A Rockaway octogenarian and polar-exploration pioneer says a pair of charities left her high — but not dry — after Hurricane Sandy.
Barbara Hillary, 82, is fighting nonprofit Habitat for Humanity to finish the sloppy job volunteers did on her damp basement, which is covered in mold.
She’s also battling the Red Cross, which wrote a $10,000 check to an unlicensed contractor who promised to fix her kitchen and then flew to Nigeria.
“I’m not a whiner. I’m not a crybaby. I was raised in Harlem during the Depression — I was raised old-school,” Hillary said.
But she added: “I don’t want to die as a result of group incompetence.”
Two months ago, Hillary asked the city’s Habitat for Humanity to rehab her flooded basement.
Hillary says volunteers would show up sporadically or not at all, and the mold never stopped growing as the repairs dragged on.
Neil Hetherington, CEO of the city’s Habitat chapter, blamed the sluggish schedule on Hillary’s unwillingness to let workers into her home while she’s not there.
“If Barbara would give us three days in her home from 9 to 5, that laundry room would be repaired,” he said.
Hillary denied her doors were closed. Hetherington said his group would fix Hillary’s basement by taking down the walls it built.
Meanwhile, the first African-American woman to reach the North and South poles is without a refrigerator and stove because she says a contractor paid by the Red Cross took his pay and never came back.
Leventis Omotade, 45, who owns EC Abatement in Elmont, was supposed to remove mold and asbestos and conduct other repairs totaling at least $20,000.
Hillary last heard from Omotade in May, when he e-mailed her to say he was heading to Nigeria because his father died.
Omotade told The Post that while he was gone for three weeks, Hillary “blasphemed” him to his wife.
Omotade claims he did all the work but didn’t install her lights and cabinets.