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Hunters Point Residents Clean Up After Sandy

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | October 31, 2012 7:42pm

QUEENS — On Wednesday afternoon, a group of residents sat at tables at Foodcellar supermarket in Hunters Point. Some brought laptops, others read books. One family came with two suitcases.

They were the tenants from The PowerHouse nearby, a luxury condo at 2-17 51 Ave., a former steam power station that has been without electricity since Hurricane Sandy roared through the city Monday night.

Some areas of Long Island City were flooded up to 11th Street and pockets of the neighborhood still had no power Wednesday night.

The 11-story building lost its electricity on Monday around 8 p.m. and was still dark Wednesday afternoon.

“I’m taking my kids to my mother in the Bronx,” said Torraine Rosemond, the manager at a gymnastics school, who brought her three daughters to the supermarket to get something to eat before the trip.

The lobby of the building filled with five feet of water Monday night, Rosemond said.

“Everything was floating around,” she noted, adding that she has no idea when the power will be back in the building where apartments run as much as $1,000 a square foot.

The lower level of the building’s parking lot remains submerged.

“Twenty-eight cars got damaged,” said Paul Carmona, a parking attendant at Central Parking System on Wednesday morning, as machines pumped water. “This is salt water, so it’s really bad for cars.”

The Foundry, a nearby condo at 2-40 51 Ave., is also without electicity, and the storm damaged first floor apartments, residents said. The building’s basement remains flooded.

Jennie McCarthy, who works as a director of vendor compliance at Donna Karan, and who lives on the first floor, said there were about six inches of water in her 2-bedroom apartment on Monday night, forcing her and her mother to stay with friends on the third floor.

On Wednesday morning, McCarthy was throwing out bags filled with possessions that had gotten wet, including expensive clothes and shoes. She said the floor and furniture in her apartment also got damaged as well as her brand new Acura RDX. She estimated her damages at about $50,000.

In many other high-rises on the Long Island City waterfront on Wednesday, workers were busy cleaning flooded building lobbies.

“They’ve been cleaning the lobby since yesterday morning,” said Hughlon Francis, 31, an IT manager who is renting an apartment at Avalon Riverview at 2-01 50th Ave.

The lobby flooded, but the building did not lose electricity.

“They only shut it down on Monday night for safety reasons, and turned it back on the following morning,” Francis said.

At the CityLights co-op at 4-74 48th Ave., where water also rushed into the building during the storm, residents were relieved Wednesday to find that the lobby had already been cleaned and that four of the building’s five elevators were operating.

“Our blowers are still working non stop,” said Steve, the building’s doorman, who didn’t want to give his last name.