Lower Manhattan Still Struggling To Get Back To Normal After Sandy
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - While most of Manhattan is back to its normal routine following superstorm Sandy, Lower Manhattan is still littered with reminders of the storm's wrath.
WCBS 880's Alex Silverman On The Story
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It was downtown where the surge flooded many streets and buildings and nearly everyone spent days without power. Some are still out.
More than two weeks later, the reminders are huge trailers, porta-johns, and pumps with massive tubes protruding from the office tower lobbies.
They look like dark, small businesses. You can't see the waterline anymore, but where it was, everything is torn up.
At 4 New York Plaza, giant gray tubes poked out of the doors. Men in white plastic suits are still hauling debris out of the massive empty towers.
At the corner of Water and Broad Streets, there are brick buildings that date back to the late 1800s.
"This is really hard," Carolyn Chadwick, who manages a private club in one of them, told WCBS 880's Alex Silverman. "I'll tell people that we still don't have any power. We still don't have any heat. They'll go 'Really?!?' They're shocked."
She says it's even bigger than the huge still off-limits office buildings all around her.
"Our major supplier is a guy up in Hunts Point. He said a 130 of his customers were down here and they're not ordering yet," she said.
Matthew Azimi owns a deli at the corner of Broad and Water.
"We waiting in here with the little bit of heat that we getting from one of the outlets," he told Silverman. "...for Con Edison to come in to pump water out of the gas line that comes to this building."
He doesn't anticipate being able to open up shop for six months.
"It's a lot of lost money for a lot of people," Chadwick said. "All of these people's incomes are being impacted by this."
There are still many hundreds of people who can't live in their homes. Several residential towers are still uninhabitable. Some are even letting tenants break their leases.
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