By Julie Shapiro
Clutching pillows and toting suitcases, the sleep-deprived tenants of 90 West St. returned to their apartments Tuesday after eight days of exile.
An uncapped Port Authority sewer pipe caused rainwater and sewage to flood the basement of 90 West St. on Monday morning, Nov. 26, dunking everything from electrical equipment to bikes and cars in 8 feet of water. The flood left the 24-story building without power and forced tenants to evacuate, carrying their belongings down flights of darkened stairs.
On Tuesday, most residents were glad to finally be home in the landmark 1907 building designed by Cass Gilbert.
“It was crazy,” said Dana Broderick, who was pushing a double stroller into the lobby. “The hardest part [of the evacuation] was getting downstairs with all our luggage.”
Broderick, her husband and their three children, aged 5, 2 ½ and 5 months, bounced to two different hotels before settling at American Express corporate housing for the remainder of the week.
“It’s nice [to be back],” Broderick said, “but I have a lot of cleaning to do.” All the food in her refrigerator spoiled during the week with no power.
The Port Authority will pay tenants $750 a night for each of the eight nights they were displaced. If tenants’ expenses exceed the amount, they can submit receipts to the Port Authority for compensation. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver negotiated that settlement.
“I think the residents are happy their expenses are covered,” Silver told Downtown Express. “It was the right thing… It shows that the system works.”
The Port though is not officially taking responsibility for the flood.
“Our immediate concern is that everyone got their immediate needs taken care of,” spokesperson Steve Coleman said Tuesday. “Then we’ll try to figure out who’s responsible.”
But Jamie Kibel, the building’s owner, was unequivocal. “It was Port Authority’s culpability,” she said Tuesday.
Several tenants said a Port Authority contractor was installing a sewer pipe and forgot to cap one end, allowing sewage and water to flood the basement when it started to rain.
“That’s somebody speculating,” Coleman said. “It hasn’t been determined yet.”
The contractor in charge of the sewer pipe work was Felix Associates, L.L.C., which declined to comment.
Chris Gilbride, spokesperson for the Office of Emergency Management, confirmed that a sewer pipe, which “was temporarily cut and not capped,” caused the flood. “Rain and high tide conditions exacerbated the situation,” he added.
The sewer line was rerouted through 90 West St. to remove it from the basement of the Deutsche Bank/W.T.C. Tower 5 site, which will house a vehicle security center. “You can’t have a sewer pipe going though that,” Coleman said. The decision to relocate the sewer pipe was made years before the fatal Aug. 18 fire at the Deutsche Bank building, he added.
The 90 West St. building reopened at 7 a.m. Tuesday, and tenants of the 410 apartments drifted in throughout the morning, unloading suitcases from taxis into a lobby that still smelled of sulfur.
“It’s good to see everybody’s faces, that’s for sure,” said building manager Lee Rosen. There were a handful of concerns about heat and hot water, but “even on a good day, that’s going to happen,” Rosen said.
The harried building owners were also happy to see tenants returning.
“It’s been an incredibly trying time for the tenants and for us,” Kibel said. Some tenants were still concerned about contamination in the building, but Kibel said she had received a verbal OK from the city Department of Environmental Protection and that written approval would arrive soon. Initial tests found coliform bacteria in the building.
By Wednesday, all the tests came back clean, and “there is no evidence of any of contaminants in the residential areas of the building,” the management posted on the building’s Web site. The tap water is also clean and safe to drink.
Peter Levenson, another owner, has been working so many hours that tenants said he was practically sleeping in the Office of Emergency Management trailer. The flood destroyed the entire electric room, and Levenson had electricians working around the clock to rebuild it.
“It [originally] took half a year to build what we built in the last week,” Levenson said. “There are more electricians in the bottom of this building than in the rest of New York City.”
Jane Emanuel, a tenant, was thrilled to be back in her apartment Tuesday.
“It really was a miserable experience, and I’m pretty hardy,” Emanuel said. She spent the first night on a friend’s sofa and then moved into a friend’s corporate apartment. Since her 11-year-old son needs to catch a school bus, Emanuel needed to stay in Downtown, but all the hotels she checked were booked.
Emanuel hiked up to her apartment on the 20th floor several times to gather clothing and her son’s school books and to feed her cat, until it got too cold for the cat to stay in the apartment.
“There should have been some kind of evacuation plan,” Emanuel said. “The building management should have been better prepared.” The Port Authority settlement sounds fair, Emanuel added.
Karen McDermott was also frustrated with the building’s response to the crisis. On the first night of the flood, she said officials at the emergency center set up at the Ritz Carlton told her to go to hotels that were booked, had bedbug litigation or are rumored to house prostitutes. They even suggested a hotel in Newark, N.J.: “Not going to happen,” McDermott said.
“I learned after 9/11, don’t do what you’re told — do what makes sense,” McDermott said. She booked a room at the Ritz Carlton instead.
“It was poorly done,” McDermott said of the resources for tenants. She called a number that the building handed out, only to find the voice mailbox full. Then the Red Cross showed up to pass out containers of pasta and drinks.
“I don’t need food,” McDermott said. “I need a place to live.”
The money from the Port Authority is not sufficient compensation, McDermott added.
“Liability equals damages,” she said. “What about the nights I didn’t sleep? What about the time I spent away from work?” McDermott, who lives on the 14th floor, made several trips up and down to get her belongings, which aggravated the herniated discs in her neck.
“My whole life has been disrupted,” she said.
John, the father of a tenant, was carrying a suitcase and several bags up to his daughter’s apartment Tuesday morning. Two Tupperware containers sat in the sink where she’d left them eight days earlier.
John, who declined to give his last name, decried the Port Authority’s “take it or leave it” compensation offer, and said he knew several tenants who would not cash their checks but instead pursue legal action. “The arrogance of Port Authority to throw money at us, as though nothing else matters,” John said. “The tenants in the building are really outraged. It’s not over yet.”
For tenant Jennifer Jones, the crisis and the management’s response became a springboard for starting a tenants association at 90 West St.
“It was disconcerting to feel like there’s a crisis and the people who are supposed to have a plan for that, don’t,” Jones said. “What we have not had is good information and proactive information.”
She has received 300 e-mails from tenants since starting the association, which now communicates mainly through a blog at 90weststreet.blogspot.com.
The association is in the process of retaining legal counsel, but that doesn’t mean a lawsuit is necessarily on the way. “It’s not just about suing — it’s about protection,” Jones said.
She has been frustrated by unanswered questions on compensation and the safety of the building. “It feels like the people handling our situation have never dealt with crisis before,” she said. “I don’t get that.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
