Bethenny Frankel: Hurricane Sandy Aftermath Is "Like a War Zone"

USMagazine, Wednesday, November 7, 2012, 6:00pm (PST)

You can take the girl out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the girl.

Sitting down to chat with fellow talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in California recently, Bethenny Frankel opened up about her love and loyalty for the East Coast, which is struggling to recover in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

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"The ocean was wicked. She was mean and nasty," the Bethenny star told DeGeneres of the superstorm, offering photos she took of the shore as proof.

"It was terrible...and every day something else unfolds. It affects everybody."

Frankel, 41, lives with her husband, Jason Hoppy, and their daughter Bryn, 2, in downtown Manhattan, which experienced significant flooding and power outages due to Sandy. But the damage there is nothing compared to some of the damage elsewhere, she said.

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"Forget me," she replied when DeGeneres asked about her NYC apartment. "What's going on in Staten Island and Jersey is crazy. Entire towns burned down and people are losing their homes."

Frankel, on the other hand, escaped relatively unscathed. Her life is already back to normal -- but she's all too aware that "normal" is still a long way off for other families.

"It's a week later, and [I'm] thinking, 'Oh, you know, maybe I'll go to the gym.' And then I think, 'They're not going to the gym. They don't have a home...Their kids have no school,'" she said. "It's bad. It's like a war zone."

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To help with the recovery efforts, the Skinnygirl mogul donated $50,000 to the Red Cross. And she's encouraging other New Yorkers to give as well.

"I was that person who sat on my couch and thought...'If I donate $10, is it really going to matter?'" she said. "It does matter...Every penny [counts]."

Want to give back? Check out all the ways you can help with Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Bethenny Frankel: Hurricane Sandy Aftermath Is "Like a War Zone"