The East River Ferry (via nycedc.tumblr.com)

The closure of the flooded subway system frustrated commuters earlier this month but it was a godsend for the East River Ferry.

Over 7,400 commuters crowded into the boats on Nov. 1, a number more than double the average ridership for the season. The weekend saw heavy ridership numbers as well, with 5,000 on Nov. 3, 3,000 on Nov. 4, and more than 7,700 people on Tuesday, Nov. 6, one of the highest totals of the year. When the L train returned on Friday, Nov. 9, some 3,200 people rode the ferry over the East River, an average figure for this time of year.

Ferry officials say that the high figures show the service is a necessary transit alternative for the city. “The return of the East River Ferry service was a significant step in providing a quick and safe transit option for commuters heading back to work in the wake of Hurricane Sandy,” said Paul Goodman, CEO of Billybey Ferry Company.

To read more New York political coverage, visit cityandstateny.com.

Witnessing the destruction of the beachfront community Breezy Point, Loyola School teacher and moderator of the Outdoor Club Tom Hanley realized that the community needed help.

The group had a hike scheduled for Nov. 11, but Hanley along with the other members decided to go to the Rockaways and help with the cleanup instead. The Loyola School, 980 Park Ave., offered to pay for the transportation of students, and as word spread, more people became interested in helping.

When the time came, 48 students and seven teachers went to Breezy Point to assist in the recovery. Working with Habitat for Humanity, the students removed furniture, tore down defective walls and removed the soggy insulation. While they were there, they also helped distribute food and water to area residents.

“Many of the houses had three to four feet of water in the first floor,” Hanley said.
He explained that they are considering going back, because the students want to continue to lend a hand. “There is so much to be done,” Hanley said. “It is an ongoing project; it will be a while to bring everything to normal.”

Students at the Loyola School are familiar with community service; Hanley noted that many of them volunteer in soup kitchens and nursing homes throughout the city.

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.

I’m adding my voice to those predicting Denzel Washington will win Best Actor in this year’s Oscar competition for his role as an alcoholic pilot in the new film Flight.  I’ll even the score with my ex-husband who, after leaving Training Day, days after the terror attacks in September 2001, correctly declared that the famous black actor would get that top honor for his role as a corrupt L.A. Detective.  Coinciding with the release of Flight, if there was a greater disaster than Hurricane Sandy since 9/11 in the New York area, I can’t name it. By chance, I was taken to see both films soon after these devastating events. As a bookish, white woman in her forties, action movies are never my thing. I’m more likely to be tucked in at home, re-watching a DVD of Howard’s End with my cat, Monk. Unforeseeably, Denzel’s characters in these two films mirror the zeitgeist of America with alacrity. They also seem to offer cogent evidence of synchronicity.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Denzel now appears onscreen as a would-be hero who miraculously saves a plane full of people in a daring move that no other pilot could maneuver, but which  still claims the lives of six people. He performs this feat high on cocaine and booze. Despite the terrible storm and the mechanics of the plane failing, because of litigation he is scrutinized for pilot error and his alcoholism comes to light.  We can’t help but root for Denzel, who starts out badass and sinks lower as the film progresses. I see him as a symbol of our own nation, weary from a decade of war and a failed economy. Yet we were once so drunk on international power and bravado that we still wonder; how did we get here? Our hero, Atlanta-based pilot Whip Whitaker, seems to be equally confused. He did everything right- so why is this happening? Assisted by his attorney, played by the excellent Don Cheadle, he manages to both squash the post-crash toxicology report and enter “Act of God” as a factor in the plane coming down. Whitaker’s co-pilot, whose legs are crushed, echoes this will of God argument, and the film’s story is touched throughout by a southern Christian sentiment applied in brush strokes too subtle to ever really take hold, let alone exonerate our hero. As I watched the film, the “Act of God” rationale echoed strongly for a New Yorker like me, as my home city struggles with the disaster and loss of life currently surrounding us.

But in Flight, it is Whip’s weakness, his moral failure that brings his problems to a head. In the comeuppance scene, played before the NTSB investigation panel, Whip finally comes clean and, as he bravely admits, stops lying about his drinking. “Act of God” takes a distant place behind his admission of free will and personal responsibility. This film soberly straightens out the apparent chaos of life to reveal the connection between our moral failures and hubris that begets the lot that God, or karma, sends our way.

Eleven years earlier, the ultra talented Washington boldly strutted through the film Training Day. As Detective Alonzo he embodied the paternalistic, American foreign policy that has historically been in evidence since Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick ideology of 1901 and carried into modern times via Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, Ronald Reagan’s Iran/Contra venture and up through the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq. With that “right justifies might” mentality on his side, Alonzo treats drug dealers the way our military took out Saddam Hussein – live outside the law and you will be taken out, due process be damned.

The only problem with that “by any means necessary” policy is it eventually catches up with the perpetrators. Alonzo, having made too many enemies of the same ilk, is gunned down at the end of the film.  I find this a sad corollary to our military men and women sent to do another clean up job in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to lose their lives in a lawless land. But Alonzo is fighting on a smaller playing field than that of the leaders in the White House and Pentagon who have innocent minions to fight their battles.

Is it a coincidence that Denzel shares his surname with our nation’s capital and helm of power? I know I’ll be keeping a close eye on Washington’s next move. After seeing Flight and living through Sandy, I can’t help but hope he will stop putting in these Oscar-caliber performances.  I don’t think New York can handle another of his cinematic hits.

New Yorkers helped re-elect President Barack Obama last week, but not without some technical difficulties.

The damages wrought on the city by Hurricane Sandy prompted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to issue an order that residents who had evacuated their homes could vote at any poll site in the state by using affidavit ballots. Many sites failed to get word of the order, which went out only the day before the election, however, and some city polls quickly ran out of the 250 affidavits that the city printed for each election district.

Jammed ballot scanners added to the confusion of relocated polling sites and affidavits, which together resulted in lines that stretched blocks. At some sites, voters waited three hours or more to cast their votes.

The city’s Upper East and Upper West sides were particularly burdened with delays. Many storm-struck New York residents fled to friends’ and relatives’ homes in the city’s less-damaged neighborhoods last week, so these polling sites were disproportionately crowded.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the Board of Elections for failing to be organized. The Board of Elections, in turn, argued that it did not have enough time to train poll workers following Cuomo’s order.

LANGONE MEDICAL CENTER REOPENS OUTPATIENT FACILITIES

After a backup generator failure and subsequent full evacuation during Hurricane Sandy, New York University’s Langone Medical Center made progress last week toward fully reopening by resuming outpatient care on Friday.

The award-winning medical center, which includes the NYU School of Medicine and three hospitals, re-launched its ambulatory care centers and faculty group practices earlier in the week, and by Friday was fully equipped to take on short-term (non-overnight) patients.

The medical center’s First Avenue location near East 32nd Street made it particularly susceptible to East River flooding, which knocked out the backup generator and caused extensive damage to the buildings’ lower levels. The medical center predicts that it was hit by a storm surge of close to 14 feet. Hospital workers spent hours on Oct. 29 moving patients out of the buildings during the storm, some down many flights of stairs. Patients were moved to other hospitals in the city, including St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, Mount Sinai and Lenox Hill.

As of Monday, the Langone Medical Center’s inpatient (long-term) services, labs, pharmacy and emergency department remained closed. NYU was still assessing the extent of the damage to the building and its facilities caused by the storm, and no official full reopening date for the medical center had been set.

CITY RATIONS GASOLINE

In its second week of fuel shortage following Hurricane Sandy, New York City began rationing gasoline last Friday in an attempt to restock its dwindling supply. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Thursday, Nov. 9, that gas stations would begin restricting sales to vehicles with even-numbered license plates on even days of the month and odd-numbered plates on odd days. (Taxis, buses and emergency vehicles were exempted.)

The rationing came despite Bloomberg’s and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s earlier assurances that fuel supplies would return to normal shortly after the storm. Hurricane Sandy jeopardized supplies by cutting power to gas stations across the city, damaging refineries and crippling the fuel distribution network of ports and terminals. Last week’s nor’easter delayed replenishment efforts by interrupting petroleum terminal repairs and further slowing fuel shipments.

In his announcement, Bloomberg noted that the shortage could last another week or more. He also said that only a fourth of the city’s roughly 800 gas stations were in operation at any given time. The NYPD assigned police officers to all open stations last week to keep order. At some stations, waits in line stretched beyond three hours.

The headquarters of Nazareth Housing, at 206 E. Fourth St., narrowly avoided major damage. Michael Callaghan, executive director of the nonprofit group that works on housing rights and homelessness prevention, said that now they’re frenetically coordinating donated supplies and volunteers.

“I think the biggest problem is heat,” said Callaghan. “There is still public housing that doesn’t have electricity and heat. They’re not letting people go in and see how the residents are because they don’t want to be sued.”

He said that volunteers have been routing incoming supplies to some of the hardest-hit areas of the outer boroughs, like the Rockaways in Queens and Coney Island in Brooklyn, but they’re also still concerned about local downtown residents.

At the Hester Street offices of CAAAV, a pan-Asian community-based organization, executive director Helena Wong said that their role in helping has evolved day to day since Sandy struck.

“Every day has been a little bit different, we started off just providing a way for people to charge their phones and handing out what donations were coming in,” Wong said. “When FEMA came, the next day we started to go into buildings and prioritize the seniors and folks who have trouble getting around.”

Wong said that they’re now using their offices primarily as a donation drop-off center while trying to work with local residents who haven’t been able to get in touch with their landlords in order to get their boilers switched on.

Some organizations have had to overcome their own major hurdles in order to help. At GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), a neighborhood housing and preservation organization, their office at 171 Ave. B was in evacuation Zone A and is still without functioning phone lines or heat.

Damaris Reyes, the executive director, said that she and most of her staff also live in the flood zone, but that they still “managed to coordinate a massive relief effort with approximately 3,000 volunteers and thousands of donations.”

This week, staffers corralled volunteers to bring food, water, flashlights, batteries and information to seniors and disabled people who were trapped on high floors of buildings without power.

“About 50 percent of the residents don’t have heat and hot water, about 20 buildings still don’t have electricity, and most folks don’t have working phone lines,” Reyes said.

At the Bowery Mission, their shelter has been operating at over three times its normal capacity, housing over 150 people, and they kept hot meals coming all through the power outage with a donated generator and a mass of extension cords.

“We were the only lights on the Bowery for a few nights there,” said James Winans, the director of development.

They’ve received an outpouring of support and have been also operating a mobile kitchen on Avenue D between Fourth and Fifth streets, giving out hot meals. Winans said that while they’re focusing on how to help Sandy victims in the immediate future, he’s also concerned about facing the holiday season with depleted resources.

“This is a critical time of year for us any year, because we always do a significant weeklong outreach during the week of Thanksgiving and typically serve about 5,000 people,” Winans said.

He’s confident, though, that downtown residents will step up to fill in the gaps in resources. Helena Wong said that she saw firsthand how important it is to have local, tapped-in neighbors helping after a disaster, because they can often get straight to work, where larger organizations are more cumbersome.

“The Red Cross, the agency that is most known for disaster relief, was coming to us to know what to do,” Wong said. “Local organizations really know the community and should be supported to do the work that we do best.”

Sandy hit New York on Monday evening with the fury promised by ominous forecasts and left behind a wake of devastation wrought by the 80 m.p.w.-plus winds and extensive flooding of lower Manhattan.

Clean-up begins at the South Street Seaport. Photo by Aaron Adler

The grim numbers began to roll in as the post-tropical storm faded on Tuesday: over half a million residents without power, according to ConEd; 1,600 people in shelters; over 80 homes destroyed in an overnight blaze that broke out in Breezy Point, Queens; at least 18 fatalities throughout the five boroughs from fallen trees, fires and rogue power lines.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the storm was perhaps “the worst we [the city] have ever experienced.”

Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at Weather Underground, agreed. “Sandy’s 9-foot storm surge rode in on top of a high tide to bring water levels to 13.88 feet at The Battery, smashing the record 11.2-foot water level recorded during the great hurricane of 1821,” he wrote in a blog post on Monday evening, reported by the Huffigton Post. “Damage from Superstorm Sandy will likely be in the tens of billions, making the storm one of the five most expensive disasters in U.S. history.”

Metropolitan Transport Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota said that the damage was certainly the worst that the city’s subway system had ever seen. Water flooded seven subway tunnels under the East River and six bus garages, forcing MTA to devise alternate bus routes and to prolong subway closures, which it began preemptively on Sunday, well into the week. “[The system] has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night,” Lhota declared on Tuesday.

The storm forced John F. Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Airports to shut down, and closed all schools and parks along with many businesses for the week. In the Financial District, the New York Stock Exchange closed for two days, its first multi-day weather-induced closure in over a century.

Damages were reported across the city. New York University’s Langone Hospital on the Upper East Side lost its backup generator and evacuated 300 patients, many on stretchers down stairs. An explosion at a ConEd substation in the East Village plunged dowtown into darkness. A 150-foot construction crane collapsed 74 stories above ground at 157 W. 57th Street, and as of press time on Thursday, remains dangling precariously over its evacuated neighborhood. The East River overflowed enough to float cars: in the words of an Upper East Side resident, some people “would have been better off with boats.”

“It’s a good reminder that Manhattan’s an island,” said an NYU undergraduate, referencing Downtown’s felled trees, occassional stripped facades and debris-ridden streets.

The Avenue C Squat ran a free cell phone charging station powered by bicycle. Photo by Aaron Adler.

Not all of the city suffered equally, though. Downtown was hit hardest, and stretches along the Hudson and East Rivers require extensive repairs, but many Upper West Side, Upper East Side and Northern Manhattan neighborhoods made it out of the storm relatively unscathed. Shops and restaurants were already opening as the storm died down in these areas, and many residents found themselves either working comfortably at home or with a lot of free time on their hands.

“I feel a little guilty,” admitted one Harlem resident. “Some people’s homes are destroyed, and I have a few trees in my street and a five day weekend.”

Some began to feel a little stir crazy. “I can only watch so much Netflix!!” posted a friend on Faceboook.

Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal told Our Town Downtown that on the Upper West Side, residents were reaching out to afflicted New Yorkers by donating goods and volunteering at local shelters set up for storm victims. “People are eager to help,” she said.

Micah Kellner, assemblymember in the Upper East Side, said that residents in his district were out and about soon after the storm as well, lending each other a hand and patronizing local restaurants. “Every diner that was open had a line out the door [on Tuesday],” he said.

What was “really spectactular,” he noted, was the speed of sanitations teams, which he saw out on the streets cleaing up trees as early as noon on Tuesday.

Plenty of cleaning still needs to be done. Kellner – along with Bloomberg and many other elected officials – has asked New Yorkers, more than anything, to be patient as the city salvages what it can of its damaged neighborhoods and trasportation systems, and begins to rebuild.

The return of the usual bright lights and roaming pedestrians in Times Square on Tuesday evening gave little impression that natural disaster had just struck, but powerless Downtown remained a different world after dark. Cars jostled through the streets despite inoperable traffic lights, often ignoring the elected officials’ pleas for patiece at free-for-all intersections. Residents ventured out with dogs or friends to become eery figures that appeared suddenly on the dark sidewalks. Police had increased patrols and installed generator-operated streetlights downtown before the storm to prevent crime in the event of power loss, though only so much could be done to reassure people in a section of the city that resembled the Halloween movies they were not watching on their powerless televisions.

Still, bus service resumed late on Tuesday, and MTA reopened many subway lines on Thursday. Power creeped back into many homes throughout the week. Stores got back to business, and people went back to work. Progress was clear – only, in the mayor’s words, “this is going to take a while.”

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.

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

The controversy over canceling the New York City marathon this weekend does not merely extend to the dangers posed for runners by downed power lines and flooding throughout the city — it also has to do with displaced residents of downtown Manhattan who just want to go home in peace.

For those who can’t go home, out-of-town marathon participants taking up valuable hotel space and resources has understandably raised tensions.

Other downtown New Yorkers want the rest of the city to understand — between the damage, deficits and crowding — Hurricane Sandy is not yet over for them.

Some have taken to blogging about their experience, hoping uptowners can begin to grasp their struggle, one to which many, they claim, seem blissfully unaware. Some can’t deny they’ve even had a little fun — the grownup equivalent of a snow day, perhaps.

Matthew Russell, a real estate agent with a love for post-apocalyptic movies, is one of them. Russell decided to stick out the storm in his 6th floor East Village apartment. In his blog post about “Living in the Dead Zone,” Russell was careful to note he, a healthy, 29-year-old with enough cash to get by, had an advantage over many. He added some of the elderly tenants who stayed in his building would have simply been unable to descend the “pitch black staircase” to evacuate.

The superintendent in Russell’s building has looked after the elderly tenants everyday, he explains, replenishing the water in their toilets and bringing them warm meals from Queens. Russell uses a hot cup of water, heated with the building’s gas, to “shower” in the morning.

Russell explains the system pedestrians have developed to signal their presence in the darkened streets: “At every intersection pedestrians flash their lights wildly in order to cross in safety, and judging by the driving pace, that is remarkably wise.”

Another blogger, Bianca Posterli, wrote of her experience after witnessing a transformer explode: “I…walked out of my apartment on 9th Street to a scene straight out of the apocalypse.

“While New Yorkers rarely ever talk to each other, here were complete strangers sharing stories, ruminating on what the next few days would hold,” she wrote. “I made my way to the corner, where a line had formed outside of the deli at least 15 people deep. With my cell phone out of order, I did something I thought I’d never have to do – used a pay phone.”

She also noted, insightfully, the one “upside” of Sandy: “For once we’re completely unencumbered by constant access to Twitter, Instagram, and emails. We’re forced to make conversation, get to know our friends, and LISTEN to each other.”

Stan Williams, “Maxim” magazine’s style editor, and his partner also decided to stay in their 7th floor apartment in the Village during the storm, a zone he coined “Zombieville.”  Only about 10 percent of the residents in Williams’s 200-apartment building stuck out the storm.

Williams said daytime was fine, pleasant even, when he’d briskly walk two miles to his midtown office, where he’d camp out for most of the day.  Returning home, however, “was pretty frightening once you got past Flatiron,” especially considering a notable drop in police presence, though in the dark it was difficult to tell if anyone was around at all.

Williams echoed the sentiment of Russell and Posterli, saying: “I feel fortunate. It was inconvenient, but an adventure.” He also noted how the blackout actually helped him focus and boost his productivity. All three were intent on finding a silver lining.

As Russell pointed out, all three seemed aware they were the “best case scenario” as far as storm survivors. “That is NOT the case for most people,” said Russell, who added he was “seriously having a blast.”

Homes in Zone A weren’t the only places affected by flooding at the height of Hurricane Sandy. An Upper East Side apartment building in Zone C also flooded Monday night.

In the aftermath, residents of 555 East 78th Street were evacuating after about five feet of floodwater surged into the building around 8:30 p.m., creating a chaotic scene, according to neighbors who hurried past with their belongings in trash bags.

A building on East 78th Street faced unexpected flooding. Photo by Meredith Rosenberg.

Barry Skipp, 30, was one of the residents directly impacted. His apartment faces the FDR and East River, and is also just off the lobby. He recalled watching the water surging over the highway around 8 p.m. “I started trying to prepare my windows as best I could, I duct taped them, I had towels there,” he said.

Skipp said the water started to breach his windows around 8:30 p.m.

“I tried to stop it and then it just came to a point where it flowed so much, the whole place flooded, and the entire lobby was flooded up until first landing step,” he said. “I grabbed what I could and I ran out.”

Skipp pushed open his door as far as it would go and revealed the damage the floodwaters left behind.

“If you look there’s a stool in my apartment. That’s not mine,” he said, noting he didn’t have homeowners’ insurance. “My wall got breached and my neighbor’s stuff came into my apartment, and I assume vice versa. I don’t even know what’s what anymore.”

Gerry Sirio, 44, is one of the building’s doormen. He was working last night when the flooding started. Standing in front of the building, he pointed out how the water entered through air conditioning vents below windows. Sandbags that had been placed in front of apartments facing FDR and the East River did nothing to stop the flow.

At first, the water was only a couple inches, Sirio said, so he simply pushed it back with a broom. “But then the river was right inside the building. We couldn’t do nothing anymore,” he said. “The first apartment, LK, was destroyed completely,” said Sirio, referring to the apartment closest to the lobby. He said many of the apartments on the first floor were also flooded.

Around 9 p.m., a power transformer on the block exploded, Sirio said, and neighbors described the panic of evacuating flooded apartments in the dark. The power has yet to be restored.

“It was worse here then Battery Park because I was watching CNN, and they said it just breached the walls. It breached the walls 30 minutes ago up here,” said Skipp, who didn’t think of evacuating because the building is located in Zone C.

“We didn’t expect this,” said Sirio. “I know a guy who’s lived here more than 30 years, and he said nothing like this ever happened.”

Both Skipp and Sirio agree that going forward, areas closest to the East River on the Upper East Side should be changed to Zone A.

By early afternoon, building maintenance had pumped out the floodwater, but the cleanup was far from over.