In Red Hook, the west side of the neighborhood was still without power, with elderly residents essentially trapped inside of their apartments.
Dorothy Robinson, 94, stayed in her fifth-floor apartment on Center Mall in the Red Hook Houses.
“I’ve seen worse. World War II was worse,” Robinson (above) said.
“But I didn’t think it was going to be this bad.”
Now she’s running out of food, as is Joshua Rodney, who’s also on the fifth floor.
Rodney, 85, has a leg injury and breathing problems. “God, oh mercy, I can’t go down the stairs,” Rodney said.
Both are now relying on the kindness of strangers, and those strangers have been reliable. Yesterday, volunteer Conor Tomas Reed, 31, of the Red Hook Initiative, brought plates of rice, beans and vegetables, along with gallons of water for residents.
When Reed asked Robinson if she’d be needing him tomorrow, she jumped at the chance. “Yes,” she said. “Please come back tomorrow.”
Many of the hardest hit from the power, water and phone outages are the elderly, who suffered particularly in the taller buildings of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
More than 500 evacuees from blacked-out nursing homes wound up at the Brooklyn Armory. “No, no, I don’t like it here,” Michael Downing, 52, a wheelchair-bound refugee from the Central Manor Home for Adults in Far Rockaway, said.