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Despite the two storms causing thousands of residents to lose power, dozens of trees to fall, several motor vehicle accidents and flooding in the Ossining School District and along the waterfront, officials in the town and village of Ossining are thankful that there were no major injuries or deaths in Ossining over the last two weeks.
Wednesday night’s nor’easter brought in freezing temperatures, slick roads and about two inches of snow to the area. There were five motor vehicle accidents between 4:30 and 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Village of Ossining Police said.
“The majority of the problems are solved,” said Ossining Mayor William Hanauer. “Cleanup was obviously not helped by that second storm, but we’re doing pretty well right now.”
Roughly 100 people in the village and town of Ossining were without power Thursday evening, according to Con Edison reports. Officials advised residents without power to seek shelter at the Ossining Community Center, which is scheduled to remain open and available for all community members to get heat and hot showers until further notice.
“For those people who still don’t have power or didn’t for more than a week, I’m very frustrated,” Hanauer said. “But for the majority of the village, we did very well compared to most of our sister villages. The majority of the village was restored several days ago, so that has been positive.”
Hanauer later noted that a few waterfront businesses have been “declared uninhabitable” until Con Edison crews are able to clear salt water from the Hudson River from their electrical systems. With the nor’easter complicating matters, Hanauer said it would be hard to tell what impact the second storm could have on the village.
“We’re doing pretty well with fuel and there were no major accidents, so it didn’t seem to have a major negative effect at this point,” Hanauer said. “I think the worst effect is that people who were looking for normalcy got hit in the face with a second round of peculiar behavior on the part of Mother Nature.”
Several roofs throughout the Ossining School District experienced leaking during Hurricane Sandy that led to flooding in roughly a dozen classrooms, district officials said this week. The roofs were repaired while the schools were closed last week, said Deputy Superintendent Ray Sanchez, and all of the classrooms are in the process of being renovated.
“We had some water damage and some difficulties, but I can’t credit our building and grounds crew enough for everything they did to get us ready to go again,” Sanchez said Wednesday. The schools opened on a two-hour delay Thursday following the impact of the nor’easter Wednesday night.
“It’s been a challenge that none of us wanted to face, but I think everyone in the district, from our teachers to grounds crews to the parents and students, has done an excellent job facing that challenge.”
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