City Schools and Businesses Hit Hard by Flooding

By FAWAAD FAROOQ and AMANDA CURCIO                                                            

Thousands of New Yorkers were left in distress Thursday, after rains flooded homes and businesses in the area.

Business owners all over the city rushed to their shops and offices to check for flooding. Many were very pained by what they found.

Carmelo Piazza, 47, owner of the Brooklyn Preschool of Science chain of three pre-schools, in Park Slope and downtown Brooklyn, made it to one of the sites late Wednesday night.

“We arrived at my Park Slope location around 11 p.m. and one of the rooms was completely flooded . . .” he said. “Water was coming in from the floors, from the moldings, the ceilings… which means sitting moisture which can cause mold. I have students coming back to school in a week which gives me very limited time to rip open the walls and floors to ensure it is safe and mold-free for return. This was the last thing I needed.”

Schools around the city were already facing numerous health-related issues. Yesterday those concerns were compounded by the destruction caused by Hurricane Ida in New York.

Businesses around Brooklyn and elsewhere braced for days and weeks of work and expenditures they had not been expecting.

Mohammad Farooq, for one, had flooding in the basement of his deli on Coney Island Ave. in Brooklyn.

“I have a lot of my merchandise in the basement, and it was ruined and it’s thousands of dollars that have been wasted,” Farooq said.

“I’ve owned this store for well over fifteen years and there have been many storms that happened in years past. This one was by far the worst,” Farooq said.

(Disclosure: Piazza is the stepfather of writer Curcio; Mohammad Farooq is the father of writer Farooq. In other words, the flooding hit home, literally and figuratively.)