Flood and her mother Anette had just parked her car in front of the house five minutes ago. Now, it was teetering on the edge of a 20-foot-deep by 20-foot-wide sinkhole that had opened up while she was inside.

Photo of the Bay Ridge Sinkhole by Twitter user @gazawia

“We’re so blessed,” she told CBS News. “If we were five minutes later or anything, we could have been in the hole.”

FDNY and members of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) arrived at the scene — 79th Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues — and were able to rescue the car. No injuries were reported, though some family’s cars were stuck in their driveways.

According to the DEP, the hole was caused by the collapse of a 50-inch, century-old sewer pipe.  It remains unclear, however, exactly why the hole opened up.

DEP spokesperson Jim Roberts says repairs will last at least through the weekend. “It’s a reasonably deep excavation, so we have to be cautious about how we go about it so it’s safely done,”  he told CBS.

Some residents are skeptical about the quality of work that is going into the city’s street construction in the first place. Christine Hansen said to CBS, “The work is shabby. They’re not doing the work right. It’s not being filled in properly.”

Whether or not Hansen is correct, this certainly isn’t the first sinkhole the city has seen. In fact, one appeared last month just 15 blocks away.

One struck 106th Street in Manhattan a year ago when a water main broke and flooded several subway stations.

A reoccurring one also stopped traffic in Midtown last year.

One hit Bedford Park in 2010.

One even swallowed an SUV in Brooklyn back in 2006.

The list goes on, sadly. Know of more? Share your New York City sinkhole story below!

Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal heeded the itchy cries of residents on and around West 84th Street who have been suffering from a bafflingly hard to quash infestation, rounding up city officials to hear their tales and explain what the city is doing to combat the insects. The result was a promise to coordinate efforts and take the problem seriously, which barely soothed a very frustrated population.

“It’s not [just] a nuisance,” said Lisa Perlman, who brought photos of her young son’s red, swollen leg after he suffered a mosquito attack. “These mosquitoes are biting ,and their bites itch like hell for days; they hurt like black fly bites.” She and dozens of other meeting attendees said they or their kids sleep under mosquito nets in an effort to keep them away, but are sometimes up all night swatting.

Representatives from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Con Edison each explained to the public what they were doing to combat the localized pests. Mosquitoes breed in standing water, and despite residents’ best efforts to eliminate stagnant water from the area and the city flushing the sewer system over 10 times in recent months, a single sewer trap is still catching over 300 mosquitoes in a day on West 84th Street.

Dr. Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, an urban entomologist from Cornell University, explained the science of the problem and told residents that even little measures might help eliminate mosquitoes.

“If you find a bottle cap, get rid of it. If you see leaves in the gutters, get rid of them,” she said. “High participation is required.”

Gangloff-Kaufmann said that installing screens is the “No. 1 [method of] urban pest control,” but acknowledged that they won’t solve the root of the problem.

Part of the difficulty in eradicating the pesky bugs is that it requires the coordination of several city agencies. For example, the DEP can flush the sewers, but it can’t pull up any part of the roads without the go-ahead from the DOT. The DOHMH is responsible for pest control, but they still have to work with other agencies.

While some at the meeting wanted to know why the city won’t just spray chemicals to kill all the larvae, others were quick to reject that idea, saying they’d rather not resort to poison in a residential area.

Part of the frustration people felt was due to the fact that because the species of mosquito found on the Upper West Side hasn’t been shown to carry West Nile virus, the city has treated the infestation as a nuisance rather than an imminent threat to public health.

“The premise is, if someone doesn’t die, you can go to hell,” said West 84th Street resident Abraham Newman. “This is just a small sampling of the people who are suffering day and night. They have no recourse, no one listens to them, no one gives a damn because no one has died.”

City officials also admitted that they don’t know exactly what the next steps should be. Rosenthal suggested they all come to the location of the infestation and work as a task force to come up with more creative solutions, which all of the agencies agreed to.

“I’m happy that this many people came here, and that the agency representatives got to hear from them directly,” Rosenthal said. “I don’t think they grasped the magnitude of the problem.”

She also suggested that if the city can’t come up with a fix, they should bring in an outside consultant.

“It doesn’t seem that the city has responded in a way that is really going to solve the problem,” Rosenthal said. “They admitted, ‘I don’t know what the problem is, it’s a mystery.’ I mean, that’s not acceptable. These are intelligent, involved people and they’re not going to be happy until the problem is fixed.”

Earlier this year, the MTA released a study that measured harmful pollutants and found that the subway construction was not creating hazardous conditions, but many residents have since complained that their respiratory problems tell a different story. Another spot check by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found elevated levels of silica, a carcinogen that targets the lungs, inside the tunnels.
“The MTA says the air is safe, but we need to know for sure,” Lappin said in a statement. “Monthly testing by an outside agency would help us breathe a little easier.”
The proposed legislation would require the DEP to post the monthly results of tests for irritants like particulate matter and sulfur dioxide, and if levels exceed safe benchmarks, the DEP commissioner would be legally required to take action to mitigate the problem.

Compiled by Megan Bungeroth & Josh Rogers

The New York state budget crisis, public school closings and potential cuts to senior centers were just some of the subjects discussed during a July 13 Upper West Side Town Hall Meeting at Goddard Riverside Community Center.

More than 300 West Siders packed the center to hear Upper West Side elected officials, including Borough President Scott Stringer, Assembly members Linda Rosenthal and Richard Gottfried, Council members Gale Brewer and Inez Dickens, as well as representatives from the departments of Education, Transportation and Environmental Protection.

After a short introduction, Stringer turned the floor over to the audience.

Many of the people in attendance wanted to know how the New York State budget crisis would affect the Upper West Side, from the closings of senior centers and public schools to inadequate unemployment benefits. The city’s $63 billion budget, which passed two weeks ago, includes a 20 percent decrease from last year in discretionary funding for community organizations.

Stringer promised the audience that he is trying to avert the public school closings Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed.

“When there are not enough seats in public schools, parents leave New York City, taking their tax dollars and their children,” Stringer said.

He also apologized on behalf of the government for proposed budget cuts to senior programs. Council Member Inez Dickens said her office has succeeded in saving three of the seven senior centers that were scheduled to close in her district, which includes parts of the Upper West Side and Central Harlem.

Residents also expressed their concerns about overdevelopment in Park West Village, with community advocates addressing the prospect of Jewish Home Lifecare, a nonprofit health care provider, building a 22-story nursing home on West 100th Street.

“It’s a disgrace,” Stringer said of the overcrowding of Park West Village.

But the topics were not all doom and gloom.

One woman proposed a law against putting spikes on ledges, saying that they injure people when they sit down. Stringer joked that he would introduce a “tuchus law.”

At one point, a former high school classmate of Stringer’s mentioned his recent engagement from the audience.

“I can’t believe you’re engaged,” she said. n