‘I blame the mayor’: Residents fume at de Blasio, AOC over flood
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave Mayor Bill de Blasio a pass for failing to warn New Yorkers about the fatal storm that lashed the city last week — preferring to pin the blame on climate change — but her Queens constituents slammed Hizzoner and other city officials for their lack of preparedness.
“I don’t blame climate change, I blame the mayor,” Danette Rivera, 47, told The Post outside her Woodside home Monday morning after de Blasio, AOC, Sen. Charles Schumer and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell toured her block.
“There was absolutely no warning. I wasn’t expecting water from my own drain to be the one that’s going to kill me,” Rivera said, her voice shaking with emotion.
Rivera’s arms and stomach were still bruised from when her son had to yank her out through a basement window as it filled with water that bubbled up from her drains Wednesday night.
“This is a nightmare. A disaster,” Rivera said, noting that her home also flooded in 2008. She said city officials told her at the time that they’d make sure it never happened again.
“Fix the sewer system,” fumed Rivera’s neighbor, Julia Nieves, 77.
“The catch basins don’t get cleaned often enough. The last time I saw them cleaned was five years ago,” Nieves, a retired Off Track Betting clerk, told The Post from her Woodside basement where the paneling had been ripped off to reveal spots of black mold.
After a joint press conference with the other elected officials, AOC declined to criticize de Blasio when asked if he did enough to prepare for the storm that killed 13 people.
“We needed more advance notice from the NWS,” the congresswoman said, even though the National Weather Service tweeted a dire warning at 3:23 p.m. Wednesday that city officials largely ignored.
“SIGNIFICANT AND LOCALLY LIFE-THREATENING FLASH FLOODING IS EXPECTED GOING INTO THE EVENING HOURS,” the message warned.
The mayor did not hold a press conference before the storm and barely mentioned the potential for flash flooding at his daily briefing.
A public school teacher in nearby Elmhurst, Queens shouted at Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as she joined de Blasio, Schumer and Criswell to tour residents’ homes where the floodwaters reached 12 feet in some sections.
“How come you’re not in this community? You don’t give a s–t!” the woman shouted at AOC.
Another local resident, Sahira Younas, 23, learned that her basement bedroom was flooded just as she was about to fall asleep Wednesday night and she looked around to see her belongings floating by.
“The flood emergency was issue at 9:30 p.m. and it happened at 10:30 p.m.,” Younas said.
Woodside resident David Luddy, 63, was alerted to the emergency situation while he was watching TV and a neighbor yelled about the water pouring into their shared alleyway.
“I was watching the news. I had no idea. They did absolutely nothing” to warn people, Luddy said about city officials.
At Monday’s press conference Criswell announced that FEMA would reimburse storm victims up to $34,000 for property damage following inspections by federal officials.
President Biden is expected to tour parts of Queens hit by the storm Tuesday.
