Workers remove a tree that fell against the restaurant Merchants River House in Battery Park City. Photo: Aline Reynolds/Tribeca Trib
Workers from the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy are busy removing downed tree trunks and branches following a brief but powerful storm that ripped through the western edge of Battery Park City on Saturday.
Soon after the storm struck Saturday afternoon, uprooting nine trees, the Battery Park City Authority mobilized a horticultural team to clear the walkway of fallen trees along the waterfront esplanade. On Monday afternoon, they continued the work of cutting trunks and limbs with chain saws, clearing shrubbery and repairing damaged benches. Part of the esplanade was cordoned off with yellow tape as the work continued. The authority expects the work to be completed by the end of the week.
There were no injuries and the area’s electrical and water systems were unscathed, according to Authority spokesman Matt Monahan. The patios of the Merchants River House, a restaurant at 375 South End Ave., sustained the brunt of the damage.
Just before 4 p.m. on Saturday, the restaurant’s outdoor diners ran for cover when the rain and wind gusts picked up, recalled Charles Waddy, the restaurant’s assistant general manager who was on duty. Moments later, he said, trees began toppling onto one another and landing on the restaurant’s north and south patios, breaking an air conditioning unit and outdoor umbrellas and frightening the restaurant’s diners and the staff. One tree crashed against the restaurant’s enclosed patio.
The restaurant sustained more exterior damage, Waddy noted, than from Hurricane Sandy.
“We were just hit with a huge whoosh, and it was just for that few minutes,” he said. “It was loud, and then, everything came down.”
“It seems like it was either a microburst or a tornado,” Gateway Plaza resident Chris Forbes told the Trib while observing the wreckage during a Monday afternoon walk along the esplanade.
“It surprised me how powerful it was,” he added, “because I was out just before, and it wasn’t raining at all.”