Families’ flooding woes

“It’s the end of the world,” Denise Rueckert recalled her daughter yelling as the floodwaters rose.
Four feet of Rueckert’s basement were under water, buckets of toys floated from one room to the next, and the area she called home was ruined.
Now, three weeks after the August 8 storm, Rueckert and her family are unable to live in the house because of possibly dangerous mold. Waterlogged books, toys, and other household items sit in front of many homes along their block waiting to be carted away by the Sanitation Department.
“It was like a third world country here for a week,” Rueckert said.
Congressmember Joseph Crowley toured some of the homes along 65th Place in Woodside that have been affected by the flooding, including the Rueckert residence.
“For the people living there it is their version of New Orleans, in terms of losing everything,” Crowley said.
Crowley was visiting the homes with members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to see if residents and business owners can receive government help to recover from the storm.
“These are communities that have not known disaster before,” Crowley said.
A FEMA official on the tour told the Congressman he thought the level of damage was high, Crowley said. If FEMA deems the damage to warrant government aid, they would tell Governor Eliot Spitzer, who would then ask President Bush to grant assistance. Crowley has sent a letter to Bush asking for aid.
However, it is not just the rainwater that caused the damage, said Kathleen Conway who is Rueckert’s mother and lives in the home.
Conway said the sewers overflowed making the flood not only disastrous but also disgusting. She also attributes the massive flooding of the homes to valves designed to prevent the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from flooding.
The valves pump water off of the expressway so cars can easily pass, but leave local homes submerged, she alleged.
Conway said in the past, members of the fire department were able to turn off the valves to protect the homes from flooding. But, since 9/11, the fire department has not been turning off the valves.
The New York Department of Environmental Protection did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.
Residents along the suburban street do not know how to get the problems with the valves fixed, but they are organizing a grassroots campaign to figure out a way to prevent this from happening again.
“You can re-route cars,” said Conway. “But you can’t move the homes.”