EYESORE: A Google Street View car shoots the wrecked home of Dominic Traina yesterday, presumably to replace the image of the once-lovely house currently online (inset). (NY Post: Chad Rachman)
Google executives thoughtlessly dispatched one of their Street View cars to photograph a Staten Island neighborhood that was just devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
The driver was observed by The Post yesterday passing by several completely wrecked homes in New Dorp Beach.
Victims still struggling to rebuild blasted the online search giant for its insensitive timing.
“They are putting us wiped out on the map!” fumed Damian Malandro, 39, who lives in the neighborhood and suffered water damage to his house.
“They’re going to call it a wasteland! I don’t like Google driving around my property. What are they doing it for? To drop the property value?”
The owner of one destroyed home that Google captured — on the corner of Cedar Grove Avenue and Maple Terrace — met personally with President Obama when Obama toured the area in the days after the storm.
“We got hammered,” said Dominic Traina, 66, who has been living in the basement apartment of a relative.
He is now battling Allstate for allegedly low-balling him on repairing his destroyed house, despite using images of it in a TV commercial.
“It’s upsetting to us. I hate even going down there now because I hate looking at it,” he said about the ordeal.
Google’s colorful car, with a panoramic camera mounted on the roof, went up Topping Street, Maple Terrace, Cedar Grove Court and Waterside Street before departing along New Dorp Lane.
It passed at least three homes totaled by the storm and dozens of others that saw several feet of floodwaters. It also took a tour of damaged areas in the Rockaways.
“It’s messed up. It’s very unfair!” said Dena Turchi, 38, who lives on Maple Terrace in a gutted frame of a house.
Mark McIntyre, 49, whose first floor was flooded, said, “If that’s the way it’s going to be in the computer for years, showing the depreciation of a neighborhood, that’s not right.”
The images could scare off potential home buyers, he said, explaining, “If someone wants to move, they look online, so that’s not good for the neighborhood. If that goes online, it’s going to drag [down] the real-estate market.”
Google execs insisted yesterday that they just wanted to update their current maps to be more accurate, and to show Hurricane Sandy’s swath of damage.
“The Street View team is currently redriving affected areas of New York City,” said a spokeswoman.
“We hope this accurate, updated imagery that will soon be available in Google Maps will help people around the world better understand the extent of the damage and the importance of coming together as a community to aid in the recovery efforts.”
Even one resident defended the shots, saying the neighborhood should be depicted as it is.
“I think the more awareness, the better,” said Danielle Salvanti.
“To pretend that this is not what my neighborhood looks like is unrealistic.”