Even now when you walk down into the South Ferry Street Station you can’t imagine it was completely submerged, filled with debris, and devastated by Sandy.

It was destroyed.

“The issue is now, do we continue to do a cleanup or do we do a complete gut?” said Joe Leader, VP Maintenance of MTA.

Joe Leader, one of the MTA’s vice presidents took Eyewitness News on a tour of this vital station as the damage there is now being assessed.
Eyewitness News saw where flood waters climbed to the top of large banks of escalators.

It’s now been pumped dry but the equipment is lost. It was a newly renovated station three years ago and is now damaged beyond repair.

Sandy’s memory etched in what she left behind. The dispatcher’s office is where workers fled Sandy’s storm surge as it filled this station with sea water. The sea water shut down a system that relies on electricity coursing through thousands of switches and miles of cables.

In the relay room, with all the racks of important switches and terminals, all of it was brand new in 2008 prior to the station reopening in 2009 and now all of it has been destroyed.

“As the contractor pulled it out and cleaned the corrosion has come back,” Leader said.

It leaves the likely choice of replacing it. The switches and signals on the tracks will have to be new. “When we put this system back, we want to be sure we put it back and it’s reliable,” Leader said.

So the trains will run again from the end of this line but it will take an estimated $600 million to repair the station.

(Source: WABC)