On Wednesday in the New York City Housing Authority announced in its storm progress report that “Power has been restored to 100 percent of all buildings affected by Sandy.” That constitutes a major feat of restoring electricity to 402 buildings housing NYCHA 79,320 residents in just over two weeks.

According to NYCHA the last buildings to receive heat and hot water on Tuesday, November 13, fifteen days after Sandy knocked out utilities were:

  • Red Hook East: 1 out of 18 buildings housing 12 residents had power restored and 1 building housing 186 residents had heat restored
  • Red Hook West – 2 out of 14 buildings housing 503 residents had power restored and 1 building housing 180 residents had heat restored
  • O’Dwyer Gardens: 3 buildings housing 473 residents had power restored
  • Surfside Gardens: 1 building housing 257 residents had heat restored
  • Redfern: 9 buildings housing 1,653 residents had heat fully restored

“The resource level has just been tremendous and we understand that when you have this kind of emergency you can never have enough resources but even the president has been very clear that money will not be an obstacle to us restoring services to Redhook,” said NYCHA chairman John Rhea Friday November 9. “We continue to do all we can to support families that are in place we understand that they are not in a good position and our goal is to ensure that there service is restored”

While electricity is a positive first step volunteers and residents have said that some NYCHA buildings who have had the lights turned on have yet to have to have elevator service restored, leaving elderly or disabled residents on higher floors still trapped in their homes.

The NYCHA progress report for Wednesday November 14 states that there were “After Sandy hit, there were 699 elevators out of service” and explains that service has been restored to “632 elevators or 90% of the 699 elevators impacted by the storm. Now that all our buildings have power, we’re actively working to safely restore elevator service to the remaining buildings.”

While heat and potable water are still on their way to being restored in some buildings the report stated, “The New York City Housing Authority has successfully restored power to 100 percent of its 402 buildings affected by Hurricane Sandy. NYCHA continues to restore heat and hot water to developments currently without service due to the storm”

Developments without heat and hot water as of November 14, according to NYCHA are:

Brooklyn

  • Carey Gardens – 4 buildings housing 1,642 residents
  • Coney Island – 5 buildings housing 1,203 residents
  • Coney Island I (Site 8) – 1 building housing 361 residents
  • Coney Island I (Sites 4 and 5) – 2 buildings housing 1,075 residents
  • O’Dwyer Gardens- 6 buildings housing 974 residents
  • Surfside Gardens – 4 buildings housing 910 residents
  • Red Hook East – 7 out of 18 buildings housing 623 residents
  • Red Hook West – 13 buildings housing 3,026 residents

Queens

  • Carleton Manor – 1 building housing 379 residents
  • Hammel – 14 buildings housing 1,816 residents
  • Ocean Bay Apartments (Bayside) – 24 buildings housing 3,734 residents