New York Today: Water Main Break Snarls Commute

Ángel Franco/The New York Times The water main break caved in a section of Fifth Avenue at 13th Street.

Updated 12:06 p.m.

Good morning on this sunny Wednesday.

The fog has cleared and normal subway service has resumed following a water main break in Manhattan.

The water main break in Greenwich Village caused a slow, messy commute this morning. Subway service was restored at 10:25 a.m., the M.T.A. said, but it still might be wise to take a numbered line.

Most lettered lines were affected and are still experiencing residual delays: Namely, the B, D, F, M, N, Q, J, Z, and C. Check the M.T.A. site for the latest disruptions.

Bus service is still disrupted. M1, M2, M3 and M5 buses are detoured between 13th and 14th Streets. Check here for details.

The water main broke near Fifth Avenue and 13th Street around 12:15 a.m., the city said. It took hours to shut off the right pipes, find the pipe that had burst and bring the flooding under control.

The source of the problem was a section of 36-inch cast iron pipe dating back to 1877, said a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection.

Basements were flooded when it cracked, but there were no injuries, said Michael Parrella, a Fire Department spokesman.

Fifth Avenue remains closed between 14th and 12th Streets. The break opened up a big hole in Fifth Avenue that repair crews were working on.

Buildings along Fifth Avenue from 14th to 12th Streets were without water this morning, the Department of Environmental Protection said.

A reader reported that buildings on 10th Street also remained without water.

Here’s what else you need to know.

REST OF THE COMMUTE

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

WEATHER

Areas of dense fog till 9 a.m. Clouds and a few stray sun rays all day long, with a high of 47. Down to 36 tonight.

THIS SIDE OF THE BRIDGE

You probably know plenty by now about traffic patterns on the George Washington Bridge, given the scandal over lane closings ordered by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration.

But what about the New York side of the bridge?

It’s that spot where several roadways meet in Upper Manhattan, then twist around, curly-straw style, and squeeze out two decks of gridlock.

The passage here isn’t easy, either.

“It’s a mess,” the NY1 traffic reporter Jamie Shupak told us. “I would say coming in from New Jersey is worse, but not by a lot.”

This winter, emergency repairs caused delays of hours for outbound traffic on at least three separate occasions.

On normal days, drivers can expect accidents, stalled vehicles, potholes â€" “and delays of at least 30 minutes every rush hour, every single day,” Ms. Shupak said.

Behind the delays is not a human but the Cross Bronx Expressway, consistently one of the most-congested roadways in the nation, “mainly because everyone is headed to the George.”

On New Jersey’s side, traffic-bound commuters may watch the largest free-flying flag in the world - a 60-by-90-foot Old Glory hangs over its bridge tower.

New York has the Little Red Lighthouse below, and the 32-story Bridge Apartments above, which overlook any number of accidents daily.

What are your experiences on either side of the bridge? Let us know in the comments, or on Twitter, with #NYToday.

DE BLASIO WATCH

From Nikita Stewart of the City Hall bureau of The Times:

- Mayor de Blasio makes an announcement about traffic safety at a public school in Queens where a boy was struck and killed by a truck last month. 12:30 p.m.

- The mayor is also weighing a plea by the National September 11 Memorial Museum for help from the city meeting its $60 million annual budget. [Wall Street Journal]

- Mr. de Blasio’s plan to rein in charter schools was dealt a blow by a state education panel that recommended expanding them to add pre-K. [New York Post]

COMING UP TODAY

- A rally against gun violence with the mothers of victims on the steps of City Hall. 10 a.m.

- The city’s first heated bus shelter opens for a month, courtesy of greater Fort Lauderdale, on 42nd Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. 7 a.m. [Includes lounge chairs and free MetroCards]

- Attorney General Eric Holder and police officials from around the country speak at a “Safe Streets, Strong Communities” symposium at the Ford Foundation. [Filled to capacity]

- Snooki alert: She signs her book, “Baby Bumps,” at the Barnes & Noble on 54th Street. 12:30 p.m.

- Just in time for Martin Luther King’s actual birthday today, an exhibition about Brooklyn abolitionists, “In Pursuit of Freedom,” opens at the Brooklyn Historical Society. [$10 suggested]

- Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday is coming up, too. There’s a party at the Bronx County Archives. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- An illustrated lecture at the Jackie Robinson Park recreation center in Harlem about the Museum of Modern Art’s collection of work by African-American artists. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- A vocal concert featuring P.G. Wodehouse’s collaborations with Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Cole Porter at Juilliard. 8 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Governor Christie did not use the word ‘bridge’ in his State of the State address. [New York]

- But his idol Bruce Springsteen reworked “Born to Run” with Jimmy Fallon last night to skewer “Governor Chris Christie’s Fort Lee New Jersey Traffic Jam.” [See video]

- A profile of Carmen Fariña, the new schools chancellor. [New York Times]

- A boy fell into a manhole in Brooklyn but emerged mostly unscathed. [New York Times]

- A restaurant in the meatpacking district canceled a SeaWorld party featuring live penguins after complaints by PETA. [Gothamist]

- Scoreboard: So much for the local winning streak. Bobcats devour Knicks, 108-98. Lightning zap Rangers, 2-1. Panthers pounce on Islanders, 4-2. But the Devils beat the Canadiens, 4-1.

AND FINALLY…

Five years ago today, there was a plane in the Hudson.

A US Airways jetliner carrying 155 people touched down on the water after losing power in both engines. Ferries and emergency boats pulled off a quick rescue.

The pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger â€" who has since been immortalized in books and a TV documentary and lent his name to a cocktail â€" will float more peaceably off our shores this afternoon.

He will take a brief ferry ride with survivors and the ferry crews who rescued them.

So tonight, make yours a Sully.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Find us on weekdays at nytoday.com.

New York Today: Comeback City

Al Bello/Getty Images Paul Pierce is back, and so are the Nets.

Updated 10:02 a.m.

Good misty Tuesday morning.

You awaken to a city of winners.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we were marveling at the local teams’ dismal seasons.

What a difference 2014 makes.

The region’s pro basketball and hockey teams have won a combined 22 of 31 games this year - 71 percent - after winning only 37 percent from October through December.

Last night, the Knicks kept things rolling, beating the Suns in overtime for their fifth straight win, 98-96.

The reasons for the turnaround are unclear. Coincidence? A sort of long-overdue market correction? A new mayor? (We’re joking, really.)

Players like Iman Shumpert of the Knicks are hitting their stride.

Everything seemed to come together on Jan. 2.

The Knicks stunned the San Antonio Spurs - perhaps the league’s second-best team.

The Nets beat the Oklahoma City Thunder at the buzzer.

And the Islanders shocked the defending champion Chicago Blackhawks in overtime.

Only the New Jersey Devils have continued their lackluster ways.

Sure, all the local teams but the Rangers are still under .500.

The Olympics will derail the hockey season for most of February, making it harder to maintain momentum.

“But for now,” said Naila-Jean Meyers, a sports editor at The Times, “enjoy it while you can because we have a lot to cheer about.”

Here’s what else you need to know.

WEATHER

Still warm, but wet, with fog and up to half an inch of rain, and a high of 49.

Clearing up by nightfall, not too cold tonight, and sunny on Wednesday.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

DE BLASIO WATCH

From David W. Chen of The Times:

- Forkgate, a.k.a. Pizzagate, may well live another day, after Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” skewered the mayor’s use of silverware to eat pizza. (See video.)

- But Mr. de Blasio won’t be talking about Forkgate today, or anything else, because he has no public events scheduled.

- He may, however, spend time figuring out what to do about a Queens school where the principal is reportedly often absent and students spend much of the day watching television.

COMING UP TODAY

- Education advocates, supported by Public Advocate Letitia James, board buses for Albany to lobby for state funding for city schools. 7:15 a.m. in Brooklyn.

- Three statues of Hindu gods stolen from a temple in India in 2009 and seized in New York are turned over to the Indian consulate here.

- Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, busy these days redefining the word embattled, delivers his State of the State speech at 3 p.m. (Watch live stream.)

- An exhibit on the history of Martin guitars opens at the Met. 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. [Pay what you wish]

- Kenny G alert: the saxophonist blows his horn, softly, to promote the softness of Charmin toilet paper, outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. Noon. [Free]

- Storytellers tell stories at Cornelia Street Cafe. 6 p.m. [$8 includes drink]

- A calligrapher and “stationery artisan,” Bernard Maisner, delivers a lecture at the lovely library of the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen in Midtown. 6:30 p.m. [$15]

- Scott Stossel, editor of The Atlantic, discusses his book about anxiety at McNally Jackson books in SoHo. 7 p.m. [Free]

- An edifying evening of lectures about the history of partying at the Bedford in Williamsburg. Topics include “The Patricians vs. The Plebeians vs. The Pious: Who Partied Hardest in Ancient Rome?” 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Assemblyman Eric Stevenson of the Bronx was convicted of taking more than $20,000 in bribes. [New York Times]

- A police helicopter fished out a kayaker and a windsurfer who got stuck in a marsh in Jamaica Bay. [New York Post]

- The fate of 300 safe deposit boxes remains unknown at an uptown Citibank branch consumed by fire over the weekend. [New York Times]

- Hang up your Cronuts: There is now, alas, a hybrid bagel-croissant called a Cragel. [Gothamist]

- A woman dying of cancer threw a monthlong party for herself, her family and her friends. [New York Times]

AND FINALLY…

This week in 1874, in the midst of a depression, labor advocates tried to march from Tompkins Square Park to City Hall to demand aid for the unemployed.

The 7,000 demonstrators were pre-empted, violently, by the police.

“There were incessant skirmishes in which clubs were judiciously applied with reasonable but not excessive severity,” The Times, which opposed the march, reported approvingly.

Dozens were arrested, dozens injured.

Mayor William F. Havemeyer, the authors of the history book “Gotham” wrote, applauded the police, too.

“Nothing better could have happened,” the mayor said.

Joseph Burgess, Annie Correal, Naila-Jean Meyers and Jay Schreiber contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Find us on weekdays at nytoday.com.

Misunderstood Aboard the Intrepid

Dear Diary:

Recently I was touring the carrier Intrepid, now the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, with another shipmate from my carrier, the Lake Champlain, in which we both had served during the Korean War. We were wearing caps with the ship’s designation â€" CVS-39.

A tourist stopped us and asked if were part of the CVS pharmacy chain.

We said no, we were part of a carrier group.

He replied: “Oh, I see. You’re with the air-conditioning company.”

We finally just walked away.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

5 Years Later, Still Feeling Impact of Plane Down in the Hudson

Michael Appleton for The New York Times US Airways Flight 1549 had taken off from La Guardia at 3:26 p.m., bound for Charlotte, N.C.

Plane down in the Hudson. No sign of it at 42nd and 12th Avenue. Where was it? Moving downstream, or downtown, fast.

I chased.

A colleague says she took notes by phone from me as I ran. My only memory is of the rod of ice that seemed to have grown inside my body, from both the wind whipping off the river on a frigid day, and the dread over what was sure to be an awful loss of life. Maybe a few people had been able to get out alive.

It was a cold day, about to get awful.

Somewhere, past the towed-car pound, maybe around the Javits Center, I spotted it. Well, not quite. What you could see from the street was a flotilla of ferries, nestled around the downed plane, keeping perfect pace with it as the Hudson currents pulled it toward the ocean.

The commuter ferries were just about 45 minutes from starting the evening rush, and all of them had gone full speed for the plane, including one with a 20-year-old woman in her first week as a captain.

The survivors would be coming out of a ferry terminal at 42nd Street. A few of us ducked into the bar of a bowling alley to get coffee. Then people began to emerge, some wrapped in blankets, ones and twos, but big numbers.

Their heads were full of escape stories: clambering out to the wing, getting into little boats, then into ferries. A warning from the intercom. Wet clothes. Ripped clothes. Water in the cabin. The details are a blur now, except for one.

Every passenger was there to tell his or her story.

Somehow â€" maybe from one of the passengers â€" came the first word that everyone, every last one, had gotten out.

The final person to leave a life raft was a tall, white-haired man named Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot who had brought the plane down safely. He climbed into the ferryboat Athenia.

“Very calm,” said Capt. Carl Lucas of the Athenia. “He had a metal clipboard with the passenger manifest. He came up into the wheelhouse, and we tried to organize a count of who was recovered from the water. I asked him if he thought there was anyone left on the plane. He said no, that he had checked twice himself.”

This time a year ago, I met Captain Sullenberger, by then retired, at a dinner with the family of Rory Staunton, a boy who had worshiped him, read his memoir dozens of times and taken his first flying lesson on his 12th birthday. Mr. Sullenberger, an expert in aviation safety who believes that many of its principles can be applied to medicine, had contacted the family after reading that Rory had died of untreated sepsis.

By that evening, Mr. Sullenberger had already told his story a million times, no doubt, but I’d never heard what had happened in the cockpit after the plane struck a flock of birds. What did he talk about with the first officer, Jeff Skiles? As it happened, the plane was being flown by Mr. Skiles at the moment of impact with the birds. The two men did not know each other.

“There wasn’t much talking, we both knew what had to be done,” Mr. Sullenberger said. He was the ranking officer and assumed command.

But how did that happen?

“I said to him, ‘My plane.’ And Jeff said, ‘Your plane.’ That was it.”

And a few minutes later, having skidded perfectly into the Hudson, his plane became the plane of the tidal currents, until the ferry crews rushed in. “They made all the difference,” Mr. Sullenberger said.

I thanked him. “For what?” he asked.

For the most exhilarating day I’ve had as a news reporter.