Man Ill; Spraying Intensifies

Spraying has intensified around Staten Island after a man was diagnosed with West Nile Virus:

After a Staten Island man was diagnosed as having the state’s first human case of West Nile virus this year, the city Health Department will spray pesticide from trucks tomorrow between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. in the following neighborhoods: New Dorp, Oakwood, Oakwood Beach, Bay Terrace, Chelsea, Graniteville, Bloomfield, Bulls Head, Old Place and Mariners Harbor.

If weather doesn’t permit, spraying will be delayed until Thursday or the next possible night.

. . .

For this application, city workers will apply Anvil 10+10 (Sumithrin), a synthetic pyrethroid used in mosquito-control efforts. A 2001 study sponsored by the city Health Department found that the pesticide had no repercussions for people’s health when applied correctly. To read the report, go to http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/wnv/feis.shtml.

During the application, people with asthma or other respiratory conditions are encouraged to stay indoors, since there is the possibility that spraying could worsen these conditions. It’s all right to run air conditioners, but to reduce the possibility of exposure, health officials recommend closing the machines’ vents.

See also: Save The Dorp!

Save The Dorp!

Virtually all of Staten Island has mosquitoes that are carrying the West Nile virus:

Since a mosquito pool in Grasmere tested positive for West Nile in late June, the virus has been found in mosquitoes in 11 of Staten Island’s 12 ZIP codes, according to statistics compiled by the city Health Department.

The only ZIP code not affected was 10304 — which includes Stapleton, Todt Hill, Clifton and Concord.

In fact, with the exception of small pockets in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, West Nile activity has been concentrated on Staten Island — but so far, it’s been confined to mosquitoes.

No human cases have been reported anywhere in the city or state this summer. And none of the 2,500 dead birds tested citywide turned up positive for the West Nile virus this year, according to Sara Markt, a Health Department spokeswoman.

The next round of pesticide spraying is scheduled to begin tonight at 8 p.m. and continue through tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.

The pesticide Anvil 10+10 (Sumithrin) will be sprayed from trucks in New Dorp, Oakwood, Oakwood Beach, Bay Terrace, Chelsea, Graniteville, Bloomfield, Bulls Head and Mariners Harbor.

At The End Of Port Richmond Avenue Among The Decaying Docks And Chicken Guts

A Staten Island woman is the latest example of how squatters have rights:

The lot at the dead end of Port Richmond Avenue — a dilapidated industrial area with gutted buildings, decaying docks and the aroma of chicken carcasses wafting from a nearby poultry slaughterhouse — seems like no place for anyone to live.

But squatter Patricia Walsh is fighting to stay there.

For five years, Ms. Walsh has called home an abandoned office trailer, with her seven dogs, dozen cats and cartloads of recyclable cans and bottles.

The 53-year-old calls herself a community activist, an animal lover, a proud citizen of Port Richmond for the past 22 years.

The owners of the 1.2-acre property overlooking the Kill van Kull call her a pain in the butt.

Since October, brothers Robert and Rudolph Rando of Long Island have tried just about everything to get her off their land so they can sell it to an Island development company.

They’ve offered her $10,000 — she refused it.

“I don’t trust them,” she said, standing in the cluttered yard last week.

They’ve promised to foot all of her moving expenses, to pack her belongings in a truck and bring her anywhere she wanted.

“They’re rich. They have nice homes to go to. Where else can I go?” she replied.

. . .

John Z. Marangos, a Staten Island landlord attorney representing the Randos, called it the toughest eviction case he’s handled. Even serving legal notice to Ms. Walsh has been a challenge. Her trailer home is guarded by an angry Chow Chow named Mary, and Buster, a massive pit bull with a knack for sniffing out lawyers carrying notices of eviction.

Meanwhile, his client has been losing “thousands of dollars every month” — not including legal fees — while he fights Ms. Walsh in court, Marangos said.

Will The Outages Ever Cease?

Con Ed can’t get a break as the power goes out in Staten Island, affecting 16,000 “customers”*:

The latest power failure occurred as the utility and the city braced for a second summer heat wave that could endanger a fragile electrical network in Queens that is still being repaired.

The power failure on Staten Island began at 4:15 p.m. when three overhead lines were damaged — just 12 hours after Con Ed announced that electricity had been restored to the last customers in the Queens blackout. Around 10 p.m., Con Ed said, power was restored to all of its customers on Staten Island. The term “customer” includes residential and commercial buildings as well as households.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg canceled plans to visit Queens last night to go instead to the affected areas of Staten Island. “The good news is the temperature is reasonably cool and we do expect to get everybody back very soon,” the mayor said last night in a news conference at Dongan Hills.

The mayor further noted the difference between above-ground and underground power lines:

He took care to distinguish between the power failure on Staten Island, which uses overhead lines, and the blackout in Queens, which relies mostly on underground networks.

“This is a very different situation than existed in Queens,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Here, when a cable is out, they know that everybody downstream is not getting power, so their estimates are very good. In an underground system, there are multiple paths to every house, so they don’t have a way of knowing.” In Queens it took Con Ed four days to correctly estimate the number of customers without power.

*And don’t let the terminology fool you — 16,000 customers could turn out to be a lot of people.

The Incident, Staten Island Style

In Staten Island, where temperatures reached 104 degrees yesterday, a group of toughs took out their frustrations on the local populace:

Tempers boiled over yesterday along with the mercury — it hit 104 degrees in the borough on the third day of summer’s first heat wave — as a rowdy crowd pushed a peace officer into a public pool in Mariners Harbor and then attacked a baseball player on a field nearby.

The trouble started at about 5:30 p.m., as about 50 young people descended on the Grandview Playground mini-pool, located at Grandview Avenue and Continental Place, not far from the Mariners Harbor Houses. The youths were in street clothes and were too old for the mini-pool, said Warner Johnston, a Parks Department spokesman.

A Parks Enforcement Patrol officer confronted the rambunctious bunch, only to find herself being pushed into the pool, police said.

Apart from getting wet, the officer was uninjured, Johnston noted.

About 15 minutes later, the same group disrupted a men’s sandlot baseball game between the Tigers and Danny Boy’s Tavern that was getting under way on a field nearby.

The right fielder was doused with a pot full of water thrown by a teen-ager, who then hit the player with the empty pot, according to witnesses. The player was banged up but didn’t go to a hospital, they said.

The game was promptly canceled.

A massive water fight then ensued at the intersection of Continental Place and Brabant Avenue, with folks filling buckets, pots, pans and their hands from an illegally opened fire hydrant.

Cops quickly swarmed the area to disperse the group and firefighters were called in to shut off the hydrant.