Brooke Dramer, an OTBKB reader and sometime contributor, needs advice about a vexing situation.

We rent a garden apartment on 6th Avenue between 5th and 6th Street—literally around the corner from the tree-crushed grey car that both HuffPo and OTBKB chose as the signature photo of tornado damage in Park Slope.  Right after the storm, we telephoned our landlady (who lives in Bensonhurst) and briefly described the damage to her property.

Here’s the problem: my landlady is willing to believe that the devastation to the backyard—ie, everything’s been crushed by a tree that fell across four backyards–was the result of the tornado.  But she has accused us of breaking the wrought iron fence in front of her house.

“You’re destroying my building!” she yelled at me over the phone a few nights ago.
I explained that the fence had been broken by a huge branch that fell on it—so huge that a neighbor had to help me lift it off the fence.  I assured her that I’d put the broken-off pieces of the fence in a safe place in the basement, and that I’d wired the remaining pieces together so that they wouldn’t fall over on the sidewalk.

“What branch!” she yelled  at me.
“A branch from the tree in front of the building,” I explained.
“What tree?!” she yelled at me. She then ranted on about how I had broken her fence and the front of the building was a mess and I was destroying her building.

Do any of your OTBKB readers have advice? Should we go to landlord tenant court if the landlady raises our rent as “punishment”—something she’s done many times before? We have photos of the tree with the torn-off branches, photos of us cleaning up in front of the house, plus photos of other damage on the block (including a bashed-in fence). We even have a video of Dave and me in the backyard with an electric saw, continuing to clear away branches. So far, we’ve put in more than 30 person-hours of work in an attempt to save as many plants as we can until the tree-trimmer comes next week.  Would we be able to present any of this video in court?

Photo credit:  Andy Arrow (Nashville drummer-turned-NY-video artist).