Nov 6 UPDATE FROM WARC PRESIDENT. VOTE . NO HEAT STILL. WATER SOON IN SOME AREAS, ELECTRICITY STILL NOT WORKING IN SOME SECTIONS, VOTE VOTE VOTE

Westbeth Update

Tuesday AM November 06, 2012

A Collection of reports from Nancy Gabor, Deb Travis, Erica Fae and Wesbeth Corporate FB page

Today is Election Day………………………………………….Go out and vote!

If you are a Westbeth voter, we are voting in our community room.

For those looking to help us

-We do not need donations of clothing, send those to the Rockaways or Staten Island.
-We could use electric blankets. If you bring them to the building, please give them to the guard to pass on to our social services coordinator, Oliva Duerr.

-Besides the obvious challenges of living with little or no services, the most difficult task is hauling water up the stairs (our elevators are still not working!) to be used for sanitation. If you are up to carrying buckets of water up the stairs, that would be the most helpful today.

As of this morning, there is still no water, heat or working elevators in the building.

Building information sheets have been posted on all floors on the bulletin boards near the elevators and in the community rooms.

Anyone needing an electric blanket should contact ericafae@live.com ASAP.

Deb Travis is posting a listing of floor captains on every floor and in the community room and gallery. Tenants should email or leave a note for their floor captains if they need anything or have questions. We still need floor captains on 7th floor east and 8th floor west. Anyone interested should email Deb their name, phone number and apartment number to westbethvp@gmail.com

The next community meeting will be at 3 PM in the Westbeth Gallery

More specifics from the Westbeth FB page:

On electric:
Electricity has been resorted to more apartments. If you are not in the A section and do not have power, please let the security desk know. For those in the A section, repairs will still take days before you will get electric.

On water:

“Our water pump company says they are still on track to deliver at least one working pump on Tuesday or Wednesday. Assuming no glitches in the hookup or wiring, we may well have running water in the building before Thursday. Hot water is another issue, but we have made significant progress in finding a rollup boiler. There are several permitting issues that will need to be addressed because the boiler we have lined up is not the type usually used in New York City, but with any luck we might have it working before the end of the weekend.”

On heat:
“The heating situation is not as clear. We have had the boiler electrician and plumber in and they now know what needs to be done, and they are beginning to put a timeframe on the process, but not with any definitiveness. It seems as if we are speaking in terms of many days or a few weeks, but the vagueness on the contractors’ part is telling. We’ll keep you up to date as the process continues.”

On the elevator:
“The elevator repair company came today, and their assessment was much less optimistic than we had hoped. The doors and cars of the two elevators in the West Street lobby were beaten out of shape by the water’s onslaught and will require major work to make safe and operable. The freight elevator is in less-bad shape, and may be the first one to be restored – we should know more by Tuesday. The elevators in the Bethune Street lobby are more of a problem – their pits were among the last places in the building to dry out (and they are not exactly “dry” even now). At least one of those elevators’ doors was damaged by debris thrown against it, and there is circuitry in all the pits that will need to be replaced.”

On the intercoms:
“We have also learned that some tenants have never learned to use the new house intercoms. Because we assumed that this new system was working and everyone could use it, we were relying on it as a means of communication from tenants, especially in an emergency. We have made copies of the instructions for using them and put them at the front desk and in the Community Room. We have also asked everyone to try to call the front desk, and to let us know if you are not successful.”

The next community meeting will be at 3 PM in the Westbeth Gallery
Now go vote!

From my last full day in Ohio,

Geo