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Perhaps I just haven't read it - but I think those firemen were in Queens fighting a huge fire - not saving people from the fire (the houses looked like single family houses to me - easy to evacuate). Reckon they would have fought the fire whether or not there were people there.
Robyn
power outages are very sporadic but all of south manhattan is out.. we have power but only blocks away they have been out.
it was a very unique storm. there were some like us who were unscathed and in fact if we didnt know it was a storm of such magnitude we wouldnt have even know it was anything other then a bad storm.
but other areas effected by the surge were devastated. there was very little rain . it was all wind and storm surge.
since we are in a high rise our exposure is on the opposite side of the building so the wind didnt hit us .
some of the areas are just amazing to see. the amount of damage is just incredible.
the flooding is being classified as the flooding you see with a cat 4.
robin if you tell me what area your relatives are ill tell you if they were evacuted in that area.
Thanks for the offer - but my family is contacting me - one by one - as they get to places where they can "recharge". And I'm glad you're ok.
Quite frankly - I have not seen an incredible amount of damage by Florida hurricane standards. Lots of downed trees - property damage near the ocean - etc. The storm surge (max about 14 feet) was about what we'd get in a cat 2 storm minus a full moon high tide. Our storm surge during Andrew (which hit us as a cat 3) was about 18 feet. Ten miles south of us (cat 4) it was 20+ feet. Fifteen to twenty miles south of us (cat 5) it was 25+ feet. Without an abnormally high tide. Which is not to say the tides during this storm weren't very high. Just don't believe all the hype you read.
OTOH - looking at this storm - I was struck by how vulnerable a lot of the northeast is to flooding - and how little has been done there to deal with the potential damage caused by flooding. There are many parts of Florida that have had few/one/no storms in recorded history. But we are all required to build for any potential storms. A lot of the metro NYC infrastructure - like subways - tunnels - etc. - is below sea level. But no measures have been taken to "seal them off" if there's flooding. There are lots of places/things in the world that are below sea level - and most take at least some precautions to deal with the possibility of flooding (like the big flood gates in New Orleans). But - in New York - even new buildings apparently aren't required to be built to any flood standards. Like the NYU hospital - basically on the water - was flooded because it was built "on the ground".
I wonder how many people who were flooded in the NE had flood insurance? Robyn
P.S. It is really unfortunate that people in the NE aren't familiar with the cost of decent tree removal. Our tree outfit (which is great professionally - also ethical - and it treats workers fairly in terms of paying for stuff like workers' comp - 125% of payroll - FICA - etc.) got burnt last time it went up north to deal with a storm. Some old crone complained about being charged $500 to remove a huge tree which had crashed on her house (although she had been given a written estimate in advance). And our service spent more money defending itself against her charges than it made on its entire trip north. So now - when a storm hits up north - it's not interested in the work.
We just regained power after a 30 hour outage. Nothing much really happened except for high waves but I am so glad that I was prepared for the worst and ready to evacuate just in case.
Thank you, mathjak, for your photos--they leave me speechless. NYC and NJ would normally not expect to be the target of such a strong and monstrous storm. It's hard just to imagine NYC without the subways as so many people depend on them and don't even have cars. New Yorkers are made of strong stuff and will carry on, but still, seeing those photos and the pictures of NYC and NJ on tv, is heart breaking.
I've lived in New England long enough to have survived hurricanes here back in the 50s so I will always prepare. Younger people won't remember. Places that are seldom hit, like NYC, don't have the firsthand experience either and may not be prepared.
I found this on Bloomburg.com:
"Sandy became the largest tropical system measured in the Atlantic, rivaling the New York blizzards of 1888 and 1947 in its impact on city life. It was the worst disaster in the 108- year history of the subway system and exceeded transit officials’ worst-case scenario, said Joseph Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority."
"New York City’s skyscrapers rest atop a honeycomb of underground subway, train and electrical tunnels susceptible to flooding, particularly now that water levels have risen in the harbor by 4 to 6 inches since the 1960s, according to a 2010 state Conservation Department report. Some subways and other conduits run under rivers and below water tables, and when one section floods, it can quickly spread to others, the report said."
With so much working against them and the odds against anything like this happening, it's no wonder they weren't better prepared for this disaster. We can debate upon whether or not it's important for them to revamp and revise just in case something like this happens again someday. It could be next year, it could be in 100 years.
Anyway, I'm no expert on NYC and all I know today is that I have never been so happy to come home to LIGHTS, TV, humming refrigerator, working stove, HEAT, and..............internet.
And this hospital was in an evacuation zone. With many electric dependent patients. Why the heck it wasn't evacuated when the first evacuation order was given - well got me. Seems like there are people in New York who are as incompetent as the people in New Orleans were during Katrina. Robyn
Those NY/NJ scenes are horrifying in their devastation - and a harbinger of our future. The 100-year flood is now becoming the every-other-year flood, as Gov. Cuomo as said. Consider the population density in the City of NY, alone - 8 million people. NJ population is 8 million.
This from the NYT:
Quote:
More than SIX MILLION customers lost power Monday as Hurricane Sandy felled trees, downed power lines and flooded substations. The storm led to power failures in at least 17 states, including more than a million customers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and about 660,000 in New York City.
Even Katrina wasn't that bad - which had power loss to about one million people - and, of course, the entire city under water, an entirely different level of destruction.
I've lived "up north" all my life. We have basements up here. Heating plants, power boxes, rec rooms, extra living quarters are in the basements. No one up here carries flood insurance unless they live in a flood plain. We don't have tropical storms, hurricanes, typhoons or anything of that nature up here - until about two years ago - when we had our second 100-year flood in the space of a few years.
Two years ago in July, for the first time since 1976 - which is as long as I've been living in this house - I had about 4-5 feet of water in my basement. Milwaukee was declared a disaster area. FEMA came out and paid for cleanup and a new hot water, which is now on one-foot cinder blocks. If the basement floods again, the next hot water heater will be hung from the ceiling. Fortunately, my furnaces survived. Certain areas in my suburb routinely flood now, where they never did before. We've got a massive deep tunnel project going on all over the city now.
We have always had snowstorms and snow blizzards which may occasionally down a tree here or there and cause a power outage, but never mass flooding until recently. However, of late, we don't get nearly as much snow as 20 years ago, either, nor does the weather get as cold. 50 years ago it was common to have two weeks of below zero weather, with the nights falling to 20 below. That hasn't happened in 10-12 years, at least. The weather is getting warmer.
Climate change is real - and whatever was the norm for the past 300 years will not be the norm going forward. I haven't put anything back in my basement since the flood of 2010, and don't intend to.
Residents of the Carolinas/Florida,LA, TX Gulf area certainly expect hurricanes, tropical storms, typhoons. But not up here. Our Lake Michigan has massive waves today as a result of what happened on the East Coast. I've often thought the snow/blizzards/ice storms in the NE and New England were far worse than ours. Now that the temperature is getting warmer, they are getting massively destructive hurricanes as well. A double whammy.
The breadth of the devastation and destruction look pretty gd awful to me.
And this hospital was in an evacuation zone. With many electric dependent patients. Why the heck it wasn't evacuated when the first evacuation order was given - well got me. Seems like there are people in New York who are as incompetent as the people in New Orleans were during Katrina. Robyn
They had another generator on the roof but the fuel pump for it was down below and flooded too,
One thing to remind people of from having gone thru alot of hurricanes to to turn on one light breaker when they say electical is repaired. Sometimes they will screwup and you can get surge which will frey some electronics etc.Here we trun off main breaker and gas nthe bad period of storms.Small fire can get out of control during a storm quickly.FEMA will only pays anything if not covered by flood insurance and then only to make house habitable which isn't all necessary in main house flooding.
These disasters, like the NEng hurricane of '38, used to be isolated incidents with many years in between. It now remains to be seen, with the oceans warming and the glaciers melting, whether these kinds of disaster storms get more frequent, something we have to live with on a regular basis. Bill McKibben the environmentalist believes this to be the case. One thing that seems apparent, after the microburst tornadoes and storms here these past few years (flattening some streets and leaving others in the same and nearby blocks intact), and the eery nature of Sandy (NJ/NY residents say there was so much devastation despite no outrageously high winds or rain) is that we may be subjected to irrational "pockets" of unpredictable forces from now on.
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