MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (SORT OF): Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson and his daughter Sarah-Cate (left, center) yesterday deliver supplies to Sheryl Lynch and kids Madison (left) and Logan on Staten Island. His pledge to bring marathon heaters and generators fell through. (
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Outraged New Yorkers drove him to it.
After five days of watching desperately needed supplies, such as generators, heaters and cases of food and water, languish in Central Park — wasted remnants of the city’s 11th-hour decision to cancel the marathon — a top mayoral aide last night picked over what was left and personally drove it to storm-ravaged Staten Island.
Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson pulled up to the marathon staging area in a city SUV and collected leftovers, including Gatorade, as well as canned goods that had been donated by the runners.
Earlier, another truck had been dispatched to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, a relief-staging area, with boxes of peanuts and apples that had been meant for the marathoners.
Wolfson had hoped to pick up more than 40 generators. But all were gone, most reclaimed by the companies that own them.
So, he picked up his 7-year-old daughter in the SUV and took the food, as well as toys and cleaning supplies, to an Eltingville family devastated by Superstorm Sandy.
Sheryl Lynch, who accepted the gifts, had huddled with her husband, three kids — including a 7-month-old — and parents in their home since the storm destroyed much of her neighborhood.
Lynch was grateful for the help, but noted that the city should have transferred goods from the marathon much earlier.
“Generators that could have been used elsewhere should not have been there to keep runners warm,” she said
Wolfson went on his mission of mercy after The Post yesterday demanded to know why those supplies and generators had gone uncollected for days from Central Park, even after the New York Road Runners’ event was called off.
Anger over Mayor Bloomberg’s initial insistence that the marathon go on — despite thousands of New Yorkers still suffering after the devastating storm — boiled over Friday after The Post revealed that generators were being stockpiled in the park for the race, instead of powering homes left without electricity.
Hours after that story appeared, Bloomberg caved — and Wolfson and Road Runners President Mary Wittenberg announced that the 2012 marathon was canceled.
At a somber press conference Friday, Wolfson, referring to Wittenberg, said, “Mary’s made it clear that all of the assets that this marathon currently has — generators, food, water, other equipment — will be redeployed to the people who need it.”
Despite that clear-cut vow, there were still dozens of generators — along with 20 heaters, tens of thousands of Mylar “space” blankets, jackets, and food meant for the racers — lying around as of Sunday.
“Thank God the marathon wasn’t run,” Karyn Bogart, an Upper West Side resident, told a nonplussed Wolfson in Central Park last night after seeing his windbreaker, which read “Office of the Mayor.”
“People could really use this equipment right now,” said Upper West Side resident Jamie Traffert, 29, as she jogged past some unused lighting equipment there yesterday.
“It’s not doing anyone any good around here. Seeing how there are still blackouts in parts of the city, it makes no sense to let them go to waste here.”
The last of 20 generators rented to the marathon organizers by SBP Industries, of New Jersey, was hauled away yesterday afternoon.
“I’ve been the devil for four days,” said one SBP employee.
“Everyone comes up to me and says, ‘These shouldn’t be here, why aren’t they going to people who need them?’
“I live in South Jersey and haven’t had power or water for days. And I don’t have one of these,” the worker said.
SBP honcho Michael Goncharko said he and other employees of the South Plainfield generator-leasing company felt “awful” as Sandy approached the city and the Road Runners confirmed that they still needed the generators.
More than 40 generators, from several companies, were spotted in the park over the weekend.
“In your heart, you say, ‘Wow, the timing is really bad for this,’ ” Goncharko noted.
Even after the marathon was called off, it took several days to move the generators out.
In the meantime, “I could rent every one of those generators five times over right now,” Goncharko said. “People are dying for those generators.”
Yesterday, Goncharko said, he was compiling a list of about 70 groups and agencies in New Jersey that are desperately in need of power, and are queued up to get the 20 generators.
Asked yesterday why he made the now-empty vow to get the marathon generators and other supplies to the hurricane victims, Wolfson said, “Obviously, that was my expectation at the time.”
“I think they delivered a very great deal,” Wolfson said of the marathon organizers. “It is unfair and unrealistic to expect them to turn over generators they don’t own.”
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg and Matt McNulty