A reader writes:
Staten Island got hit very hard. Half the reported deaths were there, and the damage has been very, very heavy. A disproportionate number of the really awful human stories, like children being swept away from their mothers and drowning, etc., have come out of Staten Island. It has been really awful out there. Lots of people are without power and basic staples like food.
But they haven't been getting very much attention. On NY1, there are many more stories about the Rockaways and sections of Queens. Staten Islanders feel that the focus of bringing power back to Manhattan has been misplaced. People in Manhattan are basically OK, even if they don't have power, while Staten Island has people who are in real distress.
There are holes in that argument (we need power to bring the transit routes that glue the city together back, etc.). But the focus on getting the marathon up and running is a really big sore spot for Staten Islanders. They feel very strongly that it's a mistake to put work into preparing for the race while so many of them are suffering. I've heard that hotel people on the island are refusing to evict locals who lost their homes in order to honor reservations for runners who are traveling to the city for the race.
I don't know if they have a point about resources, although they might. I doubt the people rebuilding substations are the same people who fix downed power lines – they seem like different kinds of jobs to me. But on TV we've seen a constant stream of updates from politicians like Bloomberg and Cuomo, and Staten Island has been mostly absent from those discussions (in my opinion), and from the news coverage. I suspect that's mostly because it's harder to get to Staten Island than it is to get to Queens.
Every now and then, in other contexts, there is talk about Staten Island seceding from the city. I haven't heard that in this context, but would be very surprised if that talk doesn't resurface.
Anyway, I think that upping the coverage of this on your blog would be a good thing. It's good journalism, I think, and it's also helpful to people on a human level. Much, much less significantly, it would probably give you some New York cred – most people who move here and live in the Manhattan bubble wouldn't tune into the larger picture in the city as a whole very well.
(Photo: Water continues to flood a neighborhood in the Ocean Breeze area of the Staten Island borough of New York City on November 1, 2012. Most homes in the seaside community were inundated by the ocean surge caused by Superstorm Sandy. By John Moore/Getty Images)
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