By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Devin Accetta, a court officer at Manhattan Supreme Court, wasn't at her usual post in the courthouse on Thursday. She was at her house, which was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, waiting for help.

Accetta, who lives in the Midland Beach section of Staten Island, narrowly escaped the surging seawater brought on by Sandy with her twin 2-year-olds, fleeing with virtually nothing but the clothes they were wearing. On Thursday she hoped a representative of the Federal Emergency Management Agency would stop by the property and assess the damage.

"The only thing we left up are the walls," and those will likely come down this weekend, she said. "We need to replace everything that we owned."

Now help may be on the way -- from her fellow court employees.

On Thursday, the court system announced the establishment of a Court Families Assistance Fund to help employees and judges who were affected by Sandy, which barreled through the region last week and devastated entire neighborhoods.

More than 100 judges and non-judicial court employees suffered some sort of damage from the storm, according to Ronald Younkins, the chief of operations for the Office of Court Administration.

Like many New Yorkers, court employees who lived in the hardest-hit areas have struggled to return their lives to normal in the wake of the storm.

Bob Abarno, a senior court officer in Mineola Supreme Court, watched helplessly from the second floor of his home as it was flooded by three feet of water. Lieutenant Jack Allen, an officer in New York City Criminal Court, saw his single-floor ranch utterly ruined. And Nassau Supreme Court Justice Jerome Murphy has spent the last week emptying his house in Island Park of his possessions, the same as all his neighbors.

"I can't put it into words," said Allen of his life since the storm. "There are days where you feel like you're going to get through this, and days when it's overwhelming."

"WE'RE A FAMILY"

Power outages after the storm forced courts throughout the region to close, including in Manhattan, where courts were essentially shuttered for a week.

David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the court system, said court employees had done an "outstanding job of getting to work whenever and wherever they could," despite Sandy's impact.

The assistance fund will be administered by the Center for Court Innovation in conjunction with the Fund for the City of New York.

The court system launched a similar effort following the attacks at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Younkins said that campaign raised $400,000, all of which was dispersed to families affected by the attacks.

Another fund was organized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to benefit New Orleans court employees and their families.

Younkins said a letter announcing the fund had been sent to judges and employees statewide, as well as the state bar associations, many of which have already vowed to provide free legal aid to victims of the storm. The National Center for State Courts will also make court systems in other states aware of the fund. Donations are tax-deductible.

The court system's effort joins a patchwork network of assistance for affected residents that includes city, state and federal agencies, nonprofit groups and neighbors and volunteers from across the region.

"I think it's amazing," Allen said. "We work in a system with a ton of different titles -- you're a court reporter, a court officer, a clerk, a judge. But we're a family."

Follow us on Twitter @ReutersLegal | Like us on Facebook