Thread: Frankenstorm

October 28, 2012
Sharp Warnings as Hurricane Churns In

By JAMES BARRON

Hurricane Sandy, a menacing monster of a storm that forecasters said would bring “life-threatening” flooding, churned toward some of the nation’s most densely populated areas on Sunday, prompting widespread evacuations and the shutdown of the New York City transit system.
Officials warned that the hurricane, pushing north from the Caribbean after leaving more than 60 people dead in its wake, could disrupt life in the Northeast for days.
New York went into emergency mode, ordering the evacuations of more than 370,000 people in low-lying communities from Coney Island in Brooklyn to Battery Park City in Manhattan and giving 1.1 million schoolchildren a day off on Monday. The city opened evacuation shelters at 76 public schools.
The National Hurricane Center said it expected the storm to swing inland, probably on Monday evening. The hurricane center reported that the storm had sustained winds of almost 75 miles an hour.
“We’re going to have a lot of impact, starting with the storm surge,” said Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “Think, ‘Big.’ ”
The subway closing began at 7 p.m. to darken every one of the city’s 468 stations for the second time in 14 months, as officials encouraged the public to stay indoors and worked to prevent a storm surge from damaging tracks and signal equipment in the tunnels. A suspension of bus service was ordered for 9 p.m.
The closing this year seemed more ominous. The shutdown before Tropical Storm Irene last year began at noon on a Saturday, and service resumed before the workweek started on Monday. This time, officials warned, it might be Wednesday before trains were running again.
Another fear in the Northeast was that winds from the storm might knock down power lines, and that surging waters could flood utility companies’ generators and other equipment.
Forecasters said the hurricane was a strikingly powerful storm that could reach far inland. Hurricane-force winds from the storm stretched 175 miles from the center, an unusually wide span, and tropical storm winds extended outward 520 miles. Forecasters said they expected high-altitude winds to whip every state east of the Mississippi River.
President Obama, who attended a briefing with officials from FEMA in Washington called Hurricane Sandy “a big and serious storm.” He said federal officials were “making sure that we’ve got the best possible response to what is going to be a big and messy system.”
“My main message to everybody involved is that we have to take this seriously,” the president said.
The hurricane center said through the day on Sunday that Hurricane Sandy was “expected to bring life-threatening storm surge flooding to the mid-Atlantic Coast, including Long Island Sound and New York Harbor.”
The storm preparations and cancellations were not confined to New York.
Amtrak said it would cancel most trains on the Eastern Seaboard, and Philadelphia shut down its mass transit system.
In the New York area, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s commuter rail lines, which suffered the heaviest damage during Tropical Storm Irene, were suspended beginning at 7 p.m. on Sunday.
New Jersey Transit began rolling back service gradually at 4 p.m., with a full shutdown expected by 2 a.m.
The Staten Island Ferry was scheduled to stop running by 8:30 p.m., PATH trains at midnight.
The nation’s major airlines canceled thousands of flights in the Northeast. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the three major airports in the New York City area, said it expected major carriers to cease operations entirely by Sunday evening. The Coast Guard closed New York Harbor — cruise ships were told to go elsewhere — and the Northeast faced the possibility of being all but shut down on Monday.
Federal offices in the Washington area will be closed; only emergency employees will be on the job. The Washington transit system — its Metrorail subway and its buses — will also be shut down.
The United Nations canceled all meetings at its headquarters in Manhattan.
Broadway shows were canceled on Sunday and Monday, as were performances at Carnegie Hall.
Schools in Baltimore, Boston and Washington called off classes for Monday.
Many public libraries said their reading rooms would be closed for the day, and parks department workers in Central Park told people to leave on Sunday and to stay away until the storm passed.
The New York Stock Exchange, which initially said its trading floor would be open on Monday, decided to close the floor and suspend all trading on Monday. The closing was the first caused by bad weather since Hurricane Gloria in 1985, although the opening bell has been delayed a number of times — once during a blizzard in January 1996 — and the exchange was closed for three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Nasdaq exchange also announced it would be closed Monday.
The hurricane center said the surges could reach 11 feet in New York Harbor, Long Island Sound and Raritan Bay in New Jersey — significantly higher than previous forecasts and significantly above the levels recorded during the tropical storm last year.
Forecasters said the water could top 8 feet from Ocean City, Md., to the border between Connecticut and Rhode Island. They predicted the waves would rise to 6 feet on the south shore of Cape Cod.
Hour after hour on Sunday, long before high tide, high waves pounded the dunes that protect the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
And in East Hampton, N.Y., where Mabel Harmon and her neighbors had spent the day tying down patio furniture, the wind was already “blowing like crazy,” she said Sunday afternoon.
Forecasters also warned that rain could saturate the ground and that trees could tumble across roads or onto power lines.
From North Carolina to Connecticut, officials declared emergencies and directed residents to leave areas near the shore.
Delaware ordered coastal communities evacuated by 8 p.m. Sunday.
In New Jersey, gamblers scrambled to play a few last rounds of blackjack before leaving the Atlantic City casinos under orders from Gov. Chris Christie.
He also ordered residents to leave barrier islands from Sandy Hook to Cape May.
In beachfront towns from North Carolina to New Jersey, the surf was spitting, and crews were rushing to build sand walls in places where the beaches had been rebuilt after 2011, when many places were hit by what was still Hurricane Irene.
In Red Hook, Brooklyn, many residents along the streets closest to New York Harbor were in their basements checking sump pumps.
Gino Vitale, a builder and landlord there, was delivering sandbags piled high in the back of his white Ford pickup truck to tenants along Conover Street, a block from New York Bay.
“We dodged most of it with Irene,” he said, referring to the storm that flooded basements in Red Hook but not much else. “I’m hoping we can do that again.”
For the most part, residents appeared to follow officials’ advice to stock up on bottled water, canned food and flashlights — so much so that stores ran low on batteries. Some gas stations in Connecticut had little gasoline left — no regular, and not much premium.
In a flood-prone neighborhood in Philadelphia, Michael Dornblum did something he did not do during Tropical Storm Irene or earlier storms that brought high water — he put 80-pound sandbags outside his family’s furniture store. In the past, he has lined them up only inside. He put the additional protection in place as employees prepared to lift carpets and sofas off the showroom floor. Some went to a storage area on the second floor.
Con Edison did not provide an estimate of how long customers in the New York City area might be without power if the storm played havoc with its network; by contrast, the parent company of Jersey Central Power and Light warned as long ago as Friday that repairs could take 10 days after the storm passed through. Another utility in New Jersey, the Public Service Electric and Gas Company, said that restoring power could take a week.
Forecasters said Hurricane Sandy could deliver something besides wind and rain: snow. That is because a system known as a midlatitude trough — which often causes severe winter storms — was moving across the country from the west. It was expected to draw in Hurricane Sandy, giving it added energy.
A blast of arctic air is expected to sweep down through the Canadian Plains just as the two storms converge. That could lead to several feet of heavy, wet snow in West Virginia and lighter amounts in Pennsylvania and Ohio that could bring down trees and power lines if already chilly temperatures drop below freezing.
The full moon on Monday could cause even greater flooding, because tides will be at their peak.
The possibility of a higher surge was one reason that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York ordered mandatory evacuations in low-lying areas, just as he did before Tropical Storm Irene. One city official said there was particular concern about Con Edison’s Lower Manhattan infrastructure, noting that if the storm surge washed over the bulkheads, it could damage the utility’s electrical and steam networks. If the surge runs as high as forecast, Con Ed will shut off two electrical networks in Lower Manhattan,
As for the subway shutdown, Mr. Bloomberg said that if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had not suspended service, but instead had left itself vulnerable to the storm, the city would have risked being without its mass transit network for even longer.
“They do have to make sure that their equipment doesn’t get damaged,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Otherwise we would not have subway trains when this is over or buses when it’s over.”
Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the authority, said he expected the transit systems to restore at least some service about 12 hours after the storm ended. But he warned that the city could be without mass transit for as many as two full work days. “I do think Monday and Tuesday are going to be difficult days,” Mr. Lhota said.
But while the mayor said schoolchildren could take Monday off, city workers could not: He said that city offices would be open for business.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us...-surge.html?hp

It always amazed me why the richest country in the world still has to shit in their back yards (cesspits). Or that powerlines are still dangling in the air like in a third world country. Con-Ed will have to pay a lot of overtime for Hurricane Sandy

^

That's not indicative of everywhere, but there are certainly areas where the infrastructure needs work.

That said, I grew up in Brooklyn (in an area which could have used some work), and I can remember only one power outage in sixteen years.

Bunch of fat ass whiners. We've had 20 major typhoons here this year.

I'm surprised i haven't seen any reports of all the religeous nutters saying that this storm is God's way of telling you not to vote for Obama/Romney (delete as appropriate).

Originally Posted by barbaro

^^ Those photos - where ever they are from - link? - are not indicative of the US.

The first one looks like Brooklyn to me- I'm not sure the second one is in the US (though I might be wrong)- that's a strange looking fire hydrant that I've never seen before.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I'm not sure the second one is in the US

I think it is Australia from the image & EXIF info, not conclusive though.

^

It looks like they drive on the right, though- I can't make out any license plates or signs.

This is an NYC fire hydrant, not that yellow thing:

Originally Posted by quimbian corholla

I think it is Australia from the image & EXIF info, not conclusive though.

Yeah; Oz have those weaving spiders

The intertube also seems to think it might be Oswego.

The phone lines are down (and probably the electric lines as well) and I can't get through to the East Coast- my brother emailed me about midnight Thai time and said they were getting hit pretty hard in New York.

Ah yes, New York the exact location of the worlds first enema. To bad the entire East coast doesn't float away toward Greenland.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/queensland/...us-east-coast/

One of the biggest storms in US history has crossed the American east coast, bringing unprecedented flooding and 140kph winds as it smashed ashore in New Jersey.
More than 50 million people across 12 states are potentially in the firing line of former hurricane Sandy, which was downgraded just before making landfall.
Parts of lower Manhattan are under water, with widespread power cuts. There are reports of at least 5 deaths in NYC.
A crane has toppled over in high winds and is hanging off a 90-storey skyscraper near Times Square.
Most of Atlantic City is under water. Millions of people are without power. Flooding expected to get worse as high tide arrives.
Follow our live blog for updates throughout the morning:
(All times AEDT)
12:08pm: It's now clear that the Hudson and East rivers have burst their banks in New York, causing widespread flooding in lower Manhattan. There are also reports of hundreds of guests being evacuated from a hotel near the site of the crane collapse.
11:35am: BREAKING: The Wall Street Journal says at least five people have been killed in storm-related incidents in New York.
Social media is alive with pictures showing what users say is the flooding in lower New York City; the photos show cars floating in the streets.
11:30am: Craig McMurtrie updates ABC News 24 on the situation as night falls in Washington DC.
11:24am: Photo: A bulldozer drives through floodwaters in Brooklyn.
11:16am: New York's Fire Department says a man has been killed after a tree fell on his house in Queens.

A transformer blows.





Latest reports 12 deaths so far.

Originally Posted by barbaro

^^ Those photos - where ever they are from - link? - are not indicative of the US.

In fact, after living in 5 cities on both coasts, I've never encountered a neighborhood like that.

And before you go negative (you already have) this is a storm. Sure, there will some damage. Some casualties.

But like everywhere in the world for the length of world history.: things, will move on as usual.

You're right ! I think the second picture is not N.Y.
You're wrong ! After living in NY for many years and visiting Long Island this year, I hate to tell you that there are neighborhood like these.
Negative ! Depends at which point you are looking from. I wished that the U.S. would invest more money in its infrastructure (plenty of job opportunities), instead wasting it in senseless wars. My point was: Now you're paying the price with tremendous interest rates.
This summer we stayed at a neighborhood where almost everyone had a pool in the back yard (Suffolk). Parents would rent a mobile zoo for a kids birthday party and so on. What I'am saying is "They got money coming out of their ass and paying high property taxes". But where did the money go ?? The powerline passes over the pool and the cesst pits are overflowing when it rains too much. Long Islander are fearing toxic waste...but no one wants to talk about it. Sorry for being fussy and caring about a land that deserves better.

Hurricane Sandy






Ocean City

I thought the guys who evacuated our NY office were just being pussies, but I can see their fears were well founded. I hope all our members' families are safe & dry.

Some underground carparks and basements are going to fill up with water I reckon.
It's 3.10am there now, be interesting to see what morning brings.

By NBCNewYork.com
Updated at 4:31 a.m. ET: NEW YORK -- At least 50 homes were destroyed in the New York City borough of Queens early Tuesday as crews battled a six-alarm fire.
Officials said the fire was reported at about 11 p.m. ET on Monday in a flooded Zone A area.
QNS 6-6 BREEZY POINT FIRE, 50+ HOMES COMPLETELY DESTROYED BY FIRE
— FDNY (@FDNY) October 30, 2012
More stories from NBCNewYork.com
A fire department spokesman said that almost 200 firefighters were at the scene in the Breezy Point section of the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. Fire officials would not confirm any injuries.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

FDNY says massive fire burning in Breezy Point section of Queens has destroyed 50 homes; 198 firefighters are battling the blaze - NY Daily News

50 homes ravaged by blaze in Queens - Video on NBCNews.com