Hundreds Of Kew Gardens Residents Lose Power, Water In Heat Wave

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — Hundreds of Kew Gardens residents lost electricity or water as a weekend of extreme temperatures took a toll on the city's aging infrastructure.

Nearly 700 people in apartment buildings along 118th Street, Metropolitan Avenue and Curzon Road in the central Queens neighborhood had little or no power for over a day, according to Con Edison and residents who spoke to Patch.

As of Monday at 9:30 p.m., almost 300 Con Ed customers in Kew Gardens still had no power.

No power also means no water for some of those residents, whose buildings rely on electricity to pump water to their tenants, a Con Ed official said.

City Council Member Karen Koslowitz called Con Edison's handling of the outages "unacceptable" and rebuked the utilities company for distributing dry ice to Brooklyn residents affected by power outages but nothing to those in Kew Gardens.

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The city's emergency management crews delivered 1,400 bottles of water to 118th Street residents Monday evening following a request from Koslowitz's office.

"This is not a joke," Koslowitz tweeted Monday night. "If this was Manhattan, service would've been restored the same day it went out. My constituents are suffering and can’t even take a shower [because] the water pumps are electric powered."

Natalia Kozikowska, who lives on the top floor of an apartment building on 118th Street, said her power went out just before 3 p.m. Sunday. So, she went to take a shower to cool off — only to discover she also had no water.

Kozikowska grabbed her cat, walked down the six flights of stairs to her lobby, then headed to her mother's house to spend the night somewhere cooler. But she's concerned about her neighbors who are stuck at home.

"I'm worried about the seniors and the disabled folks in the building," she told Patch.

Melissa Trott, who lives in an eighth-floor apartment by 118th Street and Curzon Road, is one of those residents stuck suffering. Trott hasn't had power or water since midday Sunday, and she's been home all day Monday thanks to a day off from work.

She's already gone through three of the two-liter water bottles she had stockpiled, but she said the room-temperature water does little to keep her cool.

"I'm starting to run out of water," Trott told Patch. "There's just no way to cool down."

If the outages continue, Trott said she'll either book a hotel room or head to Long Island to stay with her mother. If she takes the eight flights of stairs down, she said, it'll have to be a one-way trip.

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers lost power over the weekend as temperatures spiked to 99 degrees and Mayor Bill de Blasio called a state of emergency.

Much of the attention went to Brooklyn, where nearly 15,000 people were still suffering from power outages Monday morning and Con Ed employees started distributing dry ice.

Con Ed said Monday it had expected to restore power to all its Queens customers by 7 p.m.