114 NYCHA Buildings STILL Without Power

Eight days after Sandy and 21,000 residents in 114 NYCHA buildings remain without power:

For more than a week, hundreds of public housing tenants — mostly ailing or elderly — have been trapped inside their upper-floor apartments, waiting in vain for the return of elevators, lights, heat and water.

They say they’ve yet to get help from NYCHA and, instead, are relying on a steady stream of volunteers for food, water and a glimmer of hope.

“Nobody from management has come up here,” said Jose Reyes, 57, who has left his 13th-floor apartment in the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn only once over the last week. “It’s incredible that in the greatest nation in the world, this is happening here.”

As of Tuesday – eight days after Hurricane Sandy battered New York – 21,000 NYCHA residents in 114 buildings across Brooklyn, Queens and lower Manhattan were still without power.

In these developments, there are residents who are sick or too frail to negotiate the pitch-dark staircases that now serve as the only means of entry or exit until elevators are restored. Living high above the city, they survive without running water, and with toilets that don’t flush, refrigerators that don’t function and heat that seems to diminish each day as temperatures dip.

Reyes, who weighs 350 pounds, has osteoporosis and a weakened ankle from surgery that won’t allow him to schlep up and down 13 stories.

A Daily News reporter on Tuesday helped two of Reyes’ sisters, Marelnand Enily, drag a shopping cart full of water jugs and canned food up the unlucky 13 flights in total darkness. Urine pooled on one floor, and the load seemed heavier each step up.

Reyes fled his apartment on Sunday, and Sandy reached the first-floor windows of Red Hook West the following day. When Reyes returned two days later, fetid black water filled the basement of his building.

Since then, he’s remained in his cramped one-bedroom with only one two-hour break.

“I went downstairs once to charge my phone. I stayed a couple of hours, looked around and went back up. I had to take painkillers and I’ve been here since.”

He can’t walk his rat terrier, Pinto, so the little dog uses a pad in the tiny living room to do his business. Reyes’ wife cooks meals from whatever is left over: “Spam, a little rice, canned food.” He drinks instant coffee and watches the tropical fish in an aquarium that no longer circulates swim slower and slower each day.

“I’m knowing about the outside world with this little transistor radio – battery operated, old school,” he says. In the dark at night, “I listen to 1010 WINS, cuddle up with the wife, reminisce about the old days.

“It’s amazing to think that with all this technology, they can’t resolve this,” he said.

Brooklyn City Councilman Stephen Levin grew frustrated Tuesday trying to get NYCHA to restore power to three buildings at the Gowanus Houses in Brooklyn. Con Ed was ready to turn it on, but a NYCHA contractor had yet to show up to finish repairing the authority’s electrical system that was damaged during the flood.

“The level of dysfunction and apathy from NYCHA to the tenants of NYCHA is shocking,” Levin said. “I can’t get an answer for the last three and a half hours. I get responses like, ‘We’re trying.’ ”
In a 10th-floor apartment at Gowanus, Daisy Torres needs an electronically powered respirator to help her breathe. Without power for the last eight days, “It’s been terrible.”

Her daughter, Wendy, 28, has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, and her husband, Antonio, is confined to bed as he battles prostate cancer. The days since Sandy knocked out the power at Gowanus have been an endless nightmare.

“I feel liked we’re trapped in here,” she said. “We can’t do anything.”

Clearly Bloomberg does not give a shit about these people - at all.

This is a disgrace.

Tell me again how this isn't like Katrina?

How Will The Neo-Liberals Use Sandy To Further Their Agenda?

USA Today reports that many people are going to be unable to live in their homes for a long, long time.

Bloomberg today said quite a few housing projects across the city are no longer habitable because of the storm.

You can bet there will be the kind of social engineering that went on after Katrina in New Orleans that will go on here in the tri-state area now that the neo-liberals have got a crisis to use.

I wonder how many of the schools damaged by Sandy will return as privatized charter schools?

I wonder how many of the veteran unionized teachers who worked at those schools will end up in the ATR pool and eventually pushed out of the system?

I wonder how Bloomberg, Cuomo, Obama, Duncan, et al. will use this disaster to help out the bottom lines of their Wall Street bundlers and cronies?

Because you know they will.

You know that Arne Duncan has been beside himself this week as he looks at all the destruction in the tri-state area.

If Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to the New Orleans school system, as Duncan so famously said, he's creaming his basketball skivvies over what Sandy did over a wide swatch of the tri-state - especially in low income neighborhoods like Far Rockaway, Coney Island, Red Hook, and on Staten Island.

They going to get a chance to use this crisis to further their privatization aims.

And make no mistake, they will.

Crain's: It's Katrina In New York

More misery in the outer boroughs:

The lights went back on Saturday in lower Manhattan, prompting screams of sweet relief from residents who'd been plunged into darkness for nearly five days by Superstorm Sandy. But the joy contrasted with deepening resentment in the city's outer boroughs and suburbs over a continued lack of power and maddening gas shortages

Lines snaked around gas stations for many blocks all over the stricken region, including northern New Jersey, where the governor imposed rationing that recalled the worst days of fuel shortages of the 1970s.

But nowhere was the scene more confused than at a refueling station in Brooklyn, where the National Guard gave away free gas. There, a mass of honking cars, desperate drivers and people on foot, carrying containers from empty bleach bottles to five-gallon Poland Spring water jugs, was just the latest testament to the misery unleashed by Sandy.

"It's chaos, it's pandemonium out here," said Chris Damon, who had been waiting for 3.5 hours at the site and had circled the block five times. "It seems like nobody has any answers."

Added Mr. Damon: "I feel like a victim of Hurricane Katrina. I never thought it could happen here in New York, but it's happened."

Mr. Damon, 42, had already been displaced to Brooklyn from his home in Queens, where he still lacked power, as did millions outside Manhattan—from Staten Island, the hardest-hit borough, to Westchester County and other suburban areas.

Domingo Isasi was in a gas line in Staten Island, and minced no words about the divide between Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

"The priorities are showing, simply by the fact that Manhattan got their power back," he said, adding that Staten Islanders are used to being lower on the list.

"We're the bastard kids who keep getting slapped in the head and told to shut up," he said.

So many neighborhoods have been forgotten about - Far Rockaway, Coney Island, all of Staten Island, Gerritsen Beach, Sea Gate and now Roosevelt Island:

 

Since Hurricane Sandy struck on Monday, more than 500 largely elderly and disabled patients had been living without heat or power in a public nursing facility and hospital on Roosevelt Island.
For four days, Coler Nursing Facility patients had been marooned in unlit rooms, fighting the cold with extra blankets and socks.

Power was partially restored to the facility on Friday evening, according to a Bloomberg administration spokeswoman, and this afternoon it has been fully restored, she said. Space heaters are being used, and heat and hot water is also set to be restored this afternoon as temperatures are expected to drop to the 30′s tonight. Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, D-Manhattan, who represents the area, said she had been “very concerned about the patients” but that residents had “generally expressed” a desire to stay.

As tropical storm Sandy hit Monday evening, the backup generator and boiler system both failed at Coler, a 1,000-bed facility on the northern tip of the island that sits in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Earlier, more than 100 of the most vulnerable patients (many on ventilators) had been evacuated to Goldwater Hospital, another chronic care facility on the island, which is operating on backup power, according to the mayor’s office.

But some 550 residents had remained at Coler without heat or power. A source provided The Insider with photos taken inside Coler on Friday. They show a nurse walking through the children’s unit, and a dim hallway in the adult patient unit.Residents had food, and had been given extra blankets and socks, according to Ms. Lappin. Staff had been monitoring room temperatures and, when needed, moving patients into the warmest available space, Ms. Lappin said.

Katrina indeed - and our Mayor Nagin is still prancing around like he's the hero of Hurricane Sandy.

Fix this, Mr. Mayor.

 

Fix this.

Earth To Bloomberg: No One Cares Who You Endorse

The Mayor of Money made a big announcement today, endorsing Barack Obama for president because he thinks Obama will handle the global warming problem better than Romney.

Meanwhile in the blackout zones of New York City, things are getting desperate:

New Yorkers, without power for a third full day and growing dispirited, decided to flee the city. They worried about food and water and, in some cases, their own safety.

 "It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big time."

Rima Finzi-Strauss was taking a bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.

"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."

 She said people were on the street buying "old, tiny little vegetables" and climbing 20 floors into apartments where they wouldn't flush the toilet, and without heat. New York dipped to about 40 degrees Wednesday night.

And that's what's going on in Manhattan. 

As I posted earlier, things are getting really desperate in Coney Island where Bloomberg sent no food or water to residents without either, but did dispatch enough NYPD police to patrol every street in the neighborhood to prevent looting.

No one outside of a few asshole members of the elite media press corps gives a shit who Bloomberg endorses for president.

People do care that he can get food, water and supplies to people in the blackout zones in the city.

People also care that he gets the power back on.

Bloomberg spends more time and energy on bullshit like this endorsement crap than on the things that truly matter.

Take his insistence that the NYC Marathon on Sunday will go forward despite many politicians and runners asking for the race to be postponed.

Or his need to make believe NYC is up and running despite the lack of power and train service downtown and the four hour gridlock to get anywhere. 

I dunno, though -  maybe Bloomberg's right about the marathon.

Maybe it should go on as scheduled this Sunday.

Maybe the runners can bring food and water to Coney Island and downtown Manhattan, since Bloomberg himself can't seem to accomplish this task in a timely manner.

Daily News: Coney Island Like Katrina Zone

Mayor Bloomberg is taking bows for his Sandy response on the Upper East Side, but people who live in the zones devastated by Sandy are not so happy with his performance:

At a 12-unit apartment building at West 23rd near Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, several tenants are huddled together in one room where human waste is spilling out of the toilet. They need help, and are at a loss explaining why assistance is getting to them faster.

"We have no food or water. Why isn't anyone helping us," asked tenant Aeising Cancel.

We are scavenging for food like animals," said another tenant Jeffery Francis. "We are in a crisis and no one will help us. Look at us. We are misery. Everyone cares about Manhattan. No one is looking out for us. Nothing. We are Katrina."

At an apartment building at 3024 W 23rd the power is still out and residents are out of food.

"The food is gone. We are scrapping for food. One person found a sandwich and we split it four ways," said resident 58-year-old Albert Miller. "I'm just happy to be alive. We are praying a lot right now. Praying for help. We keep telling ourselves it is going to get better. It has to get better, right?"

The gas is on in the building, but they have no heat. Tenants are blasting their gas stoves and ovens to stay warm.

The NYPD has a massive presence on Mermaid Ave. At least two officers per block are standing guard.

Almost every business still appears to be closed - as business owners and employees are busy cleaning up from the hurricane and looting.

Why isn't anyone helping you?

Because Mayor Bloomberg doesn't give a shit about you.

He doesn't give a shit about you at all.

Not one bit.

Con Edison is saying power may be out as long as another 7-10 days in places like Coney Island.

And all the mayor has done is send the NYPD to guard against looting.

How about some food and water, Mr. Mayor?

How about buying everybody steaks from that fancy steak house you dined at last night?

How about doing something other than spinning how you failed to prepare the city for a storm you said was "less dangerous than Irene"?

If we're all in this together, why not take care of the people in Coney Island?