Williamsburg woman goes viral for cleaning the LIE with a traffic cone
NEW YORK —Daphnee Youree tweeted a clip of her efforts to clean the flooded LIE — and the video promptly went viral.
“I just think it’s kind of ridiculous,” she told PIX11 in an interview Tuesday evening.
Youree is a photographer from Williamsburg. She posted a clip to her Twitter page, letting NYC Emergency Management know she cleared the debris blocking one of the storm drains.
“I was coming from Long Island with my sick cat from the vet,” she said. “I drove through the whole storm with my son. When I got to Utopia Parkway, I saw just mad river basically and saw cars just flushing through, trying to get through the crazy river and I looked at my son and told him we were not going to drive through this.”
She pulled over to the side and grabbed what was available to her — a traffic cone — and started to dig her way out.
A number of other cars began to stop and the drivers began to get out of them. “We all kind of thought it was ridiculous,” Youree said.
Youree says she’s a curious person and went up to two men who said something had to be done. She volunteered herself to walk over to the flood and started to inspect and dig out.
“I walked through the entire area to see if any part was low enough for a car to go through. It was mostly above my knee.”
She picked up the cone and walked over and dug it out. She made three attempts to do so.
Youree was shocked that it went viral. “I just wanted to put it on our stories!”
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson called her “a great New Yorker.”
“It kind of makes me uncomfortable but we need happy stories and good news sometimes and I love that a lot is being made of this,” she said.