Power outage at Harway Terrace

An electrical explosion near Harway Terrace left many residents of the high-rise co-op without power on the morning of Tuesday, March 10.

Pumps that brought water to the upper floors of the 18-story building at 2483 West 16^th Street were also nonfunctional, meaning that building residents, many of whom are seniors, didn’t have water and couldn’t go buy water because the elevators didn’t work.

After calls came in from constituents to Assemblymember William Colton’s office, staff members, including Democratic District Leader Nancy Tong and Susan Wong, visited the affected building and walked approximately 669 bottles of water up the stairway – six cases of 24-packs and 15 cases of 35-packs — to those that needed it.

Halfway up, the emergency light shut off because of work in the building, leaving Tong and others in the dark, but they made their way up regardless.

“Oh, [the residents] were very happy that we did that,” said Tong, who also noted the generosity of building residents, looking out for each other. “When I knocked on the door to give them water, some of them did not take the water. They said, ‘Well, we have water here. Why don’t you give the water to the ones that really need it?’”

2415 West 16^th Street was also affected, losing hot water but not power.

As of press time, Con Ed was still working to repair electricity for the buildings, hoping to have it restored by later that night or the following morning.

“In a medical emergency, this might be a very bad situation,” said Colton, who kept watch on the situation from Albany, where he was in session. “When we hear of something like this, we try to offer assistance.

“We all need to be available to help each other when there’s a crisis and the people in the upper floors of this building, especially the seniors, definitely had a crisis,” Colton added. “There was no warning about this because it was an accident that occurred and so they woke up this morning and found that they had no water and that’s a big problem. I’m very happy that my office staff was able to go there and assist people in this time of need.”