Hurricane Sandy outdid even the most aggressive projections of its impact on New York. In my district on the East Side of Manhattan, and some of the West 50s, we had severe flooding throughout Zones A and B, power and heat outages that lasted for over a week, and—as if that weren’t bad enough—a crane that hung precariously in Midtown, forcing residents from their homes.

The situation presented an important opportunity for local government to respond. The flooding left thousands of my constituents stranded in their apartments and in need of assistance, particularly in Peter Cooper Village, Stuyvesant Town and Waterside Plaza, home to nearly 30,000 right next to the East River. Residents—who include me and my family—lacked electricity, heat and hot water, and just as dangerously, any telephone service.

Without the ability to call in our out, seniors and residents with limited mobility were cut off from the outside world, with family members who were worried about them.

In response, we set up our volunteer operation starting on Thursday morning, and worked hand in hand with both properties’ management with the goal of knocking on every door in both communities every day until power began to be restored. We put out a call for volunteers; we secured donations of food, blankets, batteries and water with the help of Speaker Quinn’s staff; we set up a volunteer center (and City Council mobile office) in the Stuyvesant Town Community Center and in the Management Office of Waterside Plaza; and we got to work.

It was inspiring to see how many New Yorkers turned out to help, with hundreds of volunteers from New York Cares, religious groups, local tenants associations and many others, including my colleagues in government. We dispatched them door to door, checking on our neighbors, assessing their needs, and then sending volunteers back out immediately with the relevant supplies, to the extent we had them. This continued over several consecutive days, until the power and heat started coming back.

One of the most pressing needs was that of seniors who worried that their prescriptions were running out, and needed immediate refills. In response, we called for local nurses and doctors to arrange health visits for seniors who were trapped—and we had volunteers make runs to fill their prescriptions, and bring them up the dark staircases in the buildings.

We even had a couple of very nice surprises. We had generous donations of food from the Setai Hotel, Riverpark restaurant, which also offered hot coffee in Stuyvesant Oval, and a delivery of hot soup from celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito, which he had made himself. And we had countless volunteers who pooled their own funds and made emergency runs for supplies, including prescription refills and batteries. A particularly entrepreneurial group of volunteers at Waterside borrowed a shopping cart from a local store and wheeled 300 bottles of water across the FDR for residents at Waterside.

The most incongruous image that sticks out in my mind was 40 members of the Air Force National Guard showing up late on Thursday in the Stuyvesant Town Community Center, in full military fatigues and an army truck, passing boxes of “meals ready to eat” down an assembly line into the center. When they were done, we marched with them with flashlights through the dark and desolate Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper up to meet their truck in Waterside Plaza, where they did the same thing.

Another image was one that most New Yorkers won’t soon forget: a crane hanging dangerously above Midtown in 90 mph winds, also in my council district. While the City acted swiftly to evacuate hundreds of residents, many left their homes in a hurry, leaving medication, clothing and pets behind. We worked to help these residents gain safe, temporary access to their apartments to retrieve the items they needed. I’m happy to report that as of Monday night, the crane was secured and all residents in the West 50s who had been evacuated were allowed to return home.

While the communities in my district are slowly getting back to life as usual, there are still large parts of the city that are not so lucky. If you are able to get out to Staten Island or the hard-hit areas in Brooklyn and Queens, I strongly encourage you to lend a hand there.

Dan Garodnick is the City Council Member for District 4 on the Upper East Side.

After six days of precarious dangling 74 stories above the ground, the damaged construction crane alongside 157 W. 57th St. was secured on Sunday. The crane’s 150-foot boom snapped in the middle of Hurricane Sandy’s strong winds, which left it suspended by only a few metal beams at its base as it swung over the many residential buildings below. The city evacuated at-risk residents on West 56th and 57th streets between Sixth and Seventh avenues after the snap, then set to work figuring out how to handle the unwieldy danger.

The Department of Buildings and Pinnacle Industries, the crane’s owner, reportedly spent 36 hours on Sunday turning the crane’s mast so that the wayward boom could be tethered to the residential building. Most locals—many angered over the week by the repair’s slow progress—were allowed back into their homes on Monday.

GAS LINES STRETCH MORE THAN SIX BLOCKS

Upper West Siders in need of gas endured lines six blocks and beyond on Sunday, six days into a regional fuel shortage in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that has many citygoers on edge. The shortage persisted despite assurances from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week that supplies would return to normal soon, so many residents found themselves with multiple hours to kill over the weekend along West End Avenue from around West 101st Street to the Mobil station around the corner on W. 96th Street.

According to the West Side Rag, the line stretched so far that gas station attendants had to close it off on Sunday around 2:30 p.m. to ensure that everyone in line received a portion of their dwindling supply. The line mirrored traffic jams across the city caused by fuel demand. At many stations, police were on duty to keep the gas-hungry from getting out of control.

MARATHON CANCELED; RUNNERS RACE FOR STORM RELIEF

Amid fervid debate over whether or not the New York Marathon should be run in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the cancellation of the Nov. 4 event last Friday. Bloomberg, who first supported the race after the storm, maintained that the 26.2-mile run through the city’s five boroughs would not divert resources from storm recovery efforts.

Nevertheless, he said, the controversy surrounding the event—which over 26,000 New Yorkers protested by signing an online petition—was too much of a distraction from the families and homes that needed aid.

“It is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division,” Bloomberg said in the announcement. “The marathon has always brought our city together and inspired us with stories of courage and determination. We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it.”

Many racers, however, decided not to let the cancellation darken their day, either. About 2,000 of the race’s 50,000 registered participants showed up in Central Park on Sunday morning to raise money for relief efforts by running laps around the park’s main road loop. (Four laps around the park about equals the marathon’s distance, and in fact used to be the New York Marathon’s course.) Other runners headed down to Staten Island to help families in damaged neighborhoods.

The crane’s counterweight crushed a pedestrian sidewalk during construction of the mixed-use building on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 97th Street. There were no fatalities or injuries.

On the day of the accident, Borough President Scott Stringer and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito called for an “open, transparent report to the public” about how the crane malfunctioned and what steps will be taken to prevent future accidents. Stringer recently emphasized that a report is “necessary” on a project that has a history of problems. In 2007, a retaining wall collapsed, causing the total evacuation of 784 Columbus Ave.

“Though this incident may have been minor compared to previous ones, residents still need to feel assured that necessary repairs have been made and they are not in danger of a crane malfunctioning again, perhaps causing greater damage,” Stringer said in a statement.

The buildings department did not return calls for comment.

Westsiders for Public Participation, a community group that has long opposed the development, volunteered to host a public meeting with buildings commissioner Robert LiMandri.

“All of our requests since the date of the crane accident have been met with nothing but deafening silence from the Department of Buildings,” said Paul Bunten, the group’s president.

Department of Buildings spokesperson Ryan Fitzgibbon said it was not a major accident and there were no reported injuries. The incident occurred, she said, as workers were dismantling the crane, at 775 Columbus Ave., and a counterweight fell, damaging the sidewalk shed. The 13-story, mixed-use building was under construction and is stable, according to Fitzgibbon.

The department issued a full stop work order for the crane, and issued Environmental Control Board violations to the crane’s owner, crane operator and the site’s general contractor for failing to safeguard the public and property affected by construction operations. Work on site is continuing, however.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

The crane was working on Joe Chetrit’s Columbus Square project, consisting of five luxury rentals and retail space at Park West Village, along Columbus Avenue between West 97th and 100th streets. Police, firemen and Building Department personnel were on the scene this afternoon, directly across from the new Whole Foods. As of 5 p.m. that day, workers were in the process of removing the crane, owned by U.S. Crane and Rigging. Atlantic Hoisting and Scaffolding, which owns the sidewalk shed, was also making repairs.

David Fuhrman, who lives on the 15th floor of 382 Central Park West, said he had filed two complaints about the crane with the department, starting on Oct. 5, before this afternoon’s accident.

“The crane operator should not be operating this crane,” he said. “It pisses me off. It could have been my building.”