Chris Kui helped bring emergency funds and hope to downtown after Hurricane Sandy struck

By Emily Johnson

On the third day after Hurricane Sandy, the staff of Asian Americans for Equality managed to gather themselves and return to their Division Street office—but like the rest of the Lower East Side, it was dark. Without electricity, they couldn’t even open the gate.

For executive director Chris Kui, it was a moment of truth. People in the neighborhood badly needed the sort of emergency relief his community development nonprofit was equipped to provide.

“We knew we had to pull together because we had to launch this loan fund,” he said last week at the office, which was once again bustling and brightly lit. “Could we find a reporter? We couldn’t even open our door. But we had one generator that we had for special events like street festivals, so we were able to use that generator to open up the gate, have a press conference, plug in a computer.”
Emergency loan funds became a standard first response for AAFE after last year’s Hurricane Irene. Kui oversaw two separate funds: one for homeowners and one for small businesses. It was a priority, he said, because for many business owners, waiting weeks or months for assessments and federal disaster assistance could mean they never reopen.

“They are tremendously affected by loss of sales. Restaurants, for example, they lost their inventory. Fish, poultry, they had to get rid of all of it,” he said. “It’s just tragic. Wholesale businesses and warehouses on the waterfront flooded. That $30,000 makes a big difference for desperate people.”

In the following days and weeks, AAFE disbursed 100 loans and organized a grassroots relief effort to deliver food and basic necessities to many of downtown Manhattan’s most vulnerable people—particularly recent immigrants with nowhere to go and seniors stuck in top-floor apartments in the Knickerbocker Village housing complex, where residents remained without power long after it was restored to the rest of downtown.

The organization also coordinated with city government to provide translation services for the large population of non-English speakers in Chinatown, Two Bridges and the Lower East Side. On-the-ground communication was crucial in assessing and prioritizing needs in the aftermath of the storm, and it helped many people navigate a complex system in which they might otherwise have been reluctant to place their trust.

“The community was so disoriented,” Kui said. “They needed timely and accurate info for how to register with FEMA. We tried to simplify the process.”

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), who nominated both Kui and David Garza of Henry Street Settlement for the OTTY awards, praised the men for stepping up day and night to provide what he called “life-saving help.”

“Those were very chaotic days and weeks after the storm,” Silver said. “Communication was difficult throughout the relief effort, and Chris was like a lifeline thousands of people relied on for information.”

The speaker also praised Kui’s “tireless” grassroots efforts to mobilize people to go door-to-door and make sure residents had blankets, food and water.

Kui, who lives in Flushing, did not suffer any flood damage but was himself without power for 10 days.

“Compared to other people, my personal suffering was nothing,” he said. “I feel attached to helping these folks. And I give credit to our staff. They really worked 24/7. Especially during the first three weeks, people were coming in on weekends to process loans.”

Looking ahead, Kui said, AAFE is already transitioning to more long-term recovery efforts.
“We’re looking at covering overhead costs for sanitation and cleanup, because those things cost money, and once people are stabilized they can go back to their jobs,” he said. “We’re here together to bring the community back.”

Josh Fox

Hurricane Sandy hit New York just a month ago and yesterday, Josh Fox (Academy Award- nominated director of 2010′s Gasland) released his short documentary, Occupy Sandy, in the same fast, unconventional way that the Occupy Sandy relief effort popped up after the storm.

People were led via text message to the site of the film’s “guerrilla movie premiere,” which was ultimately revealed less than half an hour before the film began. Fox was still making edits on the latest version.

On the wall of a Mobil gas station, The Illuminator (the mobile projector that has been called Occupy’s “bat signal”) projected the film, as audience members, including people from affected communities, munched on popcorn.

NY Press pulled Fox aside after the movie to talk about the state government’s attitude towards climate change, the role of Occupy Sandy, and plans to re-purpose more gas stations into movie theaters.

NY PRESS: So Sandy hit just about a month ago and you already have this film out. When did you know you were making this film?

JOSH FOX: Oh, like a week ago. I mean, this was something very fast. It’s not polished.  It’s sort of like, we need to get the word out that this incredible disaster relief effort has come out of the Occupy Movement and what amazing work that they’re doing. And I had an afternoon – like a very rare Sunday afternoon off. And I was sitting in my studio in Brooklyn and I was like, “You know what, I’ve heard a lot about this, let me just walk  in there with a camera.’

I walked in the door and was just blown away by what they were doing. I said, ‘I have to go with them on some of these runs.’ I went to Sheepsheadbay, went to the Rockaways, and just met extraordinary people. And also just for myself, to see the damage… it is unforgettable. And to know that this is climate change in real and human terms.

Occupy Sandy is a disaster relief organization of the moment, but it’s also about the root causes of the disaster. You don’t go ahead and say, ‘Oh this is just a thing where we deliver food and water and heaters.’ This is about, ‘No, we have to address climate change.’

That’s why I come to a Mobil Station and show it on the wall. Go directly to the fossil fuel industry and say, ‘If it’s business as usual for you guys, we’re going to see New York flooded again and again and again. And it’s time for you guys to realize that you’re putting us all in peril.’

So what do you think needs to happen to go from Governor Cuomo recognizing that climate change is happening to having something actually be done about it?

Well, I really think this is a moment of change for the government. I mean, obviously, Governor Cuomo stepped out amidst this wall of climate silence right before the presidential election and broke the silence.

And now I think he and everyone else need to understand two very basic things. One, renewable energy can run the world. On existing technology. We have enough wind and sun to power everything that we need in this United States. And two, that it’s an economic engine that people can participate in at every level – at the corporate level, at the personal level, and it needs to be encouraged through leveling the playing field at the government level.

So, this is where we have to be, what we have to do. When we have hurricanes that are supercharged by global warming, we have to plan for a different way of organizing our economy.

Your film Gasland obviously had a considerably larger release and started a national conversation about hydraulic fracturing and agitated a lot of people in the natural gas industry. Do you have any plans to make a longer movie about this?

Well, we’re making Gasland 2, which does address issues of climate change. Fracking and natural gas is one of the worst fuels, in terms of its greenhouse emissions profile – both carbon and methane. And for this governor and the mayor of this city to be acknowledging publicly that climate change is a huge problem and, at the same time, still considering a huge drilling campaign throughout all of New York state, is a contradiction in terms.

Hopefully, when they realize, ‘Oh, we’re really at risk here,’ [they'll say], ‘We have to move towards renewable energy and completely abolish the thought of more fossil fuel production in NY state.’

There are two main points that you made in the movie: one, that people need to be held accountable for what happened, and two, that government agencies and established, large non-profits are not the ones that stepped in, but rather Occupy. Do you think that those organizations are really equipped or flexible enough to do what Occupy did?

Well, I don’t think it’s about saying anything bad about FEMA or the City at all. I think what this is saying is, acknowledge the brilliant work that’s being done person to person. The brilliant new model that’s being created here of mutual aid, not charity.

Mutual aid is people giving to people. Charity is rich people giving to poor people. This is coming from within those communities and I think it’s an acknowledgment of how we have to engage a whole new structure.

You know, Occupy Wall Street was dealing with a disaster also – the disaster of the banking collapse and the housing collapse. This is their environmental disaster relief. And I think what we’re finding here is we’re building a new community and a new way of talking about politics.

Would you ever do this kind of guerrilla release again?

Absolutely. Sure, I think once we’ve started to convert the gas stations and the other infrastructure in the fossil fuel industry to movie theaters and other things that people like, it’ll be easier.

OCCUPY SANDY from JFOX on Vimeo.

I’m not the only child of the Garden State who has lamented the bastardization of our diverse homeland, and I’ve made a tentative peace with it. I’ve always been proud of my NJ heritage, though not above making fun of the parts that deserve it. Newark, in the industrial areas, is indeed smelly. That doesn’t mean the entire state wreaks of garbage.

Now, I am just as heartbroken as Chris Christie that the Jersey shore of our collective youths has been decimated by Hurricane Sandy. For me, this is not the Jersey shore of some MTV producer’s making, but  one of gorgeous, uncrowded beaches  in towns with names like Avalon-by-the-Sea and Brighton, with surprise fireworks displays and artisanal ice cream stands. It’s made of memories of actually swimming in the ocean and avoiding the punishing sun on my super-fair skin at all costs.

That’s why, though I want to support any effort to raise money for the victims of Sandy in both my former home and my current one, New York, I physically cringed when I read a PR email imploring me to “Jersey up the holidays!” in support of fundraising campaigns.

“‘A Very Jersey Xmas‘ calls on everyone who has ever lived in New Jersey, has family in New Jersey, enjoyed a turn on the New Jersey Turnpike, watched Jersey Shore, The Sopranos or Real Housewives of New Jersey, OR who just wants an excuse to party in leopard print to dedicate this holiday giving season to hurricane relief, Jersey-style.”

It goes on to suggest fundraising levels ($10 is a Snooki) and “Jersey garb,” which apparently means velour tracksuits.

This, I cannot support.

I know that every subset of our country endures its own grossly exaggerated stereotyping. People from San Francisco are annoyingly liberal; people from Texas are drawling hicks; people from Connecticut are rich snobs, etc. My best friend once had someone ask her at a party in New Orleans if she knew Tony Soprano. Like she thought he was a real person, and also that my friend, a college-age girl from a random small-town suburb, would be pals with him. This shit happens all the time.

Still, I fight against it. Jersey isn’t a verb, and when people apply the term to mean “dress slutty and act drunk!” it’s insulting to everyone, not just those from Jersey. No one needs a geographic excuse to be drunk and slutty! Have at it, I say! Just don’t pretend that “it’s a Jersey thing.” It’s not. Wearing leopard print spandex and attacking your frenemies over lunch in front of a realty-TV crew isn’t “Jersey style,” it’s just tacky. Tacky you can find all over this great country, not just in NJ.

If people want to party like d-bags and raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief, that’s great. Just please don’t do it in the name of my home state. This is coming to you from a through-and-through “Jersey girl” (born in New Brunswick, lived in the state for 22 years) who has never known a press-on nail, a spray tan, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. If anyone wants to make a reality show about the traffic-sense superiority of jug handles, 24-hour diners, and singing in high school barbershop choirs, though, give me a call.

ASSEMBLY MEMBER ROSENTHAL’S CALL FOR HELP INSPIRED WEST COAST SCHOOL

When Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal sent out an e-mail to her constituents on the Upper West Side that explained how they could aid victims of Hurricane Sandy, she did not expect a response from San Diego.

Rosenthal’s e-mail list, it turned out, was a bit dated. One recipient was a former Upper West Side resident who left the city three years ago for the Southern California city. There she enrolled her children at San Diego Jewish Academy, a day school with a history of community outreach that includes benefit drives for post-earthquake Haiti and post-Katrina New Orleans. When she heard that the school’s administrators where brainstorming aid projects for New York City a few weeks ago, she forwarded Rosenthal’s message to Head of School Chaim Heller.

“We were looking for a local person who was actually doing something on the ground,” Heller told West Side Spirit on Friday at Rosenthal’s West 72nd Street office. “We wanted to be able to tell our students, practically, what their contributions would mean—something tangible.”

Heller and his colleagues decided to host an event that would raise money instead of goods, and told Rosenthal they would donate half the proceeds to a local organization recommended by her. Then they set about organizing and advertising their project: “The Mother of All Garage Sales,” a daylong used-item sale run by the school’s 600 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students and their parents.

Students spent the week leading up to the Nov. 11 sale collecting items from their families and posting fliers across the city. On the day of the sale, they took on roles assigned by grade, such as managing particular sections of goods and grilling hot dogs, which they sold to raise additional money.

According to Heller, the school charged $5 for food and a $5-per-car entrance fee. The items for sale, he added, were far from dusty throwaways pulled out of attics: “There was furniture, there were television sets, sports equipment, bicycles. There was a car. It was a big deal. We fanned all over the city for a week picking things up from people’s homes.”

The sale began at 8 a.m. and closed at 3 p.m. Heller said that people lined up before it opened, and well over 1,000 attended. The school raised $23,000 by the end of the day, well over double what Heller had anticipated.

Half of this amount went to the Jewish Federations of America, an international Jewish organization that has spearheaded its own extensive aid projects for victims of the storm. The other half, by Rosenthal’s recommendation, went to Met Council, one of the city’s largest human services agencies.

“I’ve worked closely with Met Council in my almost-seven years in office,” Rosenthal told West Side Spirit. “I know what wonderful work they’ve done when I’ve needed help for my constituents. The kind of help they give is not just food or places to live, but actual human beings who care and have empathy and compassion for the people who are stuck in a dark, powerless apartment.”

Ilene Marcus, Met Council’s chief of staff, joined Rosenthal in her office to accept an oversized check from Heller. She agreed that her organization’s mission in hurricane relief is to provide personal care to victims as well as goods and cash assistance. “It’s all about one-on-one interaction, making people feel comfortable,” she said.

According to her, San Diego Jewish Academy’s donation will help fund Met Council’s multifaceted “whole needs” approach to aiding hurricane victims, which includes building repairs, temporary housing, bulk food shipments, direct cash assistance and social worker deployments.

Did Rosenthal think it was funny that a large donation came from a mistakenly sent e-mail? “It was not a mistake,” she laughed. “It was serendipity!”

Photo by Ross Terelle, Megacast News

“Looks like food’s not the problem in Staten Island,” I say. Photographer Ross Terelle and I walk through dark streets lined with great mounds of garbage that used to be people’s lives. It’s a week after Hurricane Sandy hit. Most of the people we’ve met along the way have been trying to give food to us and to each other: “You guys need some hot coffee?” “We got pasta, you guys hungry? You seen anybody who needs some hot food?” “Pizza anybody? It’s still kinda warm.”

We pass a man standing in the doorway of a house that God must have punched, on Hunter Avenue. I ask him what happened and his story spills out in Spanish-inflected English—a messy narrative interrupted from time to time by people begging to give us food. His name is Alfredo Zapata. During Irene last year, the water level only rose a couple of feet, so he decided to stick it out. He put boots on and sloshed through knee-high water with his neighbor, surveying, protecting his house from the thieves who work disaster areas. This year they did the same but the results were different. Zapata and his neighbor barely made it to his house. They shut the door and then watched in terror as the water surged through his neighborhood. Wave after wave—he called them tsunamis—brought the water to within six inches of his ceiling, where it stagnated for a day, leaving a brown ring of grime to mark an astonishing high water mark.

“That’s got to be twelve feet,” says Terelle.

“At least,” I say.

Zapata invites us in. His house is empty; he lost everything. The floor is a layer of brown filth and foam, the walls are grimy, the framing shows through where the drywall has crumbled away, and the walls that remains are soft to the touch. The smell of mold and rot is overpowering. A young couple comes to the door and poke their heads in. “We have hot coffee and hot chocolate. Anybody?”

Zapata graciously declines and sends them on their way. When they are gone, he points to a green sticker on the door. An inspector came and told him his house was habitable. “He looked in and said, ‘Uh, well, you can live here.’” He imitates the inspector’s voice with a generous dose of idiot. “’Well, maybe dry it and you can sleep here. I’m going to put a green sticker on your door saying you can live here.’ Come on! You think a child could live here?” Terelle and I shake our heads. He snaps pictures. I don’t think a prisoner should live in this place.

“This is the same story for all my neighbors,” says Zapata. “They’re complaining. They say the government forgot us. They’re helping Long Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan. This is not Staten Island, this is Forgotten Island.” In the distance a sound like the Muslim call to prayer, but muffled, echos through the neighborhood. It’s a truck with a bullhorn: “We…have…food. We…have…water.” “We…have…food. We…have…water.” It could be something official—NYPD, Red Cross, FEMA—or it could be a local church or a youth group or volunteer firefighters or bunch of friends who feel guilty for being warm. The Occupy movement has been ferrying food and supplies to the hardest hit areas. But nobody has come by handing out lawyers or a warm place for Zapata’s family to live. I imagine he would line up for that truck.

He tells us some of the Staten Island deaths occurred within a stone’s throw of his house. The neighbor who died trying to save her dog. Two children drowned down the road. A couple in the house on the corner. And there could be more. He worries about the illegals hiding from the authorities; people waiting in the dark, afraid to light candles or turn on generators for fear of being expelled from Forgotten Island. We thank Zapata and wish him luck—both come out hollow—and leave him standing in his doorway thanking-but-no-thanking people, waiting for his insurance company to call him back. Back on the street, we walk gingerly around piles of busted dreams towards the safety of the Midland Beach Distribution Center.

Lenox Hospital held its annual Autumn Ball on Monday evening, only this time the money raised did not benefit the hospital itself, but its employees. North Shore LIJ Health System announced last week that proceeds from the fundraising gala, which was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Midtown, would be donated to the health system’s newly established Emergency Employee Resource Center, an initiative created to assist employees whose families and homes were harmed by Hurricane Sandy.

“We as a health system can take great pride in how we responded during the storm,” said North Shore-LIJ President and CEO Michael Dowling. “Our ability to meet the needs of communities we serve throughout New York City and Long Island and assist other New York area hospitals in distress was nothing short of remarkable. While Sandy has passed, much work remains. That includes taking care of our own employees, who continued to work even though many lost their homes, cars and personal possessions in the storm.”

North Shore-LIJ is a 16-hospital system that employs over 44,000 people in New York City and Long Island. The fundraiser honored Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel and included a performance by singer Cyndi Lauper.

HALLOWEEN SURVIVES IN EVACUATION ZONE

Flood damage was not the only scary thing last Wednesday at the Stanley M. Isaacs Houses, a public housing complex along the East River at East 93rd Street. A bunch of ghosts and goblins were out, too, with their parents and big bags of candy.

Despite a mandatory evacuation notice from the New York City Housing Authority before Hurricane Sandy, many residents stayed in their homes after heat and elevators were shut down. Uprooted trees and debris-ridden streets made Halloween look unlikely, but parents in the buildings decided to let their children enjoy the holiday nonetheless.

“It’s good for the kids,” resident Patrick Fraser told NY City Lens. “They don’t need to worry about what’s going on in the world right now.”

Parents walked door to door with kids whose costumes included witches, fairies, Batman, Spider-Man and a bumblebee. Elsewhere in the city, many Halloween happenings were canceled, including the Village’s annual Halloween Parade, the largest public Halloween event in the country.

LOCAL MAN SAVES TAXI DRIVER FROM DROWNING

Jon Candelaria braved Hurricane Sandy last week to pull a taxi driver out of rushing floodwater. The 25-year-old was sipping coffee in his family’s Upper East Side apartment on Monday during the storm when he saw an SUV taxi driving in water on a closed street. A sudden surge lifted the vehicle, then pulled it into deep water.

“I acted on a reaction. I didn’t think of my well-being,” he told CNN of his heroic feat that followed. He rushed outside into waist-high water wearing basketball shorts and a jacket and waded to the vehicle. Wind, water and a rapid loss of strength prevented him from opening the SUV’s door at first, but he told the driver that they were going to work together, and they managed to open the door on the count of three.

“As soon as I got to three, the wind just stopped for that one second,” Candelaria told CNN. “It was like something from a movie.”

The driver left the scene without identifying himself. The rescue was captured from above, though, on a nearby security camera.

“At the end of the day, it wasn’t about what I was getting in return,” Candelaria said after joking with CNN that he should be granted unlimited cab rides in the city. “I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. If I knew that this was going on in front of me, I would have done it for anyone.”

Midland Beach, New Dorp, Tottenville—these are neighborhoods few West Siders had ever visited, or perhaps even heard of, until last week. Few of us will ever forget them now—and not only for the suffering and devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy. We will remember because we made their names, along with Far Rockaway and Coney Island, our own.

The first few days reminded me of the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Life as we knew it had stopped, and everyone seemed to be in shock. The subway, the city’s lifeline, was crippled. We couldn’t get to work, or if we did, it was closed. School was out, and so the kids were home. Refugees from lower Manhattan began moving in with friends. Soon there was no bread, and before long, no gas. What we did have was a glut of television images of survivors pleading for help and of damage that seemed to dwarf the capacity of government to respond.

I believe it was in part those images of hungry, dispossessed people and shattered lives that inspired West Siders to do what comes naturally to us: lead, organize, network and donate what’s needed, but especially to give of ourselves. The problems weren’t all far away. Hundreds of people came to our neighborhood shelters seeking care. After a tour of the evacuation centers at IS 118/Joan of Arc School, Brandeis High School and John Jay College, I called Shelly Fine, head of the Upper West Side CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and he went into action, finding volunteers, locating dry clothing, delivering food and even getting sponsorship for a hotel room for two disabled seniors.

And then there were the donations of food, clothing and bedding that poured in from every part of the community. Members of the JCC of Manhattan were generous with contributions, and their lobby quickly filled. They found cars with gas and drove to where the need was. But then all West Siders wanted to donate, and they brought more supplies to JCC, so my office working with City Council colleagues in devastated communities organized truckloads to go to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and downtown Manhattan. At the same time, a shout-out on Facebook for contributions to be dropped off at the Firehouse Restaurant brought supplies and a line of people to load them into trucks bound for the Rockaways. The Fourth Universalist Society collected donations and working with Congregation Rodeph Sholom brought them to Staten Island and the Rockaways. Congregation Ohab Zedek, Lincoln Square Synagogue, Advent Lutheran Church, Community Free Democrats and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun did the same, and there are more.

Fairway and Fresh Direct donated food, as did Carmine’s and the New York Hospitality Alliance, and trucks from the City of NY as well as Mel Wymore made deliveries. Bike and Roll is now doing the same.

We used social media to tell West Siders how they could volunteer. They went on Council-sponsored buses and on their own to clean up homes, visit seniors on high floors and give out supplies. When they were told that blankets, not clothes, were needed, they took it in stride and donated to the Salvation Army. Members of our local NYPD volunteered in their off hours. Staff at LaGuardia High School, where students come from all over, identified those families who no longer had a home, and found apartments and funded clothing and new books.

Riverside Park suffered serious flooding and tree loss, and the docks at the boat basin were damaged—luckily, everyone had evacuated. Riverside Park belongs to the West Side, and once word went out that it needed help, volunteers poured in: Community School District 3 families, Manhattan New York Temple of the Church of Latter Day Saints, teens from Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Hippo Playground families, gardeners, bicyclists, runners and neighbors—more than 1,000 people swept the park clean of debris and leaves from Riverside South to the “Great Gray Bridge.”

West Siders want to continue their support of the post Hurricane Sandy efforts, but they also want to know what are the lessons learned and what changes should be made to our infrastructure in the near future.

Gale Brewer is the City Council Member representing District 6, which includes the Upper West Side and Clinton.

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.

A tree blocks two lanes of traffic on Bedford Avenue at Avenue T in Brooklyn.

Their offices were flooded, their phones were down and the power has been out, but that hasn’t stopped lawmakers in Zone A from helping their constituents.

The cleanup begins at the South Street Seaport. Photo by Aaron Adler.

Want to help out with the hurricane relief effort but not sure how? Below are links to volunteer opportunities around the city as well as places accepting donations of blankets, batteries and nonperishable items. You can also consider donating money or blood at redcrossblood.org.

• List of blood drives in NYC
• JCorps Volunteering Lower Manhattan
• Help Stuyvesant Cove Park rebuild this weekend 
• Donate or volunteer at a NYC soup kitchen 
• Places to help out in Brooklyn

Harlem:

• Residence 47 St Nicholas Avenue, #4D between 112 and 113 (volunteering & donation)
• 938 St Nicholas Avenue, #25 corner of 157th and St Nicholas Avenue (volunteering & donation)

Downtown/Lower East Side:

• Community Access (donate & contact online for information)
• Lower East Side Recovers (check website for information)
• CAAAV 46 Hester Street, Frnt A 212-473-6485 (drop-off for food, water, batteries, clothing)
• The Bowery Mission 45-51 Avenue D, 212-777-3424  (drop-off for food, water, batteries, clothing)

Upper East Side:

• Rockaway Relief 85th & 2nd Ave at Molly Pitcher’s bar (accepting a variety of donations)

Upper West Side:

• Brandeis High School on West 84th Street (overnight volunteers)
• BJ Synagoguge 88th Street Sanctuary at 257 West 88th Street, Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m (donations of bottled water, non-perishable kosher food, toiletries, batteries, radios and blankets)
• BJ Office at 2109 Broadway, Thursday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. or Friday from 9 a.m. to noon (donations of bottled water, non-perishable kosher food, toiletries, batteries, radios and blankets)

—Compiled by Alissa Fleck