For weeks after superstorm Sandy hit  the Rockaways, it was difficult for the residents of the remote peninsula to get the information they needed.

The tight community of Belle Harbor was among those along the barrier island without power, without internet and without access to the rest of the city. Mainstream media were reporting on the largest storm to hit the region in years.

Rockaway Emergency Plan turned to Facebook as one-stop information hub connecting area residents and evacuees – an effort that now carries through rebuilding.

The question became, how could residents of the peninsula find out what was going on?

This is the void Jaime Jordan and Katie Honan, who both have journalism backgrounds, decided to fill. (Jordan is an alumna of Columbia Journalism School, which publishes The New York World; Honan went to CUNY Journalism.)

“All we did was connect people and provide hyperlocal information,” Jordan said. “That turned out to be really helpful.”

During the storm, Jordan was just outside of the city in Garden City, Long Island — where she did have power — while her friends and family were in the Rockaways. Similarly, Honan was at work in midtown Manhattan, at the time as a social media editor at WNBC.

The two Rockaway natives started talking online, trying to find out what was happening to their loved ones and trying to spread information.

And just like that, the Rockaway Emergency Plan/Rockaway Help — an impromptu news outlet and now watchdog organization — was born. Residents started accessing the site when cellphones and power returned to the neighborhood, or from temporary quarters off the island. The organization’s Facebook group still has more than 10,000 members. The organization also runs a website where residents can find information.

Accurate information is still as vital today as it was during the days immediately after the storm, Jordan said.

“Local news couldn’t get local enough,” said Honan, co-founder of Rockaway Help. Honan is now a reporter for DNAinfo covering neighborhoods in the Rockaways and elsewhere in Queens. She said that her experience during Sandy helped her get to her goal of becoming a local reporter.

Together they put “a hyperlocal spin on recovery,” Honan said, covering topics such as community board meetings and important FEMA deadlines.

While Rockaway has a strong local newspaper in The Wave, the paper’s office was heavily damaged and didn’t get back up and running until months later.

While the paper was unable to put out information and struggled to get back up and running, Honan and Jordan decided, “Let’s publish the information people need,” Honan said. And they did so on Facebook, which then helped to spread information in the most old-fashioned way possible — from mouth to mouth.

“People wanted to know down to their street what was going on,” Honan said.

Honan posted just five days after the storm: “i found a photo album in the mud on Beach 93 & Holland the other day and I recognize the people in it but don’t know their name. Can some people share and let them know I salvaged some of their old prom photos and they’re drying in my apartment?”

Many residents in Belle Harbor still remember how alone they felt on the peninsula during the storm, even a year later.

“Rockaway was really forgotten through this,” said Debby Smodic, who has lived in the area for about two years. “It was all about Staten Island and Battery Park City.”

Without a way out after the bridges closed and with nothing but a transistor radio to stay in touch with the outside world, Smodic stayed on the peninsula.

“I had to ride it out,” she said.

Many people in Rockaway are still struggling to make ends meet, Jordan said. Through the volunteering she spearheaded in the weeks after the storm, she has connected people in need to those who could help.

“Nobody got as much [aid] as they thought,” Jordan said.  “Most of the fixing has not been happening through insurance.”

Rather, it’s been neighbors helping neighbors. Now, a year after the storm, the Rockaway Emergency Plan has turned into something of a local news organization. Jordan and Honan go to community board meetings, attend information sessions and try to hold the government’s feet to the fire.

They want to make government agencies driving Sandy recovery funds and decisions “know that someone’s watching them,” Jordan said. “They can’t pull a fast one.”

While the initial goal was to provide real-time information and help the volunteer effort, the ad hoc organization now plans to take an active role in the area’s rebuilding.

“It’s a tiny community,” Jordan said about the peninsula. “They should have a voice in their recovery.”