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| Politics
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| Jailed and jailers pitched in help |
| Jailed and jailers pitched in help after Superstorm Sandy
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 22-November-2012
9:1:40 AM |
| There are plenty of unsung heroes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, but the story of how those at New York's least desirable address lent their muscle and might is perhaps among the most compelling.
On the night that the storm roared into the city, Dora B. Schriro, the correction commissioner, slept on a couch in her office at the Rikers Island jail, bracing for flooding and reassuring inmates and employees that the island would weather the storm.
The next morning, the vast jailhouse complex was mostly unscathed, but Schriro was stunned by the devastation the storm had wrought elsewhere.
So she decided to put her jail, and those who call it home, to work. Inmates did 6,600 pounds of laundry for people in emergency shelters; the jail provided gas from its pumps to fuel the generators it provided to neighbourhoods in the dark and donated long underwear usually given to inmates; and officers with medical training provided emergency care to victims.
"There was a lot of loss," said Schriro, who pitched in at food lines on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. "It was our responsibility and opportunity to jump in and help."
Schriro, a Staten Island native who lives in the Bronx, and her deputies started strategizing how they would tap Rikers' enormous resources even as the storm was still raging. Schriro had already reminded the Bloomberg administration of all that Rikers had to offer should the storm prove to be as catastrophic as predicted.
But Schriro felt a greater sense of urgency after seeing firsthand what the storm had done to the Rockaways, a place that is home to some of the jail's inmates as well as to some of the guards who watch over them.
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