Report on the Self-Organized Ad Hoc recovery effort in New York City

[flamingdem]

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680836/whats-really-happening-in-blacked-out-manhattan#1



The darkened stairwell of the tower on Broome Street on the Lower East Side is like a dripping, foul-smelling cave lit only by a few headlamps and flashlights. A group of eight 20- and 30-somethings are climbing to the top floor of the 23-story building to check on public housing residents who have been stuck without power or water since Monday night.

"Hello? Hello? We’re volunteers! Do you need help? Water? Agua? Ayuda?" The women do the talking in hopes that people won’t be intimidated. Theo, a resident on the 18th floor who escorts us up, says that this is a dangerous building in the best of times. He also says to his knowledge, no one has been door to door to help yet: not FEMA, not the Red Cross. Just the NYC Housing Authority Police on Monday to tell people to get out. This is Thursday.
Click to enlarge.

On each floor above the fourth we find elderly and sick people who have been unable or afraid to venture out since the start of the storm. "I’ve fallen down twice--that was enough for me," says Estelle Kleinhaus, a white-haired woman on the 12th floor who lives alone. They need food, drinking water, and medication. More able-bodied residents have been filling buckets at a hydrant outside in order to flush toilets.


Nadia Televiak, 68, in 22C is out of candles. Antonia Rivera, 72, her next-door neighbor in 22B, is sick with a fever and is in need of food. In 20G there is an elderly man with a broken foot who only speaks Cantonese--luckily one of our group can translate. In 18H, one of the Wongs has a heart problem and they haven’t been able to climb downstairs. In 8A there are two young girls by themselves. They say their mom is at work.

Somewhere there is a cat who is alone and very unhappy about it.

Our group doesn’t have much to offer beyond a couple of bottles of drinking water and some flyers directing people to a donation center nearby. We’re not from the Red Cross, FEMA, New York Cares, the public housing police or any other city agency. We’ve never met before and we aren’t affiliated with any one organization, school, or group.

We come from all corners of the city: Elmhurst, Crown Heights, Cobble Hill, and even downtown neighborhoods like Chelsea and the West Village, where the power’s still out.

Each of us showed up this morning for the first time, after we saw a notice on a website, got an email, or saw a Tweet that volunteers were needed at 46 Hester Street on the Lower East Side, where a local Asian community organization called CAAAV has become the hub for an almost completely self-organized aid effort.

I realize just how self-organized it is when I ask several people who’s in charge of all this and am pointed to Brian Palmer. He is standing behind a table, processing, organizing, and coordinating volunteers and giving out orders, but, he says, "I’m just someone who showed up early this morning and got a cool vest," indicating his safety-orange vest. (He points out a woman named Helena Wong who is actually affiliated with CAAAV.)