Yonkers residents still reeling from Hurricane Ida damage
People in one southeast Yonkers neighborhood say they still desperately need help picking up the pieces.
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Oct 7, 2021, 10:15 AM
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Updated 1,023 days ago
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3h agoIt's been more than a month since Hurricane Ida tore through the Hudson Valley, but many are still dealing with the aftermath.
People in one southeast Yonkers neighborhood say they still desperately need help picking up the pieces, and people are afraid of this happening again.
Residents in the Edgewood Place and Maple Avenue neighborhood say they need the city to do more to help protect their neighborhood from flooding.
No one on Maple Place got hit worse than Ann Marie O'Sullivan.
O'Sullivan’s house on Maple Place was fully condemned by the city after taking on nearly 10 feet of water.
"I'm a nurse at St. John's, ICU, just came through COVID of 18 months and now I'm losing my home," she says.
She says FEMA only gave her $22,000 for repairs and living costs, but contractors say it will take 10 times that to make the house livable again.
Even insurance refuses to cover her, saying this is damage from a flood, not a hurricane.
"I had hurricane insurance. This is the remnant of Ida. This is what happened to my home," she says.
"You can smell the mold down here and I'm asthmatic, so I need help here. I need somebody to do something with this home," she says.
As O'Sullivan fights financially, her neighbors say the city needs to upgrade its sewer system. They say without improvements, it's only a matter of time before they're underwater again. "Our basement started filling with water, because nothing was draining in the street or draining in the highway. So, the water was literally coming up through the manholes in the streets," says Sullivan. "They can build as many homes as they want but if they're not addressing the sewer system, then this is what we're going to always have. And we're not going to have a quality of life," says Luz Napolitano. "They come with their camera trucks, they put it down the manhole covers here, they check out the pipes, but the system just can't handle the growth of the neighborhood anymore," adds Dave Swatowy.
A GoFundMe page has already raised nearly $15,000 to help O’Sullivan with repairs.
