Cold rage at chaotic JFK
FOR STRANDED travelers on Sunday, JFK was the worst hotel room ever, a horrible infirmary and a terrible water park.
In short, it was anything but an airport.
A broken water main, as well as weather-related flight delays and cancellations, kept many Kennedy Airport passengers on the ground in a no-go nightmare.
The water main break at the privately operated Terminal 4 caused a shutdown of international flights there, airport officials tweeted about 3:30 p.m. They urged passengers to contact their airlines for specifics on their flights.
Port Authority officials blamed the flooding on a pipe that feeds Terminal 4’s sprinkler system. The pipe was not weather-protected, and the agency has launched a probe into why, Port Authority Director Rick Cotton said.
“What happened at JFK Airport is unacceptable, and travelers expect and deserve better,” Cotton said in a statement. Many travelers at Kennedy found themselves stranded because of Thursday’s massive snowstorm — and the frigid temperatures that followed.
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Actor Paul Wesley was among the unfortunate passengers, and he tweeted his ire at the airport and Delta Air Lines. “We are stuck on your tarmac because of a shortage of baggage handlers. Utterly inept,” he fumed Sunday in a tweet that was later deleted.
Before news of the water main break, exasperated travelers in Terminal 4 were reclining beside their luggage. Carlos Koester, 52, cuddled with his wife and two teens inside an airport vestibule.
“We just want to get home to Brazil,” he said. “We were in New York for a week. We love New York, but now we are stuck here. It’s frustrating. The storm caught us, and now we have been stranded here for 13 hours.”
“They are sick, to make matters worse,” Koester also said, pointing at his wife and a friend, who covered their faces as they coughed.
Nearby, a group of travelers clapped to prod Copa Airlines employees into opening check-in gates. When an airline staffer said the carrier didn’t have available planes, some started yelling, “Liar! Liar!”
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ALBANY — The co-chairman of former Gov. George Pataki’s successful 1994 campaign is considering mounting a Republican challenge to U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand this year.
Joseph Holland, a Harvard Law School graduate, author and Pataki’s first housing commissioner, has created an exploratory committee that will allow him to raise money as he decides whether to get in the race.
Gillibrand, a Democrat who will be seeking a second full term, “has not been the kind of leader in the Senate that the people of New York need,” Holland said. “We need a more dynamic leader who is really looking at how the people of New York can get better jobs, have more opportunity. She hasn’t brought that kind of initiative.”
Holland, who is African-American and an ordained minister in Harlem, will be one of three Republicans considering running against Gillibrand who will be in Albany on Monday to meet with GOP leaders from across the state to talk about the race.
Chele Chiavacci Farley, a fund-raiser for the state Republican Party who is also considering a run, will also be at the meeting.
The Daily News has learned the third person will be David Webber, a Syracuse-area resident who retired from the financial industry in 2010. Webber has created a Senate campaign website in which he says he “is not part of the club who gets funded by large corporations to run for office.”
Holland said he has not been active in politics in a number of years. But in the 1980s, he served as chief counsel for the state Senate Housing Committee before heading up Pataki’s first gubernatorial campaign and becoming his housing commissioner.
“I used to be quite active in politics,” he said. “As I looked at the environment at this point, I got motivated that it was time for me to get back engaged with the goal of bringing some new ideas and new direction to the political discourse.”