After the Devastation, a Daunting Recovery
The New York Times - 31 October 2012
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Keith Klein and Eileen Blair among homes destroyed by fire in the Breezy Point section of Queens. More Photos »
By JAMES BARRON
The New York region began the daunting process on Tuesday of rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,
a storm that remade the landscape and rewrote the record books as it
left behind a tableau of damage, destruction and grief.
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The toll — in lives disrupted or lost and communities washed out — was
staggering. A rampaging fire reduced more than 100 houses to ash in
Breezy Point, Queens. Explosions and downed power lines left the lower
part of Manhattan and 90 percent of Long Island in the dark. The New
York City subway system — a lifeline for millions — was paralyzed by
flooded tunnels and was expect to remain silent for days.
Accidents claimed more than 40 lives in the United States and Canada,
including 22 in the city. Two boys — an 11-year-old Little League star
and a 13-year-old friend — were killed when a 90-foot-tall tree smashed
into the family room of a house in North Salem, N.Y. An off-duty police
officer who led seven relatives, including a 15-month-old boy, to safety
in the storm drowned when he went to check on the basement.
On Tuesday, the storm slogged toward the Midwest, vastly weaker than it
was when it made landfall in New Jersey on Monday night. It delivered
rain and high winds all the way to the Great Lakes, where freighters
were at a standstill in waves two stories tall. It left snow in
Appalachia, power failures in Maine and untreated sewage pouring into
the Patuxent River in Maryland after a treatment plant lost power.
President Obama approved disaster declarations for New York and New
Jersey, making them eligible for federal assistance for rebuilding. “All
of us have been shocked by the force of mother nature,” said the
president, who plans to visit New Jersey on Wednesday. He promised “all
available resources” for recovery efforts.
“This is going to take some time,” he said. “It is not going to be easy for these communities to recover.”
There was no immediate estimate of the losses from the storm, but the
scope of the damage — covering more than a half-dozen states — pointed
to billions of dollars. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called it
“incalculable.”
Rescuers looked for survivors in the wet rubble in places like Atlantic
City, and state and local officials surveyed wreckage. Utility crews
began working their way through a wilderness of fallen trees and power
lines. And from Virginia to Connecticut, there were stories of tragedy
and survival — of people who lost everything when the water rushed in,
of buildings that crumbled after being pounded hour after hour by rain
and relentless wind, of hospitals that had to be evacuated when the
storm knocked out the electricity.
The president spoke with 20 governors and mayors on a conference call,
and the White House said the president would survey damage from the
storm with Mr. Christie on Wednesday. Mr. Obama’s press secretary said
the president would join Mr. Christie, who has been one of his harshest
Republican critics, in talking with storm victims and thanking first
responders.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Mr. Obama had also offered to visit the
city, “but I think the thing for him to do is to go to New Jersey and
represent the country.”
Connecticut, New Jersey and New York reopened many closed roads and
bridges, and the New York Stock Exchange made plans to resume floor
trading on Wednesday after a two-day shutdown, its first because of
weather since a blizzard in 1888.
There were no traffic signals on the walk from Fifth Avenue to the East
River. Police officers were directing traffic; here and there, bodegas
were open, selling batteries and soft drinks. In Times Square, a few
tourists walked around, though some hotels still had sandbags by the
doors.
Mr. Bloomberg said 7,000 trees had been knocked down in city parks.
“Stay away from city parks,” he said. “They are closed until further
notice.”
The mayor also said that trick-or-treating was fine for Halloween, but the parade in Greenwich Village had been postponed. The organizers said it was the first time in the parade’s 39-year-history that it had been called off.
New York’s subway network, which suffered the worst damage in its
108-year-history, faced one of its longest shutdowns because the
problems were so much worse than expected, said Joseph J. Lhota, the
chairman and chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority, the agency that runs the subways and several commuter
railroads.
Water climbed to the ceiling of the South Ferry subway station, the end
of the No. 1 line in Lower Manhattan, and debris covered tracks in
stations up and down other lines after the water rushed in and out. Mr.
Lhota said that seven subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn were
flooded.
He also said that the Metro-North Railroad had no power north of 59th
Street on two of its three lines, and that a 40-foot boat had washed up
on the tracks in Ossining, N.Y.
The Long Island Rail Road’s West Side Yards had to be evacuated, and two
railroad tunnels beneath the East River were flooded in the storm. The
railroad had not restored power on Tuesday and had no timetable for
restoring service. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, officially the Hugh L.
Carey Tunnel, and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel also remained impassable, he
said.
Airports, too, took a beating. More than 15,000 flights were canceled,
and water poured onto the runways at Kennedy International Airport and
La Guardia Airport, both in Queens. Officials made plans to reopen
Kennedy, the larger of the two and a major departure point for
international flights, on Wednesday. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said La
Guardia would remain closed “because of extensive damage.”
The flooding in the tunnels in Lower Manhattan was so serious that the
Federal Emergency Management Agency asked specialists from the Army
Corps of Engineers to help. The “unwatering team,” as it is known — two
hydrologists and two mechanical engineers from the corps with experience
in draining flooded areas — flew to the airport in White Plains because
it was one of the few in the area that was open.
Buses began running again on Tuesday afternoon, and the mayor ordered a
ride-sharing program for taxis. He said more than 4,000 yellow cabs were
on the streets by Tuesday afternoon.
From southern New Jersey to the East End of Long Island to the northern
suburbs in Connecticut, power companies spent Tuesday trying to figure
out just how much damage the storm had done to their wires, transformers
and substations.
The work will take at least a week, possibly longer, because the damage
was so extensive, and utility companies called in thousands of crews
from all around the country to help out. Consolidated Edison reached to
San Francisco to bring in 150 workers from Pacific Gas and Electric.
Even with the additional manpower, Con Edison said it could still take
more than 10 days to complete the repairs. Con Edison had more than
285,000 customers in Manhattan who were in the dark on Tuesday, and more
than 185,000 in Westchester.
Things were worse east of New York City, where nearly one million
customers of the Long Island Power Authority did not have power on
Tuesday and Mr. Cuomo made clear he wanted the authority to restore
power faster than it had in the past. He said it was “not O.K.” for it
to take two weeks to repair lines brought down by tree limbs.
In New Jersey, Public Service Electric and Gas said it had 1.3 million
electric customers in the dark, including 500,000 without power because a
surge in Newark Bay flooded substations and other equipment. Another
New Jersey utility, Jersey Central Power and Light, whose territory
covers many shore towns, said almost all of its customers had lost power
in some counties, including Ocean and Monmouth. More than one-third of
Connecticut Light and Power’s 1.2 million customers had no electricity,
either.
The fire in Breezy Point, Queens, leveled scores of houses, among them
one that belonged to Representative Bob Turner, who was riding out the
storm at home despite the mayor’s order to evacuate low-lying areas. Mr.
Turner’s spokeswoman, Jessica Proud, said he and his wife made it out
safely after flames reached their house. Michael R. Long, the chairman
of the state Conservative Party, had a home nearby that also burned
down, she said.
Flooded streets in the area prevented firefighters from reaching the
blaze, a Fire Department spokesman said, and the mayor, who toured the
area on Tuesday afternoon, said the neighborhood was devastated.
“To describe it as looking like pictures we have seen at the end of World War II is not overstating it,” the mayor said.
The off-duty officer who drowned in his basement was identified as Artur
Kasprzak, 28, who was assigned to the First Precinct in Manhattan. He
had led seven relatives upstairs to the attic as the water rose in his
house on Doty Avenue on Staten Island. He said he was going to check the
basement and would be right back. About 20 minutes later, one of his
relatives called 911 and said he was missing.
A rescue team with boats and motorized water scooters tried to answer
the call but could not reach the house at first because power lines were
in the water. His body was found shortly before sunrise.
Labels: Environment, Natural Disasters, Nature, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 31, 2012
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