He took me through a door to a little cul-de-sac where garbage was stored in vast plastic containers.
She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting "a little of everything" from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.
First and foremost, officials have said, residents must not feed bears and must store garbage securely.
Many people shut their windows and doors before they start cooking, to contain the smells, and many store garbage in their basements or sheds until pickup day.
Discard the seeds in your compost pile or garbage bin or store them for another use.
In particular, you should clean any food or drink spills and only store garbage outdoors in containers with secure, airtight lids.
Ms. Ezell lives on Teller Avenue, a tree-lined street in Morrisania where privately owned homes face tidy front yards, and porches are for sitting, not for storing garbage.
On Friday, one such front-line area, the main Jamila market, was a charred, half-deserted stretch of shuttered stores, garbage and abandoned vegetable trolleys.
Mr. Medina is not sure whether the hurricane is to blame, but he said the city's rat problem was getting worse, with more construction on the go, and more garbage being poorly stored, as trash bags split open, dripping juices and grease.
In 1993, Staten Islanders voted to secede from New York City, unhappy with what they saw as a disproportionately small share of city services and a disproportionately high share of city garbage, which was stored by the mountain-load at the Fresh Kills landfill for decades.
