“I’m still pretty strong for my age,” says Jane Rapp, 65.
This is an understatement. Every day since the storm, Rapp has been ferrying precious water in heavy buckets from a curbside fire hydrant up to her elderly neighbors in her 21-story building at 75 Montgomery St. on the Lower East Side.
“There are elderly people who are bedridden on the upper floors,” she explains. “They’re very sick and they need help.”
With no electricity and, therefore, no water pump, taps are dry throughout the upper floors of building. It was Rapp who had lobbied the city to turn on the hydrant so some water was available, albeit at street level.
After sunset, when the halls are pitch black, Rapp wears a light strapped to her head as she carries her heavy buckets up the stairs, looking something like an urban coal miner.
“I can make fewer trips by bringing up two buckets of water. It’s pitch black in the stairwells, and at first, it was really frightening going up and down,” she said.
“It’s been incredibly overwhelming trying to live like this,” she said. “But we have to remember the spirit of old New York.
“We don’t need light and technology to take care of each other — just some good old-fashioned hard work.”