Douglaston Took the Brunt of Irene's Wrath, Halloran Says

Douglaston took one of the hardest hits this past weekend as Hurricane Irene touched down in the borough, Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, said during a Monday phone conference on cleanup efforts in northeast Queens.

Several city agencies were still working to remove hundreds of large trees that had crashed down during the storm as well as fix downed power lines, the councilman said.

Con Edison was also attempting to restore power to several thousand residents.

“Douglaston got battered pretty good,” he said. “It was the hardest hit. Udalls Cove has a lot of trees down. There are no city roads or a sewer system there. Everything is maintained by the homeowners. They lost power in their neck of the woods a little earlier because once the trees started going down, there was nothing they could do about it.”

Crews from the city’s Parks, Transportation and Sanitation departments were still working Monday afternoon to remove a total 300 to 400 trees that toppled in northeast Queens.

An estimated 1,200 trees fell across the borough during Irene’s visit.

Halloran said less than 20,000 Queens residents were still without electricity and that 2,000 of them lived in his district. Con Edison estimated that all power would be restored by Tuesday evening.

The councilman’s office received 120 phone calls on Saturday night and Sunday morning from residents with hurricane-related issues. But he said flooding was not severe in his district.

“We only had a little bit of overspill in the Little Neck Bay and Udalls Cove areas,” he said. “A lot of people’s basements flooded, but that was because groundwater was so high and we’d had so much rain. The majority of issues involved falling trees and then the power lines coming down as a result.”

Parks in northeast Queens have reopened, but beaches and pools will remain closed until the city is able to address health concerns at the sites. 

Halloran said there was no significant damage to Bayside’s busy shopping strip on Bell Boulevard during the storm.

“Some basements were flooded, but most of the businesses were open the next day,” he said.