Verizon Headquarters After Hurricane Sandy. (Damon Dahlen, AOL)

By Gerry Smith

The building took on heavy flooding during the storm surge brought ashore by Hurricane Sandy. Workers begin the arduous task of cleaning and repairing the Verizon Headquarters building as well as telecommunications infrastructure located at West and Barclay Streets in Lower Manhattan on Saturday Nov. 3, 2012.

The water came rushing through the lobby, crashing against doors, shattering windows and scattering sandbags meant to stop it. Then, it cascaded down the stairs and flooded the underground cable vault, soaking tangled wires that deliver phone and Internet service to customers across the region.

“It was churning like crazy. You can see the line here,” Chris Levendos, Verizon’s executive director of national operations, said Saturday, pointing to a 4-foot-high water mark left on the lobby wall. “It was finding all sorts of ways to get into the building.”

Heavy flooding this week at Verizon’s headquarters in lower Manhattan — a critical node of its network infrastructure — has begun to subside, but the company’s effort to repair damaged network equipment and restore service to customers after Hurricane Sandy continues.

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