Bedford Park residents spent much of Tuesday cleaning up after a water main ruptured Monday night, sending high-pressure water into the streets—flooding homes, submerging vehicles and causing havoc.
Floodwaters receded on Webster Avenue Tuesday morning to reveal muddy and debris strewn streets, ruined ground floor apartments and cars destroyed by water surge that reached as high as the door handles. Residents sifted through the damage of their apartments and owners pulled soaked belongings out of their now defunct cars parked curbside on Webster Avenue just south of Mosholu Parkway.
Monday’s destructive flooding left residents in the area stunned, searching for help and picking up the pieces of soaked apartments and waterlogged cars.
Jessica Acea couldn’t reach her apartment Monday night while water flooded into the building. Her children and animals were trapped inside. Acea said her neighbor, along with the New York City Fire Department, rescued them.
“ Firemen came because I was screaming at them,” Acea said. “They came and really rescued them, opened the door, broke it, everything.”
So far, there have been no reported injuries following the rupture of the 120-year-old pipe. But residents like Acea wandered through the wreckage of their homes Tuesday, trying to salvage anything that wasn’t completely ruined after hours of being submerged under water.
“This is years’ worth of things,” Acea said while picking through the piles of soaked belongings in her ground-floor apartment. “I’ve lived here seven years.”
Acea said she believes the destruction could have been prevented with proper maintenance of the water main.
“After so many years, they have to fix the pipe,” Acea said. “But until it busts? That’s when they fix it.”
City agency workers from the Department of Sanitation, Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Emergency Management, New York Police Department, Fire Department and Con-Edison worked through the night and into Tuesday cleaning up homes and streets, removing mud and debris from roadways, and pumping out the water that still filled the low laying areas.
A resident who lives on the block and identified himself by the name Brown, could only look on as his car, a 1999 Mercury Grand Marquis, which he nicknamed, “Blue” was totally flooded with water. The water left the hood of Brown’s car nearly covered in mud.
He said that he had some good memories in the car.
“ I made trips to South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Upstate,” Brown said. “We got around, we really did.”
Brown, who walks with a cane, was trapped in his upper story apartment when the water flooded his car. The elevators were out and his disability prevented him from descending multiple flights of stairs to move the car to higher ground.
“ I went upstairs and I stayed upstairs,” Brown said. “I turned around and somebody called me and said my car was underwater. I looked out the window – the car was flooded, it was underwater.”
The city restored water service to the neighborhood early Tuesday morning, and residents told the Bronx Times they still didn’t have gas by Tuesday afternoon and that connections to electricity were intermittent.
New York City’s Department of Emergency Management said that the Red Cross was on the scene to assist residents who needed shelter for the night. The agency was optimistic that most residents could return to their apartments quickly but could not provide a specific timeframe for cleaning up the most damaged homes.
Swanna Sands arrived home to her sixth floor apartment on Botanical Square when she saw the flood waters. She said she and her neighbors, some with infants, were stranded in their apartments all evening without water.
“People had to be leaving to go to a restaurant to buy water for the babies to make food for the babies,” Sands said.
While Sand’s sixth floor apartment wasn’t damaged by flood waters, she said she had a refrigerator full of food that spoiled since the electricity was out.
“ We can’t get to cook,” Sands said. “Because we were going to cook. So all of that, all of this, it’s not just one little thing that’s affected.”
Sands also said that the city had not effectively communicated with the neighborhood about how to access resources or where to go and what to do for the night.
“ No one is telling us anything,” said Sands. “People are trying to get information, ‘Who’s going to take care of this? What can we do?,’ Tell us something. People with babies, say something to them.”
