By SARAH GARLAND

Newsday (New York)
May 13, 2005 Friday
THE FOLD: PARKWAY LANDSLIDE;
Parked in rough spot
BYLINE: BY SARAH GARLAND
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A46

Landslide

When a wall collapsed on my car yesterday where it was parked along the Henry Hudson Parkway, my first response was a sigh of relief. The engine burned oil and the dented hood I never fixed must be pulverized now, but I crossed my fingers and hoped that my insurance covers landslides.
At first I thought my car, a red 1993 Honda Civic, might be the one sticking halfway out of the rubble. Then I found Ann Alston, 70, who claimed that the half-buried car was hers, a red Toyota Corolla she had just repaired for $5,000.
“This is terrible. That red color is hard luck,” said Alston, a resident of 1380 Riverside Dr.
My red car was parked farther north along Riverside Drive, now underneath two trees and 20 feet of dirt.
It turns out we were all lucky. Alston had parked her car an hour before the collapse and her neighbor, Joan Donovan, had pulled in just behind her.
“I saw they were inspecting the wall the day before, but I asked and they said it’s just a couple of loose bricks,” said Donovan, who said she has noticed engineers taking photographs and monitoring the wall for several years. “I asked if I should park here and he said, ‘Yes, it’s fine.’”
Finding a parking spot in Washington Heights is a nightmare, so when I found a spot along the entry ramp to the Henry Hudson Parkway after cruising the streets for 45 minutes, I was ecstatic. I never noticed the loose bricks in the wall above. Instead, I halfheartedly jammed The Club onto my steering wheel, not bothering to lock it in the hope that some unsuspecting thief might steal the car and relieve me of my burden. I never dreamed I would get this lucky.
Chris Kane, a firefighter who responded after the collapse, said it would take a long time to dig the cars out. After I described my car to him, he congratulated me on my good fortune. “It’s going to be worthwhile,” he said.
Donovan and Alston were not as chipper as they waited to hear word of their vehicles. But they brightened when Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived to express his condolences for our loss. They said they were happy to see him, and Donovan even suggested she would throw her support to him in the mayor’s race.
“I’ll vote for you if you get me a new car,” Donovan said.