To that end, 35 residents living on 159th Street and on 84th Avenue along…
By Chris Fuchs
Nearly two weeks after his mom discovered mysterious fissures in their Briarwood house, John Roumeliotis, 20, thought that the city would have figured out how it had all happened.
To that end, 35 residents living on 159th Street and on 84th Avenue along with Roumeliotis, their de facto spokesman, attended a one-hour meeting at Borough Hall Friday, confident they would be closer to learning whether they could move back into the homes they were forced to leave in late January. At the end of that hour, though, their confidence had waned, their frustration peaked.
“We were told our questions would be answered last Friday and they weren’t,” said Roumeliotis, a fourth-year engineering student at The Cooper Union in Manhattan.
A few days after cracks were discovered in at least eight houses in Briarwood on Jan. 22, the city Department of Design and Construction bored 30-foot holes in the ground to retrieve soil samples. Tests were being performed to determine whether the cracks were caused by shifting or settling in the ground, possibly a result of contamination.
Paul Wein, a spokesman for the city Department of Buildings, said Tuesday evening the tests had not been completed.
But Dan Andrews, a spokesman for Borough President Claire Shulman, said the Department of Buildings had sent out letters this week to the homeowners, advising them to retain licensed engineers or architects to assess the damage done to their homes. The letters were prompted by test results indicating that the soil was unsatisfactory, he said, a claim that the Department of Buildings could not confirm by Tuesday night.
At the Borough Hall meeting Friday, homeowners were also told that they would have to retain engineers and architects on their own, Roumeliotis said.
It was unclear whether the city or the homeowners would ultimately bear the cost of hiring the engineers and architects to perform the assessments or whether the city ultimately could be held liable for the damage to the homes.
Officials from the Office of Emergency Management, the Department of Design and Construction, the Department of Buildings and the Department of Environmental Protection were all in attendance but offered only skeletal and summary information about the progress of the investigation, Roumeliotis said.
“We were not able to give them a lot of information because we didn’t have the report from the agencies from the results of the 30-foot borings that were done,” Andrews said. “The city recognizes the anxiety that is being created by this.”
All of this has indeed created anxiety in Roumeliotis’ life. He goes to school, holds down a job and now spends his spare time waiting for city officials to return his phone calls. His crusade is not by choice but out of necessity.
He was unofficially appointed spokesman by his neighbors after his parents’ house as well as four others on 159th Street and on 84th Avenue in Briarwood had to be vacated two weeks ago.
The houses on 159th Street near 84th Avenue were built more than 60 years ago on landfill, one possible reason why the houses had shifted. But Roumeliotis took issue with this possible cause.
“Obviously settling happens in all homes, but they have been here for 60 or 70 years,” he said. “That’s not natural settling.”
The extent of the damage varied from home to home, some displaying hairline fractures in the walls while others revealing gaps in the foundations. One man called the police after his wall split open, Roumeliotis said.
His mother was the first to notice the damage to their home when she came back from work on Jan. 23. Their balcony is connected to their two-story house, he said, and it had pulled the connecting wall away with it. Now it is slanted, he said, with one of the corners having tilted four to six inches.
“The extent of the slanting or grade in my home now is a direct result of what had happened the last couple of weeks,” he said.
In September, Roumeliotis said, the city had replaced a sewer line and in the process had broken a nearby water main. On Jan. 23, the day that Roumeliotis noticed the cracks in his house, he also spotted water at the intersection of 159th Street and 84th Avenue. Later that day, Department of Environmental Protection officials came to investigate the leak, he said.
For now, the displaced residents of the five homes are living with relatives, Andrews said. If they need to go back, for any reason, they first have to contact an inspector from the Department of Buildings, Roumeliotis said.
“At this point, we don’t even know if the damage will continue,” he said. “There are still people living in the area who want to know whether they’re safe here.”
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
