The purpose of a newspaper should be a little more than accepting official statements or press releases but should involve digging below the surface to determine if these statements or facts are accurate. A case in point is your front page article on your Jan. 28 issue concerning flooding in Munsey Park.

First of all, the rainstorm of Jan. 3 involved more than Munsey Park but affected houses in the whole area. My insurance company informed me that they were dealing with 800 claims in this area alone from the storm and when you take into account homes covered by other insurance companies, the number of homes affected probably ran into the thousands. It appears that Manhasset Press missed a major story.

The statement by Deputy Mayor Vincent Syracuse of Munsey Park that the problem was "a matter of capacity" certainly can be questioned. It's easy to blame things on "acts of God" so nobody is responsible. The fact that in the middle of the storm on Jan. 3 when some workmen (I presume from the NY State Department of Transportation) bothered to show up and clear some drains the street flooding immediately eased.

The DOT's excuse that due to the number of parked cars at all hours, day and night, the drains cannot be cleaned is simply incorrect. First of all there is no overnight parking on Port Washington Boulevard and if some inspectors from the DOT would bother to show up in the late afternoon after 4 p.m. or on most weekends he or she would notice that there are very few cars. A neighbor noted to me that on the Monday after the storm the DOT did show up and managed to clear the drains despite the parked cars. Perhaps there should be a no parking zone around each storm drain but I feel the DOT owes the community a much better explanation.

I further learned from a neighbor that this is not the first time that such street flooding took place as he remembered a similar occurrence about four years ago. I guess Manhasset Press has a short memory but it would have been nice to get a little more in-depth reporting from a community newspaper.

John Frangos