Queens City Councilman Calls For Restoration Center, Assistance For Residents In Hard-Hit Area
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - In one neighborhood near John F. Kennedy International Airport, people were not told to evacuate before superstorm Sandy but the flood came anyway.
Now a month later, people in Rosedale, Queens said the city has not done enough to help them clean up and recover.
WCBS 880's Alex Silverman reports
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Rosedale sits in Zone B, with only a few creeks running through Idlewild Park. But the community was one of just a handful that flooded during Hurricane Irene.
Some residents said they chose to evacuate on their own.
"I asked my tenant across there to evacuate," resident Ted Vaughn told WCBS 880's Alex Silverman. "I said 'what are you going to do with the children?'"
Only residents in Zone A, which include coastal and low-lying areas, were ordered to evacuate. But the damage in Rosedale looks the same as some of those hard-hit areas, Silverman reported.
Flooded out cars were loaded onto flatbed trucks and piles of wreckage litter the streets, Silverman reported.
"Debris of people's lives," New York City Councilman James Sanders told Silverman.
The councilman has called on the mayor's office to set up a restoration center in Rosedale to help hard-hit residents there.
"Not having a large commercial district means that we're not interesting to the business-minded in government," Sanders said.
The nearest restoration center is in Far Rockaway.
"Which, I love, earns its name, it's far," Sanders told Silverman. "Open up a center out here so that my neighbors can start rebuilding."
Residents said the clean-up and recovery is too much to handle without a little assistance.
"I think that would help because I didn't get any help yet, I'm just doing everything from my own pocket," Bukky Oyewole told Silverman.
WCBS 880 has reached out to the mayor's office for comment but has not yet heard back.
