A Burnt Out Hallway at a NYCHA Building for Seniors Was Not Cleaned Up for 7 Weeks, Until One Tweet Changed It All
Originally published in
Bklyner
Residents of a large East Flatbush NYCHA building for seniors lived on a severely fire-damaged floor for nearly two months, until a tweet from State Senator Zellnor Myrie prompted NYCHA into quick action.
“The onus is placed on the elected official to reach out to NYCHA, even though the tenants who are experiencing health hazards had reached out to NYCHA,” Myrie said in an interview. “That is their primary constituency. They’ve been reaching out for seven weeks, there was no response, and now the onus is on me to reach out directly to NYCHA? That’s not how it goes. This is an egregious situation, and it is an emergency that requires an emergency-like response.”
The emergency response, Myrie said, should be an immediate evacuation.
“There’s so many residual impacts that are happening,” he said. “And it’s well known that when there’s a fire, there are chemicals that are burned. We have no idea the air that they’re breathing, so I think that they should be immediately evacuated.”