Backed up sewer line inundates South Jamaica homes with crappy water and the city is slow to help

NY Daily News
 

Queens residents driven from their homes by a clogged sewer line demanded answers Sunday from city officials who said they weren’t sure when the problem would be fixed.

A jam in a sewer line serving 300 homes in a swath of South Jamaica just north of Kennedy Airport backed up raw, fetid sewage into about 80 residences on Saturday.

Officials from the Department of Environmental Protection, which runs the city sewer system, said they weren’t sure when flooded-out residents could return.

“We are alive and OK but everything is gone,” said Sani Lakudi, 50, an Uber driver who lives in the neighborhood. “My TV, printer, computer — they are ruined. We stayed up all night pumping water. We had to do what we had to do or the water would have destroyed everything.”

“Nobody from the city has come to me,” Lakudi added. “We are doing all the work ourselves.”

Streets were blocked off, including 133rd Ave. near Inwood St., as crews pumped out of the blocked sewer to keep the smelly, stinking waste from pouring back into homes across the 15-square block area affected by the crisis.

Residents were asked to turn off their heat, hot water and electricity while the problem was addressed.

DEP spokesman Edward Timbers said crews worked overnight to “pump around” a blockage in the neighborhood’s main sewer conduit near 150th St and Rockaway Blvd.

City officials on Saturday said that 300 homes were affected by the sewage backup. On Sunday, Timbers said that figure was the total number of residences served by the affected sewer line, and that only about 80 of them were flooded.

“We don’t know when it will be fixed,” said Timbers. “People should contact their home insurance carrier. The DEP has been helping people fill out claim forms against the city.”

A bypass system to prevent further basement flooding was to be finished by Sunday evening, Timbers said.