Coping with Sandy

After the hurricane, many of CV’s locations were without power. Initially, our biggest concern was the Dobbs Ferry campus, with more than 200 children in residence. Our maintenance crew established a network of generators that allowed the children to stay warm in the cottages and have hot meals, and enabled staff to keep a sense of normalcy for more than 8 days as Con Edison and CV’s own electricians worked to restore power. There was much rejoicing when the lights came back on!

Getting help to our families was an even greater challenge as they are scattered throughout the worst-hit areas. Friends have been donating food, flashlights, batteries, blankets, diapers, cleaning supplies and much more, and staff continue to drive vans full of supplies to the Far Rockaways, lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn.

As staff made sure children were safe, they were dealing with their own power outages. CV provided access to hot showers  and warming centers and ran shuttles to get staff to work.

All of our locations currently have power and our school opened on Wednesday for the first time since the hurricane hit. However, it will take months for many people in our community to recover and we will continue to do what we can to help.