KING JESUS IS COMING FOR US ANY TIME NOW. THE RAPTURE. BE PREPARED TO GO.
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.(FROM QUAKES,NUKES ETC)
THE FIRST JUDGEMENT OF THE EARTH STARTED WITH WATER-IT ONLY MAKES SENSE THE LAST GENERATION WILL BE HAVING FLOODING
GENESIS 7:6-12
6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
GOD PROMISED BY A RAINBOW-THE EARTH WOULD NEVER BE DESTROYED TOTALLY WITH A FLOOD AGAIN.BUT FLOODIING IS A SIGN OF JUDGEMENT.
MATTHEW 16:1-4
1 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven.
2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.
3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.
DAY 1 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/10/updates-on-hurricane-sandy.html
DAY 2 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/10/no-ny-trading-today-again.html
DAY 3 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES - HAPPENINGS
ITS 2AM WED OCT 31,12 AND THE STOCK MARKET WILL BE OPEN TODAY.
ITS 10:00AM WED OCT 31,12 AND THE STOCK MARKET IS UP AND GOING WITH MINOR GLITCHES.THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THE STOCK MARKET HAS BEEN CLOSED IN NEW YORK FOR 2 DAYS SINCE A BLIZZARD DONE IT IN 1888.
ITS 11:25AM OCT 31,12 AND THE DEATH TOTAL IS 50 AND UNTOLD MILLIONS STILL WITHOUT POWER IN THE USA.IN CANADA LAST REPORT I HEARD 10,000 WERE WITHOUT POWER AND 1 DEAD FROM HURRICANE SANDY.
ITS 1:50PM OCT 31,12 AND 61 DEAD + 1 CAN AND 6.1 MILLION STILL WITHOUT POWER IN AMERICA.
ITS 6PM AND OF THE 61 KILLED,14 CAME FROM STATEN ISLAND NEW YORK ALONE.AND 700 PATIENCES WERE EVACUATED FROM BELLEVUE HOSPITAL IN NEW YORK AS THE GENERATORS STOPPED WORKING AND THE PATIENCES WENT BY AMBULENCES TO OTHER HOSPITALS IN NEW YORK.
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - The northeastern United States battled epic flood
waters and lengthy power outages on Tuesday after the massive storm
Sandy pummeled the coast with a record storm surge,
high winds and heavy rains that killed at least 45 people and caused
billions of dollars in losses.Millions of people in New York City and
other hard-hit
areas will spend days or weeks recovering from a storm already seen as
far more destructive that Hurricane Irene, which slammed into the same
region a year ago. One disaster modeling company said Sandy may have
caused up to $15 billion in insured losses.The storm killed 18 people in
New York City, among 23 total in New York state, while six died in New Jersey. Seven other states reported fatalities.Some 8.2 million homes and businesses in several states
were without electricity as trees toppled by Sandy's fierce winds took
down power lines.Sandy hit the coast with a week to go to the November 6
presidential election and turned its fury inland with heavy snowfall,
dampening an unprecedented drive to encourage early voting and raising
questions whether some polling stations will be ready to open on
Election Day.New York City
will struggle without its subway system, which was inundated and will
remain shut for days. Much of the Wall Street district was left
underwater but officials hoped to have financial markets reopen on
Wednesday.Sandy was the biggest storm to hit the country in
generations when it crashed ashore with hurricane-force winds on Monday
near the New Jersey gambling resort of Atlantic City, devastating the
Jersey Shore tourist haven. Flood waters lifted parked cars and
deposited them on an otherwise deserted highway.With the political campaign and partisanship on hold, Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie planned to tour New Jersey disaster areas on Wednesday."It's total
devastation down there. There are boats in the street five blocks from
the ocean," said Peter Sandomeno, an owner of the Broadway Court Motel
in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey.Christie, who has been a strong supporter of Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney, praised Obama and the federal response to the storm.Obama and Romney put campaigning on hold for a second
day but Romney planned to hit the trail again in Florida on Wednesday
and Obama seemed likely to resume campaigning on Thursday for a final
five-day sprint to Election Day.Obama faces political danger if the government fails to
respond well, as was the case with predecessor George W. Bush's botched
handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Obama has a chance to show that
his administration has learned the lessons of Katrina and that he can
lead during a crisis.
NEW YORK UNDER WATER
"I'm lucky to have gas; I can make hot water. But there is no heating and I'm all cold inside," said Thea Lucas, 87, who lives alone in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
DESTRUCTION THROUGHOUT REGION
Airlines canceled more than 18,000 flights, though two of the New York City area's three major airports planned to reopen with limited service on Wednesday.Cellphone service went silent in many states and some emergency call centers were affected.Some cities like Washington, Philadelphia and Boston were mostly spared but he storm reached as far inland as Ohio and parts of West Virginia were buried under 3 feet (1 meter) of snow, a boon for ski resorts that was one of the storm's few bright spots.The western extreme of Sandy's wind field buffeted the Great Lakes region, according to Andrew Krein of the National Weather Service, generating wind gusts of up to 60 mph on the southern end of Lake Michigan and up to 35 mph Chicago.In Cleveland, buildings in the city's downtown area were evacuated due to flooding, police said. Winds gusting to 50 mph brought down wires and knocked out power to homes and business. City officials asked residents to stay inside and for downtown businesses to remained closed for the day.Amid the devastation there was opportunity. Snowmakers at Snowshoe Mountain in the mountains of West Virginia had their equipment running at full speed on Tuesday, taking advantage of the cold temperatures to build the 24-30 inch base they need to open for skiing by Thanksgiving."There are snowmakers out there making snow in what was a hurricane and blizzard," said Dave Dekema, marketing director for the resort, which received a foot-and-a-half of snow, with another foot or two expected.The resort's phones, email account and Facebook pages were "going crazy," Dekema said, with avid skiers and snowboarders wondering if there was any chance of getting out on the mountain this weekend. He said that was unlikely.(Additional reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Ilaina Jonas, Daniel Bases, Lucas Jackson, Edward Krudy and Scott DiSavino in New York; Ian Simpson in West Virginia; Diane Bartz and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Susan Guyett in Indianapolis; Kim Palmer in Cleveland and James B. Kelleher in Chicago. Writing by Daniel Trotta and Ros Krasny; Editing by Bill Trott)
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.(FROM QUAKES,NUKES ETC)
THE FIRST JUDGEMENT OF THE EARTH STARTED WITH WATER-IT ONLY MAKES SENSE THE LAST GENERATION WILL BE HAVING FLOODING
GENESIS 7:6-12
6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.
7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
GOD PROMISED BY A RAINBOW-THE EARTH WOULD NEVER BE DESTROYED TOTALLY WITH A FLOOD AGAIN.BUT FLOODIING IS A SIGN OF JUDGEMENT.
MATTHEW 16:1-4
1 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven.
2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.
3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.
DAY 1 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/10/updates-on-hurricane-sandy.html
DAY 2 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/10/no-ny-trading-today-again.html
DAY 3 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES - HAPPENINGS
ITS 2AM WED OCT 31,12 AND THE STOCK MARKET WILL BE OPEN TODAY.
ITS 10:00AM WED OCT 31,12 AND THE STOCK MARKET IS UP AND GOING WITH MINOR GLITCHES.THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THE STOCK MARKET HAS BEEN CLOSED IN NEW YORK FOR 2 DAYS SINCE A BLIZZARD DONE IT IN 1888.
ITS 11:25AM OCT 31,12 AND THE DEATH TOTAL IS 50 AND UNTOLD MILLIONS STILL WITHOUT POWER IN THE USA.IN CANADA LAST REPORT I HEARD 10,000 WERE WITHOUT POWER AND 1 DEAD FROM HURRICANE SANDY.
ITS 1:50PM OCT 31,12 AND 61 DEAD + 1 CAN AND 6.1 MILLION STILL WITHOUT POWER IN AMERICA.
ITS 6PM AND OF THE 61 KILLED,14 CAME FROM STATEN ISLAND NEW YORK ALONE.AND 700 PATIENCES WERE EVACUATED FROM BELLEVUE HOSPITAL IN NEW YORK AS THE GENERATORS STOPPED WORKING AND THE PATIENCES WENT BY AMBULENCES TO OTHER HOSPITALS IN NEW YORK.
Millions in Northeast struggle after massive storm
By Martinne Geller, Emily Flitter and Dhanya Skariachan | Reuters – 1:15AM OCT 31,12NEW YORK UNDER WATER
Sandy brought a record storm surge of almost 14 feet to downtown Manhattan, well above the previous record of 10 feet during Hurricane Donna in 1960, the National Weather Service said.The storm forced New York City
to postpone its traditional Halloween parade, which had been set for
Wednesday night in Greenwich Village and threatened to disrupt Sunday's New York City marathon.The lower half of Manhattan went dark when surging
seawater flooded a substation and as power utility Consolidated Edison
shut down others pre-emptively. Some 250,000 customers lost power.Fire ravaged the Breezy Point neighborhood in the
borough of Queens, destroying 110 homes and damaging 20 while destroying
still more in the nearby neighborhood of Belle Harbor. Remarkably, no
fatalities were reported."To describe it as looking like pictures we've seen of
the end of World War Two is not overstating it," New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg said after touring the area. "The area was completely leveled.
Chimneys and foundations were all that was left of many of these
homes."Hospitals closed
throughout the region, forcing patients to relocate and doctors to carry
premature babies down more than a dozen flights of stairs at one New York City facility.
While some parts of the city went unscathed,
neighborhoods along the East and Hudson rivers bordering Manhattan were
underwater and expected to be without power for days, as were low-lying
streets in Battery Park near Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center
stood before the September 11, 2001, attacks."I'm lucky to have gas; I can make hot water. But there is no heating and I'm all cold inside," said Thea Lucas, 87, who lives alone in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
DESTRUCTION THROUGHOUT REGION
Airlines canceled more than 18,000 flights, though two of the New York City area's three major airports planned to reopen with limited service on Wednesday.Cellphone service went silent in many states and some emergency call centers were affected.Some cities like Washington, Philadelphia and Boston were mostly spared but he storm reached as far inland as Ohio and parts of West Virginia were buried under 3 feet (1 meter) of snow, a boon for ski resorts that was one of the storm's few bright spots.The western extreme of Sandy's wind field buffeted the Great Lakes region, according to Andrew Krein of the National Weather Service, generating wind gusts of up to 60 mph on the southern end of Lake Michigan and up to 35 mph Chicago.In Cleveland, buildings in the city's downtown area were evacuated due to flooding, police said. Winds gusting to 50 mph brought down wires and knocked out power to homes and business. City officials asked residents to stay inside and for downtown businesses to remained closed for the day.Amid the devastation there was opportunity. Snowmakers at Snowshoe Mountain in the mountains of West Virginia had their equipment running at full speed on Tuesday, taking advantage of the cold temperatures to build the 24-30 inch base they need to open for skiing by Thanksgiving."There are snowmakers out there making snow in what was a hurricane and blizzard," said Dave Dekema, marketing director for the resort, which received a foot-and-a-half of snow, with another foot or two expected.The resort's phones, email account and Facebook pages were "going crazy," Dekema said, with avid skiers and snowboarders wondering if there was any chance of getting out on the mountain this weekend. He said that was unlikely.(Additional reporting by Scott Malone in Boston; Ilaina Jonas, Daniel Bases, Lucas Jackson, Edward Krudy and Scott DiSavino in New York; Ian Simpson in West Virginia; Diane Bartz and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Susan Guyett in Indianapolis; Kim Palmer in Cleveland and James B. Kelleher in Chicago. Writing by Daniel Trotta and Ros Krasny; Editing by Bill Trott)
New York's JFK, Newark airports to open Wednesday; LaGuardia still closed
Reuters – 2AM OCT 31,12
(Reuters) - John F. Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International airports, two of the three main flying hubs for the busy New York City area, will reopen on Wednesday morning with limited service, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said on Tuesday.LaGuardia Airport remains closed, the Port Authority said on its website.The three airports have all been closed due to Sandy,
the massive storm that swept through the area on Monday. Typically they
handle 300,000 passengers a day.(Reporting By Dan Burns; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Some train services resume along U.S. East Coast
Reuters – 2AM OCT 31,12
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Limited passenger train
services will resume along the U.S. East Coast on Wednesday as
transportation slowly returns to normal after Hurricane Sandy, but
flooding in tunnels is still blocking access to New York City, Amtrak said on Tuesday.Services provided by rail company Amtrak along the busy Northeast corridor
were suspended on Monday as the storm hit the eastern United States,
flooding tracks and roads, felling trees and power lines.Amtrak said it
would provide modified Northeast regional services south from Newark in
New Jersey from Wednesday. Routes would include a Virginia service,
trains between Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and services between Boston,
Portland and Maine.
There will still be no service between New York and Boston and no Acela Express service for the length of the Northeast Corridor.Amtrak said that,
along with other tunnel owners and operators in New York City, it was
still removing water and repairing track, signal and power systems
within its tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers surrounding
Manhattan."The amount of
water intrusion into the tunnels is unprecedented - as was the storm
itself - so a date for restoration of Amtrak service
directly to/from New York Penn Station from either the north or south
is not available at this time," Amtrak said in a statement.(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Sandra Maler) Hurricane Sandy: U.S. East Coast faces challenge of rebuilding: ‘I lost everything’
STAN HONDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Gavin Byrne views damage in the Breezy Point area of Queens
in New York on Tuesday after fire destroyed about 80 homes as a result
of Hurricane Sandy.
NEW YORK- People in the heavily populated U.S. East Coast corridor battered by superstorm Sandy
took the first cautious steps to reclaim their upended daily routines,
even as rescuers combed neighbourhoods strewn with debris and scarred by
floods and fire.
Sandy’s aftermath: photos
But while New York City buses returned to darkened streets eerily free of traffic and the New York Stock Exchange was set to reopen its storied trading floor Wednesday, it became clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks that link them together could take considerably longer.
Sandy: did climate change play a part?
“We will get through the days ahead by doing what we always do in tough times — by standing together, shoulder to shoulder, ready to help a neighbour, comfort a stranger and get the city we love back on its feet,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Why Sandy knocked out power for so many
The scale of the challenge was clear across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where National Guard troops arrived in the heavily flooded city of Hoboken to help evacuate thousands still stuck in their homes. And new problems arose when firefighters were unable to reach blazes rekindled by natural gas leaks in the heavily hit shore town of Mantoloking.
What food should you toss in a power failure?
As New York began its second day after the megastorm, morning rush-hour traffic was heavy as people started returning to work. There was even a sign of normalcy: commuters waiting at bus stops.On the Brooklyn Bridge, closed earlier because of high winds, joggers and bikers made their way across the span before sunrise. One cyclist carried a flashlight. Car traffic on the bridge was busy, and slowed as it neared Manhattan.
President Barack Obama was planning to visit New Jersey on Wednesday to see the area near Atlantic City where the violent storm made landfall two days before. With the presidential election just six days away, Obama was cancelling campaign events for the third straight day to focus on co-ordinating the response to the superstorm. His Republican rival Mitt Romney planned to resume full-scale campaigning in Florida on Wednesday.By late Tuesday, the winds and flooding inflicted by the fast-weakening Sandy had subsided, leaving at least 55 people dead along the Atlantic Coast and splintering beachfront homes and boardwalks from the mid-Atlantic states to southern New England.The storm later moved across Pennsylvania on a predicted path toward western New York State and Canada.At the height of the disaster, more than 8.2 million customers lost electricity — some as far away as Michigan. Nearly a quarter of those without power were in New York, where lower Manhattan's usually bright lights remained dark for a second night.
But, amid the despair, talk of recovery was already beginning.“It's heartbreaking after being here 37 years,” Barry Prezioso of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, said as he returned to his house in the beachfront community to survey the damage. “You see your home demolished like this, it's tough. But nobody got hurt and the upstairs is still livable, so we can still live upstairs and clean this out. I'm sure there's people that had worse. I feel kind of lucky.”Much of the initial recovery efforts focused on New York City, the region's economic heart. Bloomberg said it could take four or five days before the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, is running again. All 10 of the tunnels that carry commuters under the East River were flooded. But high water prevented inspectors from immediately assessing damage to key equipment, raising the possibility that the nation's largest city could endure an extended shutdown of the system that 5 million people count on to get to work and school each day. The chairman of the state agency that runs the subway, Joseph Lhota, said service might have to resume piecemeal, and experts said the cost of the repairs could be staggering.Power company Consolidated Edison said it would be four days before the last of the 337,000 customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who lost power have electricity again and it could take a week to restore outages in the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County. Floodwater led to explosions that disabled a power substation Monday night, contributing to the outages.Surveying the widespread damage, it was clear much of the recovery and rebuilding will take far longer.When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stopped in Belmar, New Jersey, during a tour of the devastation, one woman wept openly and 42-year-old Walter Patrickis told him, “Governor, I lost everything.”Christie, who called the shore damage “unthinkable,” said a full recovery would take months, at least, and it would likely be a week or more before power is restored to everyone who lost it.“Now we've got a big task ahead of us that we have to do together. This is the kind of thing New Jerseyans are built for,” he said.Christie said that when he speaks with Obama on Wednesday, he plans to ask the president to assign the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to start working on how to rebuild beaches and find “the best way to rebuild the beach to protect these towns.”
By sundown Tuesday, however, announcements from officials and scenes on the streets signalled that New York and nearby towns were edging toward a semblance of routine.First came the reopening of highways in Connecticut and bridges across the Hudson and East rivers, although the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan, and the Holland Tunnel, between New York and New Jersey, remained closed.A limited number of the white and blue buses that crisscross New York's grid returned Tuesday evening to Broadway and other thoroughfares on a reduced schedule — but free of charge. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he hoped there would be full service by Wednesday. Still, school was cancelled for a third straight day Wednesday in the city, where many students rely on buses and subways to reach classrooms.
In one bit of good news, officials announced that John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark International Airport in New Jersey would reopen at 7 a.m. Wednesday with limited service. New York's LaGuardia Airport remains closed.The New York Stock Exchange was set to open again Wednesday after being closed for two days — the first weather-related, two-day closure since the 19th century — but trading was scheduled to resume Wednesday morning with Bloomberg ringing the opening bell.Amtrak also laid out plans to resume some passenger train service in the Northeast on Wednesday. But flooding continues to prevent service to and from New York's Penn Station. Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers is unprecedented. There will be no Northeast Regional service between New York and Boston. No date has been set for when it might resume.But even with the return of some transportation and plans to reopen schools and businesses, the damage and pain inflicted by Sandy continued to unfold, confirming the challenge posed by rebuilding.In New Jersey, amusement rides that once crowned a pier in Seaside Heights were dumped into the ocean, some homes were smashed, and others were partially buried in sand.Farther north in Hoboken, across the Hudson from Manhattan, New Jersey National Guard troops arrived Tuesday night with high-wheeled vehicles to reach thousands of flood victims stuck in their homes. They arrived to find a town with live wires dangling in the floodwaters that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said were rapidly mixing with sewage. At nightfall, the city turned almost completely dark.About 2.1 million homes and businesses remained without power across New Jersey late Tuesday. When Tropical Storm Irene struck last year, it took more than a week to restore power everywhere. The state's largest utility, PSE&G, said it was trying to dry out substations it had to shut down.
Outages in the state's two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City, left traffic signals dark, resulting in numerous minor accidents at intersections where police were not directing traffic. And in one Jersey City supermarket, there were long lines to get bread and a spot at an outlet to charge cellphones.Trees and power lines were down in every corner of the state. Schools and state government offices were closed for a second day, and many called off classes for Wednesday, too. The governor said the PATH trains connecting northern New Jersey with Manhattan would be out of service for at least seven to 10 days because of flooding. All the New Jersey Transit rail lines were damaged, he said, and it was not clear when the rail lines would be able to open.___Contributors to this report included Associated Press writers Angela Delli Santi in Belmar, New Jersey; Geoff Mulvihill and Larry Rosenthal in Trenton, New Jersey; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Samantha Henry in Jersey City, New Jersey; Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut; Susan Haigh in New London, Connecticut; John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Alicia Caldwell and Martin Crutsinger in Washington; David Klepper in South Kingstown, Rhode Island; David B. Caruso, Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York.
Sandy’s aftermath: photos
But while New York City buses returned to darkened streets eerily free of traffic and the New York Stock Exchange was set to reopen its storied trading floor Wednesday, it became clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks that link them together could take considerably longer.
Sandy: did climate change play a part?
“We will get through the days ahead by doing what we always do in tough times — by standing together, shoulder to shoulder, ready to help a neighbour, comfort a stranger and get the city we love back on its feet,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Why Sandy knocked out power for so many
The scale of the challenge was clear across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where National Guard troops arrived in the heavily flooded city of Hoboken to help evacuate thousands still stuck in their homes. And new problems arose when firefighters were unable to reach blazes rekindled by natural gas leaks in the heavily hit shore town of Mantoloking.
What food should you toss in a power failure?
As New York began its second day after the megastorm, morning rush-hour traffic was heavy as people started returning to work. There was even a sign of normalcy: commuters waiting at bus stops.On the Brooklyn Bridge, closed earlier because of high winds, joggers and bikers made their way across the span before sunrise. One cyclist carried a flashlight. Car traffic on the bridge was busy, and slowed as it neared Manhattan.
President Barack Obama was planning to visit New Jersey on Wednesday to see the area near Atlantic City where the violent storm made landfall two days before. With the presidential election just six days away, Obama was cancelling campaign events for the third straight day to focus on co-ordinating the response to the superstorm. His Republican rival Mitt Romney planned to resume full-scale campaigning in Florida on Wednesday.By late Tuesday, the winds and flooding inflicted by the fast-weakening Sandy had subsided, leaving at least 55 people dead along the Atlantic Coast and splintering beachfront homes and boardwalks from the mid-Atlantic states to southern New England.The storm later moved across Pennsylvania on a predicted path toward western New York State and Canada.At the height of the disaster, more than 8.2 million customers lost electricity — some as far away as Michigan. Nearly a quarter of those without power were in New York, where lower Manhattan's usually bright lights remained dark for a second night.
But, amid the despair, talk of recovery was already beginning.“It's heartbreaking after being here 37 years,” Barry Prezioso of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, said as he returned to his house in the beachfront community to survey the damage. “You see your home demolished like this, it's tough. But nobody got hurt and the upstairs is still livable, so we can still live upstairs and clean this out. I'm sure there's people that had worse. I feel kind of lucky.”Much of the initial recovery efforts focused on New York City, the region's economic heart. Bloomberg said it could take four or five days before the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, is running again. All 10 of the tunnels that carry commuters under the East River were flooded. But high water prevented inspectors from immediately assessing damage to key equipment, raising the possibility that the nation's largest city could endure an extended shutdown of the system that 5 million people count on to get to work and school each day. The chairman of the state agency that runs the subway, Joseph Lhota, said service might have to resume piecemeal, and experts said the cost of the repairs could be staggering.Power company Consolidated Edison said it would be four days before the last of the 337,000 customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who lost power have electricity again and it could take a week to restore outages in the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County. Floodwater led to explosions that disabled a power substation Monday night, contributing to the outages.Surveying the widespread damage, it was clear much of the recovery and rebuilding will take far longer.When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stopped in Belmar, New Jersey, during a tour of the devastation, one woman wept openly and 42-year-old Walter Patrickis told him, “Governor, I lost everything.”Christie, who called the shore damage “unthinkable,” said a full recovery would take months, at least, and it would likely be a week or more before power is restored to everyone who lost it.“Now we've got a big task ahead of us that we have to do together. This is the kind of thing New Jerseyans are built for,” he said.Christie said that when he speaks with Obama on Wednesday, he plans to ask the president to assign the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to start working on how to rebuild beaches and find “the best way to rebuild the beach to protect these towns.”
By sundown Tuesday, however, announcements from officials and scenes on the streets signalled that New York and nearby towns were edging toward a semblance of routine.First came the reopening of highways in Connecticut and bridges across the Hudson and East rivers, although the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan, and the Holland Tunnel, between New York and New Jersey, remained closed.A limited number of the white and blue buses that crisscross New York's grid returned Tuesday evening to Broadway and other thoroughfares on a reduced schedule — but free of charge. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he hoped there would be full service by Wednesday. Still, school was cancelled for a third straight day Wednesday in the city, where many students rely on buses and subways to reach classrooms.
In one bit of good news, officials announced that John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark International Airport in New Jersey would reopen at 7 a.m. Wednesday with limited service. New York's LaGuardia Airport remains closed.The New York Stock Exchange was set to open again Wednesday after being closed for two days — the first weather-related, two-day closure since the 19th century — but trading was scheduled to resume Wednesday morning with Bloomberg ringing the opening bell.Amtrak also laid out plans to resume some passenger train service in the Northeast on Wednesday. But flooding continues to prevent service to and from New York's Penn Station. Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers is unprecedented. There will be no Northeast Regional service between New York and Boston. No date has been set for when it might resume.But even with the return of some transportation and plans to reopen schools and businesses, the damage and pain inflicted by Sandy continued to unfold, confirming the challenge posed by rebuilding.In New Jersey, amusement rides that once crowned a pier in Seaside Heights were dumped into the ocean, some homes were smashed, and others were partially buried in sand.Farther north in Hoboken, across the Hudson from Manhattan, New Jersey National Guard troops arrived Tuesday night with high-wheeled vehicles to reach thousands of flood victims stuck in their homes. They arrived to find a town with live wires dangling in the floodwaters that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said were rapidly mixing with sewage. At nightfall, the city turned almost completely dark.About 2.1 million homes and businesses remained without power across New Jersey late Tuesday. When Tropical Storm Irene struck last year, it took more than a week to restore power everywhere. The state's largest utility, PSE&G, said it was trying to dry out substations it had to shut down.
Outages in the state's two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City, left traffic signals dark, resulting in numerous minor accidents at intersections where police were not directing traffic. And in one Jersey City supermarket, there were long lines to get bread and a spot at an outlet to charge cellphones.Trees and power lines were down in every corner of the state. Schools and state government offices were closed for a second day, and many called off classes for Wednesday, too. The governor said the PATH trains connecting northern New Jersey with Manhattan would be out of service for at least seven to 10 days because of flooding. All the New Jersey Transit rail lines were damaged, he said, and it was not clear when the rail lines would be able to open.___Contributors to this report included Associated Press writers Angela Delli Santi in Belmar, New Jersey; Geoff Mulvihill and Larry Rosenthal in Trenton, New Jersey; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Samantha Henry in Jersey City, New Jersey; Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut; Susan Haigh in New London, Connecticut; John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Alicia Caldwell and Martin Crutsinger in Washington; David Klepper in South Kingstown, Rhode Island; David B. Caruso, Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York.
Northeast crawls back to business after monster storm
By Edward Krudy and Daniel Bases and Ellen Wulfhorst | Reuters – 10AM OCT 31,12
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Northeast began crawling back to normal on
Wednesday after monster storm Sandy crippled transportation, knocked out
power for millions and killed at least 45 people in nine states with a
massive storm surge and rain that caused epic flooding.Financial markets reopened with New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and
packed buses took residents back to work with the subway system halted
after seawater flooded its tunnels.
Remnants of the storm churned slowly over Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. Winter storm warnings were in effect from southwestern Pennsylvania to eastern Tennessee.Battered by a record storm surge of nearly 14 feet of water, large sections of New York City remained submerged under several feet of water. In the city's borough of Staten Island, police used helicopters to pluck stranded residents from rooftops.Across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, members of the National Guard arrived to help residents pump floodwater from their homes, the city said on Twitter.More than 8.2 million homes and businesses remained without electricity across several states after trees toppled by fierce winds tore down power lines.In New Jersey, Christie said it could take seven to 10 days before power was restored statewide.Subway and commuter tunnels under New York City, which carry several million riders a day, were under several feet of water.In the lower half of Manhattan, a quarter of a million residents remained without power after a transformer explosion at a Con Edison substation Monday night.
CRIPPLED COMMUTE
New York City likely will struggle without subway service for days, authorities said. Buses were operating on a limited basis and many residents were walking long distances or scrambling to grab scarce taxi cabs on the streets.Sunday's New York Marathon will go on as scheduled, but Wednesday night's Halloween parade through Greenwich Village was postponed. On Broadway, the Theater League announced that most shows would resume performances on Wednesday. Shows had been canceled since Sunday due to the storm.
John F. Kennedy and Newark airports reopened with limited service after thousands of flights were canceled, leaving travelers stuck for days. New York's LaGuardia Airport, the third of the airports that serve the nation's busiest airspace, was flooded and remained closed.It will take days or weeks to recover from the massive power and mass transit outages.With six days to go before the November 6 elections, President Barack Obama will visit storm-ravaged areas of the New Jersey shore, where Sandy made landfall on Monday.He will be accompanied by Republican Governor Chris Christie, a vocal backer of presidential challenger Mitt Romney. Nevertheless, Christie has praised Obama and the federal response to the storm.
The storm killed 27 people in New York state, including 22 in New York City, and six in New Jersey.
Seven other states reported fatalities. One disaster-modeling company
said Sandy may have caused up to $15 billion in insured losses.Sandy killed 69 people in the Caribbean last week
before it slammed into the U.S. East Coast and pushed inland, dumping
snow in the Appalachian Mountains and other inland areas.Remnants of the storm churned slowly over Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. Winter storm warnings were in effect from southwestern Pennsylvania to eastern Tennessee.Battered by a record storm surge of nearly 14 feet of water, large sections of New York City remained submerged under several feet of water. In the city's borough of Staten Island, police used helicopters to pluck stranded residents from rooftops.Across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, members of the National Guard arrived to help residents pump floodwater from their homes, the city said on Twitter.More than 8.2 million homes and businesses remained without electricity across several states after trees toppled by fierce winds tore down power lines.In New Jersey, Christie said it could take seven to 10 days before power was restored statewide.Subway and commuter tunnels under New York City, which carry several million riders a day, were under several feet of water.In the lower half of Manhattan, a quarter of a million residents remained without power after a transformer explosion at a Con Edison substation Monday night.
CRIPPLED COMMUTE
New York City likely will struggle without subway service for days, authorities said. Buses were operating on a limited basis and many residents were walking long distances or scrambling to grab scarce taxi cabs on the streets.Sunday's New York Marathon will go on as scheduled, but Wednesday night's Halloween parade through Greenwich Village was postponed. On Broadway, the Theater League announced that most shows would resume performances on Wednesday. Shows had been canceled since Sunday due to the storm.
In New Jersey,
Christie took a helicopter tour of the devastation on Tuesday along the
shore, where boats were adrift, boardwalks washed away and roads
blocked by massive sand drifts. He stopped in the badly damaged resort
towns of Belmar and Avalon."I was just here walking this place this summer, and
the fact that most of it is gone is just incredible," he said at one
stop.Sandy hit the East
Coast with a week to go to the November 6 presidential election,
dampening an unprecedented drive to encourage early voting and raising
questions whether some polling stations will be ready to open on
Election Day.Obama faces
political danger if the government fails to respond well, as was the
case with his predecessor George W. Bush's botched handling of Hurricane
Katrina in 2005.Obama and Romney put campaigning on hold for a second
day on Tuesday but Romney planned to hold rallies in the battleground
state of Florida on Wednesday and Obama seemed likely to resume
campaigning on Thursday.Sandy became the biggest storm to hit the United States
in generations when it crashed ashore with hurricane-force winds on
Monday near the New Jersey gambling resort of Atlantic City.(Additional
reporting by Michael Erman, Anna Louie Sussman, Atossa Abrahamian,
Michelle Nichols, Ed Krudy, Chris Michaud and Scott DiSavino in New York
and Ian Simpson in West Virginia; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Ellen
Wulfhorst; Editing by Eric Beech)
October 31, 2012
Here's how Hurricane Sandy is affecting Pennsylvania today
- INJURIES/DEATHS: Seven people were killed, including a 66-year-old
man who died of carbon monoxide poisoning from fumes from a generator in
the garage of an eastern Pennsylvania home that also sent several other
people to the hospital, and a 90-year-old woman in suburban
Philadelphia found dead of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning, also from
a generator in use during the storm. An 8-year-old Susquehanna County
boy died when a tree limb fell on him. In Berks County, a 62-year-old
man was killed after a tree fell atop his house. A man trimming a tree
in preparation for the storm fell and died in Lancaster County. A
vehicle passenger died in Somerset County when the car she was riding in
slid off a snowy, slushy road and overturned into a pond. A 17-year-old
riding an ATV in Northampton County died after striking a fallen tree
during the storm. An infant was slightly injured when a tree fell on a
house in Delaware County.
In addition, a York County woman was charged after she jumped into a raging creek to "save" a couple dozen wild ducks.
— POWER OUTAGES: About 850,000 customers remained without power Wednesday morning down from a peak of more than 1.2 million customers throughout Pennsylvania on Tuesday, according to utilities FirstEnergy, PECO and PPL. That figure ranks among the top three storms ever with hurricanes Agnes (1972) and Floyd (1999), according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Gov. Tom Corbett said he is working to ensure that power outages caused by this week's storm will not interfere with voting for president and other major offices next week.
— SHELTERS: Approximately 450 people were in shelters across the state Tuesday, down from more than 900 earlier in the day, according to Corbett. Pennsylvania opened "mega-shelters" at two state-owned universities to help 1,800 people left homeless in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Tuesday's absentee ballot application deadline has been extended for a day or two for counties where courthouses were closed Monday, Tuesday, or both.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Anybody without electricity is probably not saying we dodged a bullet." — Gov. Tom Corbett on Tuesday after detailing that more than 1.2 million people in Pennsylvania are without power.
NOW-FRAIL SANDY FIZZLES OUT WITH COLD,RAIN IN CANADA
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/now-frail-sandy-fizzles-out-with-cold-rain-in-canada-1.1018384
DEATH TOLL HITS 50 FROM HURRICANE SANDY
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-pelts-ontario-with-rain-snow-hail-as-u-s-death-toll-hits-48/
In addition, a York County woman was charged after she jumped into a raging creek to "save" a couple dozen wild ducks.
— POWER OUTAGES: About 850,000 customers remained without power Wednesday morning down from a peak of more than 1.2 million customers throughout Pennsylvania on Tuesday, according to utilities FirstEnergy, PECO and PPL. That figure ranks among the top three storms ever with hurricanes Agnes (1972) and Floyd (1999), according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Gov. Tom Corbett said he is working to ensure that power outages caused by this week's storm will not interfere with voting for president and other major offices next week.
— SHELTERS: Approximately 450 people were in shelters across the state Tuesday, down from more than 900 earlier in the day, according to Corbett. Pennsylvania opened "mega-shelters" at two state-owned universities to help 1,800 people left homeless in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Tuesday's absentee ballot application deadline has been extended for a day or two for counties where courthouses were closed Monday, Tuesday, or both.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Anybody without electricity is probably not saying we dodged a bullet." — Gov. Tom Corbett on Tuesday after detailing that more than 1.2 million people in Pennsylvania are without power.
NOW-FRAIL SANDY FIZZLES OUT WITH COLD,RAIN IN CANADA
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/now-frail-sandy-fizzles-out-with-cold-rain-in-canada-1.1018384
DEATH TOLL HITS 50 FROM HURRICANE SANDY
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-pelts-ontario-with-rain-snow-hail-as-u-s-death-toll-hits-48/
New York's Bellevue Hospital evacuates about 500 patients
By Bill Berkrot and Michael Erman | Reuters – 6PM OCT 31,12
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - New York City's Bellevue Hospital Center, which has
been operating on backup generators since massive storm Sandy pummeled
the city, is being evacuated, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Wednesday.About 500 patients at the city hospital near the East River in Manhattan are affected. Bellevue has one of the busiest emergency departments in the city.Several area hospitals, including The Mount Sinai Hospital and St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center, have agreed to take some of Bellevue's patients."We learned this morning that Bellevue will now have to
evacuate because of damage that it has sustained," Bloomberg told a
news conference."They didn't think the damage was that bad, and they
had a generator going. But the bottom line is when they got into the
basement they realized there was more damage," Bloomberg said.Outside Bellevue, the oldest of New York's public hospitals, a long line of ambulances waited to ferry patients to other medical centers.A handful of New York hospitals had already been
evacuated due to the storm that caused record flooding in parts of the
city.New York University's Langone Medical Center near the
East River was forced to evacuate all 215 of its patients, including
critically ill infants, when its backup generator failed after some
eight feet of water flooded its basement.The Manhattan Veterans Affairs Hospital
and the New York Downtown Hospital, both in low-lying areas of lower
Manhattan, evacuated patients before the storm hit, and Brooklyn's Coney
Island Hospital near the Atlantic Ocean beaches was later evacuated.A spokeswoman for New York Presbyterian Hospital
said it was accepting transfers from Bellevue, but she was unsure of
the number. It had already taken patients from three other medical
centers, including NYU Langone.Bellevue, known for its psychiatric care facilities,
has many other therapeutic departments. The hospital has long been an
important resource for the city's poor and uninsured.Jarron Franklyn, 28, who works in Bellevue's
rehabilitation department, said: "The power is down, and we have
flooding in the basement." He said a back-up generator was still
running.A New York Police Department spokesman said National Guard members were assisting with the Bellevue evacuation.
Dennis Jiosne, 34, a
patient from Point Pleasant, New Jersey, was evacuated by stairs from
the hospital's 16th floor. He said National Guardsmen in the stair well
were passing people food and water.
Jiosne, who was
being treated for a septic ulcer, said the power went out two days ago
and there was no running water in his room. He appeared to be taking it
in stride."In my unit it really wasn't bad, aside from the
plumbing and the food," he said. "I'm a pretty resilient guy. I was
content in my room. The lack of television was an inconvenience."(Reporting by Paul
Thomasch, Bill Berkrot, Michael Erman; and Anna Sussman; Editing by
Jackie Frank and David Gregorio) About 6 million remain without power in Northeast
By Scott DiSavino and Adam Kerlin | Reuters – 6PM OCT 31,12
(Reuters)
- About 6 million homes and businesses in 15 states remained without
power on Wednesday as utilities scrambled to restore service disrupted
by Hurricane Sandy, federal data showed.The power companies
had restored electricity to some 2.4 million customers in the
Northeast, although the pace of recovery in New York appeared to lag behind other storm-hit states, the data showed.At the storm's peak impact on Tuesday, 8.48 million
customers in 21 states from North Carolina to Maine and as far west as
Illinois were without power after Sandy came ashore with hurricane-force
winds in New Jersey late Monday, according to Department of Energy
(DOE) data.Power has been restored to nearly 600,000 customers in
New Jersey, out of more than 2.6 million that lost power, although more
than half the state still remains in the dark, according to the data as
of 3 p.m EDT.In New York, where Sandy knocked out power to nearly a third of the customers in New York City and Westchester County,
only about 150,000 customers of the total 2.1 million that lost power
in the state have seen it restored, according to the figures.The DOE did not provide any further comment or explanation for the figures.
NEW YORK CITY OUTAGES
In New York, power company Consolidated Edison Inc said about 795,000 storm-hit homes and businesses in New York City and Westchester County remained without power.Con Edison said its crews had restored service to about 109,000 customers by 11:00 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) Wednesday.That is less than the estimated 140,000 customers the company said it restored on Tuesday. Officials at Con Edison were not immediately available to explain the difference.Con Edison said those customers still out include: about 237,000 in Manhattan, 115,000 in Staten Island, 109,000 in Queens, 108,000 in Brooklyn, 40,000 in the Bronx, and 176,000 in Westchester County.The power company said its Courtland district in Manhattan, which spans from just below the World Trade Center to the lower tip of the island, regained power Wednesday morning, and restoration of the company's Brighton Beach district in Brooklyn is expected by 4 p.m., said John Miksad, senior vice president of electric operations at Con Edison.Customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, who are served by underground electrical equipment, should have power back within three days.Restoration to all customers in other areas served by overhead power lines like Westchester and Staten Island will take at least a week.Miksad said there was a large crew assembled at Con Edison's 14th Street station, the site of a large explosion that caused most of lower Manhattan's power outages, and customers served by this station are expected to regain power by Friday or Saturday.For areas served by underground wires, Con Edison said workers must clean and dry equipment of seawater before it can be safely placed back in service."In 120 years we've never seen damage this significant," Miksad said.Con Edison said Sandy was the largest storm-related outage in its history. The previous record was the more than 200,000 customers affected by Hurricane Irene in 2011.Irene left an estimated 8.38 million customers out along the U.S. East Coast from South Carolina to Maine.Tuesday night, Con Edison said it cut power to about 160,000 customers in southern Brooklyn and central Staten Island due to Sandy-related problems on high-voltage systems supplying electricity to those areas.The company also said it reduced the voltage in several neighborhoods in Brooklyn by 8 percent Tuesday night as workers fixed problems there.
The company said Sandy knocked down more than 100,000 electric wires. Some roads were blocked by trees or flooding, slowing those working to restore power in areas served by overhead wires like Westchester.Con Edison said it has secured assistance from 1,400 external contractors and mutual aid workers from utilities as far west as California to help with the restoration efforts.(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by James Dalgleish, Jim Marshall, Leslie Gevirtz, Andrew Hay and David Gregorio)
HERE WE GO.WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE GLOBAL WARMING NUTCASES TO PROAGANDISE AND DECIEVE ABOUT THE CULT GLOBAL WARMING.I HEARD LOTS-MEANING 4 OR 5 ANALYSTS ON CNN (OBAMAS AGENTS OF PROPAGANDA).THAT THIS STORM WAS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING.GET READY TO PAY YOUR CARBON TAXES TO AL GORE AND OBAMA-FOR THE GOOD OF THE EARTH OF COURSE.
NEW YORK CITY OUTAGES
In New York, power company Consolidated Edison Inc said about 795,000 storm-hit homes and businesses in New York City and Westchester County remained without power.Con Edison said its crews had restored service to about 109,000 customers by 11:00 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) Wednesday.That is less than the estimated 140,000 customers the company said it restored on Tuesday. Officials at Con Edison were not immediately available to explain the difference.Con Edison said those customers still out include: about 237,000 in Manhattan, 115,000 in Staten Island, 109,000 in Queens, 108,000 in Brooklyn, 40,000 in the Bronx, and 176,000 in Westchester County.The power company said its Courtland district in Manhattan, which spans from just below the World Trade Center to the lower tip of the island, regained power Wednesday morning, and restoration of the company's Brighton Beach district in Brooklyn is expected by 4 p.m., said John Miksad, senior vice president of electric operations at Con Edison.Customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, who are served by underground electrical equipment, should have power back within three days.Restoration to all customers in other areas served by overhead power lines like Westchester and Staten Island will take at least a week.Miksad said there was a large crew assembled at Con Edison's 14th Street station, the site of a large explosion that caused most of lower Manhattan's power outages, and customers served by this station are expected to regain power by Friday or Saturday.For areas served by underground wires, Con Edison said workers must clean and dry equipment of seawater before it can be safely placed back in service."In 120 years we've never seen damage this significant," Miksad said.Con Edison said Sandy was the largest storm-related outage in its history. The previous record was the more than 200,000 customers affected by Hurricane Irene in 2011.Irene left an estimated 8.38 million customers out along the U.S. East Coast from South Carolina to Maine.Tuesday night, Con Edison said it cut power to about 160,000 customers in southern Brooklyn and central Staten Island due to Sandy-related problems on high-voltage systems supplying electricity to those areas.The company also said it reduced the voltage in several neighborhoods in Brooklyn by 8 percent Tuesday night as workers fixed problems there.
The company said Sandy knocked down more than 100,000 electric wires. Some roads were blocked by trees or flooding, slowing those working to restore power in areas served by overhead wires like Westchester.Con Edison said it has secured assistance from 1,400 external contractors and mutual aid workers from utilities as far west as California to help with the restoration efforts.(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by James Dalgleish, Jim Marshall, Leslie Gevirtz, Andrew Hay and David Gregorio)
HERE WE GO.WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE GLOBAL WARMING NUTCASES TO PROAGANDISE AND DECIEVE ABOUT THE CULT GLOBAL WARMING.I HEARD LOTS-MEANING 4 OR 5 ANALYSTS ON CNN (OBAMAS AGENTS OF PROPAGANDA).THAT THIS STORM WAS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING.GET READY TO PAY YOUR CARBON TAXES TO AL GORE AND OBAMA-FOR THE GOOD OF THE EARTH OF COURSE.
Scientists look at climate change, the superstorm
By | Associated Press – OCT 30,12
WASHINGTON (AP) — Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer stood along the Hudson River and watched his research come to life as Hurricane Sandy blew through New York.Just eight months earlier, the Princeton University professor
reported that what used to be once-in-a-century devastating floods in
New York City would soon happen every three to 20 years. He blamed
global warming for pushing up sea levels and changing hurricane
patterns.New York "is now highly vulnerable to extreme hurricane-surge flooding," he wrote.For more than a dozen years, Oppenheimer and other climate scientists
have been warning about the risk for big storms and serious flooding in
New York. A 2000 federal report about global warming's effect on the
United States warned specifically of that possibility.Still, they say it's unfair to blame climate change for Sandy and the
destruction it left behind. They cautioned that they cannot yet
conclusively link a single storm to global warming, and any connection
is not as clear and simple as environmental activists might contend.
"The ingredients of this storm seem a little bit cooked by climate change, but the overall storm is difficult to attribute to global warming," Canada's University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said.
Some individual parts of Sandy and its wrath seem to be influenced by climate change, several climate scientists said.First, there's sea level rise. Water levels around New York are a nearly a foot higher than they were 100 years ago, said Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann.Add to that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is about 2 degrees warmer on average than a century ago, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. Warm water fuels hurricanes.And Sandy zipped north along a warmer-than-normal Gulf Stream that travels from the Caribbean to Ireland, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for the private service Weather Underground.Meteorologists are also noticing more hurricanes late in the season and even after the season. A 2008 study said the Atlantic hurricane season seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer but found no explicit link to global warming. Normally there are 11 named Atlantic storms. The past two years have seen 19 and 18 named storms. This year, with one month to go, there are 19.After years of disagreement, climate scientists and hurricane experts have concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter.Sandy took an unprecedented sharp left turn into New Jersey. Usually storms keep heading north and turn east harmlessly out to sea. But a strong ridge of high pressure centered over Greenland blocked Sandy from going north or east, according to the National Hurricane Center.
"The ingredients of this storm seem a little bit cooked by climate change, but the overall storm is difficult to attribute to global warming," Canada's University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver said.
Some individual parts of Sandy and its wrath seem to be influenced by climate change, several climate scientists said.First, there's sea level rise. Water levels around New York are a nearly a foot higher than they were 100 years ago, said Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann.Add to that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is about 2 degrees warmer on average than a century ago, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. Warm water fuels hurricanes.And Sandy zipped north along a warmer-than-normal Gulf Stream that travels from the Caribbean to Ireland, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for the private service Weather Underground.Meteorologists are also noticing more hurricanes late in the season and even after the season. A 2008 study said the Atlantic hurricane season seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer but found no explicit link to global warming. Normally there are 11 named Atlantic storms. The past two years have seen 19 and 18 named storms. This year, with one month to go, there are 19.After years of disagreement, climate scientists and hurricane experts have concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter.Sandy took an unprecedented sharp left turn into New Jersey. Usually storms keep heading north and turn east harmlessly out to sea. But a strong ridge of high pressure centered over Greenland blocked Sandy from going north or east, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, an expert in how a warming
Arctic affects extreme weather patterns, said recent warming in the
Arctic may have played a role in enlarging or prolonging that high
pressure area. But she cautioned it's not clear whether the warming
really had that influence on Sandy.While components of Sandy seem connected to global warming, "mostly
it's natural, I'd say it's 80, 90 percent natural," said Gerald North, a
climate professor at Texas A&M University. "These things do happen,
like the drought. It's a natural thing."On Tuesday, both New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew
Cuomo said they couldn't help but notice that extreme events like Sandy
are causing them more and more trouble."What is clear is that the storms that we've experienced in the last
year or so, around this country and around the world, are much more
severe than before," Bloomberg said. "Whether that's global warming or
what, I don't know. But we'll have to address those issues."Cuomo called the changes "a new reality.""Anyone who says that there's not a dramatic change in weather
patterns I think is denying reality," Cuomo said. "I told the president
the other day: 'We have a 100-year flood every two years now.'"For his published research, Oppenheimer looked at New York City's
record flood of 1821. Sandy flooded even higher. This week's damage was
augmented by the past century's sea level rise, which was higher than
the world average because of unusual coastal geography and ocean
currents. Oppenheimer walked from his Manhattan home to the river Monday
evening to watch the storm."We sort of knew it could happen, but you know that's different from
actually standing there and watching it happen," Oppenheimer said from a
cell phone. "You don't really imagine what this looks like until you
see it."___Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Malcolm Ritter in New York and Michael Gormley in Albany contributed to this report.___Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears .
U.N. Security Council relocates due to storm damage: envoys
Reuters – 10:35PM OCT 31,12- Enlarge PhotoReuters/Reuters - Delegates sit for a Security Council meeting to discuss Peace and Security in the Middle East during the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, September
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council
was forced to relocate on Wednesday for a meeting on Somalia and other
issues because of extensive water damage to parts of the United Nations
complex from the storm Sandy, U.N. officials and diplomats said.It was not immediately clear how badly the U.N.
buildings were damaged by the storm. The U.N. press office sent a
statement to reporters announcing that the U.N. headquarters would
reopen Thursday after a three-day closure and outlining which areas
would be accessible.The statement also said senior U.N. officials would
brief reporters on Thursday about the damage the U.N. sustained during
the massive storm Sandy, which flooded many parts of lower Manhattan and
left nearly 2 million residents of New York state without electricity
since Monday.Diplomats said
flooding in basement areas at the U.N. was severe enough to require the
15-nation Security Council to move to a temporary container-like
structure built to house parts of the U.N. secretariat and conference
rooms during a years-long renovation of the main buildings due to finish
in 2013."The council chamber was hit, IT (information
technology) was apparently damaged, possibly some documents as well," a
council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Another council
envoy confirmed the diplomat's remarks.The U.S. Northeast
began crawling back to normal on Wednesday after Sandy crippled
transportation, knocked out power for millions and killed at least 45
people in nine states with a massive storm surge and rain that caused
epic flooding.When the Security Council met on Wednesday, it approved
the extension of its mandate for the African Union peacekeeping mission
in Somalia for one week before meeting again next week to vote on a
12-month extension for the force, known as AMISOM.(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Mohammad Zargham, Bernard Orr)
LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY
About 6 million homes and businesses in 15 U.S. states remained without power on Wednesday, down from a high of nearly 8.5 million, which surpassed the record 8.4 million customers who went dark from last year's Hurricane Irene.While markets reopened, floodwaters receded and residents went back to work by car, bicycle and bus in New York, the country's most populous city suffered some setbacks. Damage forced evacuation of Bellevue Hospital, known for psychiatric and emergency care.Five hundred patients were being moved, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Evacuations of four other hospitals and 17 chronic care facilities had already been ordered.An evacuation order for 375,000 New Yorkers in low-lying areas remained in effect. With subways down, the mayor said cars must have at least three passengers to enter Manhattan.Across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, water that reached chest high on Monday was knee high on Wednesday morning."I thought it was the end. I kept telling my sons to pray," said Marcelina Rosario, 47, who was trapped in the second floor of her Hoboken apartment. "Everything happened so fast. The water started coming up, the refrigerator was floating."In Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, a few hundred people strolled the storm-shattered boardwalk on Wednesday, stepping around piles of broken boards, sand and debris as crews used heavy equipment to clear 2 feet of sand from nearby streets.More than half of all the gas stations in the New York City area and New Jersey were closed due to power outages and depleted fuel supplies, frustrating attempts to restore normal life, industry officials said.
Tempers flared and horns blared in a line of some 30 cars at a Getty service station in Gowanus in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. "I don't have any lights and need this gasoline for my generator," said Abdul Rahim Anwar as he put two full jerry cans into his trunk.The New York area's John F. Kennedy and Newark airports reopened after thousands of flights had been canceled, leaving travelers stuck for days. LaGuardia, a third major airport, was scheduled to reopen on Thursday.Limited New York subway service was due to start on Thursday, four days after the system, with daily traffic of about 5.5 million people, shut down.Brooklynite Matthew Gessler went to Breezy Point, the New York neighborhood where fire destroyed 111 homes, to inspect damage to his mother's house, and was disturbed by what he saw.
"Where the fire happened, you could honestly take that picture and say it was somewhere in the Middle East, like in Afghanistan, and no one would doubt you at all," said Gessler, 35. "There were houses that just got picked up and washed away. So you'd be walking down the street and there'd be a house in the middle of the street."Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said more than a dozen people had been charged with theft and looting in connection with the storm for targeting businesses in the badly flooded Far Rockaway neighborhood of the New York City borough.
POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
With six days to go before Tuesday's presidential election, Obama and Christie put aside politics to tour devastated areas together. The two men boarded the president's Marine One helicopter and from the air saw wrecked piers, swamped beach homes and streets under water."We are here for you and we will not forget," Obama said.Christie, a vocal backer of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has repeatedly praised Obama and the federal response to Sandy."I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and his compassion," Christie, known for his aggressive political style, said after the tour.
Obama was scheduled to resume his campaign on Thursday with visits to battleground states Nevada and Colorado.The growing U.S. death toll from the storm reached at least 64, with 30 people killed in New York state, nine in Maryland, and six each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Five other states reported fatalities.Remnants of the storm were over Pennsylvania on Wednesday, forecasters said. Winter storm warnings were in effect along the central Appalachian mountains and flood watches and warnings were issued across New England and northern mid-Atlantic states.Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the storm may prove to be the most expensive in U.S. history."Now we are looking at flooding on Lake Erie, possibly Lake Michigan," she said. "We're looking at secondary flooding downstream as rivers fill with the remnants of Sandy and the water has to go somewhere."Sunday's New York Marathon will go on as scheduled, but Wednesday's Halloween parade through Greenwich Village and Thursday's National Basketball Association season-opening game between the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets were postponed.(Additional reporting by Michael Erman, Anna Louie Sussman, Atossa Abrahamian, Chris Michaud, John McCrank and Scott DiSavino in New York, Susan Heavey in Washington, Ian Simpson in West Virginia, and Mark Felsenthal in Atlantic City, N.J.; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Jim Loney; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Fuel spills into waterway between New Jersey and Staten Island
Reuters – 10:40PM OCT 31,12
(Reuters) - An unknown amount of fuel spilled from a northern New Jersey oil facility that had been closed due to Sandy, the storm that battered the U.S. Northeast, the site's operator said on Wednesday.
Motiva, a joint venture of Shell Oil and Saudi Refining, said the spill occurred at its Sewaren, New Jersey, facility, along the Arthur Kill, the tidal waterway separating New Jersey from Staten Island, New York.
"No injuries have occurred and there has been no
further product released since the initial event. Previously deployed
booms are continuing to skim released product in the Woodbridge creek
adjacent to the site," the company said in a statement.NBC, citing the U.S. Coast Guard, said 300,000 gallons (115,000 liters) of diesel fuel had been released. The network said 200 people were working on the cleanup.A Coast Guard spokesman did not immediately return
calls for comment. A message left with Shell was not immediately
returned.(Reporting By Dan Burns, Barbara Goldberg and Shruti Chaturvedi; Editing by Peter Cooney) Flood ebbs, Northeast picks up after epic storm
By Daniel Bases and Dena Aubin | Reuters – 10:40PM OCT 31,12
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City
and the sodden Northeast began an arduous journey back to normal on
Wednesday after mammoth storm Sandy killed at least 64 people in a
rampage that swamped coastal cities and cut power to millions.Financial markets reopened with the New York Stock Exchange
running on generator power after the first weather-related two-day
closure since an 1888 blizzard. Packed buses took commuters to work with
New York's subway system halted after seawater flooded its tunnels.
President Barack Obama,
who has halted campaigning with the election six days away, set aside
political differences with New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie
for a helicopter tour of the devastated coast, where they saw flooded
and sand-swept neighborhoods and burning homes."The entire country's been watching. Everyone knows how
hard Jersey has been hit," Obama told residents at an evacuation
shelter in the town of Brigantine."We're not going to tolerate any red tape. We're not
going to tolerate any bureaucracy," he said of the relief effort.Sandy crashed ashore with 80 mile-per-hour (130-kph)
winds on Monday as a rare hybrid superstorm after merging with another
system. It was the largest storm by area to hit the United States in
generations, after killing 69 people as a hurricane in the Caribbean.Sandy was likely to rank as one of the costliest storms
in U.S. history. One disaster-modeling firm said Sandy may have caused
up to $15 billion in insured losses.LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY
About 6 million homes and businesses in 15 U.S. states remained without power on Wednesday, down from a high of nearly 8.5 million, which surpassed the record 8.4 million customers who went dark from last year's Hurricane Irene.While markets reopened, floodwaters receded and residents went back to work by car, bicycle and bus in New York, the country's most populous city suffered some setbacks. Damage forced evacuation of Bellevue Hospital, known for psychiatric and emergency care.Five hundred patients were being moved, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Evacuations of four other hospitals and 17 chronic care facilities had already been ordered.An evacuation order for 375,000 New Yorkers in low-lying areas remained in effect. With subways down, the mayor said cars must have at least three passengers to enter Manhattan.Across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, water that reached chest high on Monday was knee high on Wednesday morning."I thought it was the end. I kept telling my sons to pray," said Marcelina Rosario, 47, who was trapped in the second floor of her Hoboken apartment. "Everything happened so fast. The water started coming up, the refrigerator was floating."In Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, a few hundred people strolled the storm-shattered boardwalk on Wednesday, stepping around piles of broken boards, sand and debris as crews used heavy equipment to clear 2 feet of sand from nearby streets.More than half of all the gas stations in the New York City area and New Jersey were closed due to power outages and depleted fuel supplies, frustrating attempts to restore normal life, industry officials said.
Tempers flared and horns blared in a line of some 30 cars at a Getty service station in Gowanus in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. "I don't have any lights and need this gasoline for my generator," said Abdul Rahim Anwar as he put two full jerry cans into his trunk.The New York area's John F. Kennedy and Newark airports reopened after thousands of flights had been canceled, leaving travelers stuck for days. LaGuardia, a third major airport, was scheduled to reopen on Thursday.Limited New York subway service was due to start on Thursday, four days after the system, with daily traffic of about 5.5 million people, shut down.Brooklynite Matthew Gessler went to Breezy Point, the New York neighborhood where fire destroyed 111 homes, to inspect damage to his mother's house, and was disturbed by what he saw.
"Where the fire happened, you could honestly take that picture and say it was somewhere in the Middle East, like in Afghanistan, and no one would doubt you at all," said Gessler, 35. "There were houses that just got picked up and washed away. So you'd be walking down the street and there'd be a house in the middle of the street."Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said more than a dozen people had been charged with theft and looting in connection with the storm for targeting businesses in the badly flooded Far Rockaway neighborhood of the New York City borough.
POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS
With six days to go before Tuesday's presidential election, Obama and Christie put aside politics to tour devastated areas together. The two men boarded the president's Marine One helicopter and from the air saw wrecked piers, swamped beach homes and streets under water."We are here for you and we will not forget," Obama said.Christie, a vocal backer of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has repeatedly praised Obama and the federal response to Sandy."I cannot thank the president enough for his personal concern and his compassion," Christie, known for his aggressive political style, said after the tour.
Obama was scheduled to resume his campaign on Thursday with visits to battleground states Nevada and Colorado.The growing U.S. death toll from the storm reached at least 64, with 30 people killed in New York state, nine in Maryland, and six each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Five other states reported fatalities.Remnants of the storm were over Pennsylvania on Wednesday, forecasters said. Winter storm warnings were in effect along the central Appalachian mountains and flood watches and warnings were issued across New England and northern mid-Atlantic states.Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the storm may prove to be the most expensive in U.S. history."Now we are looking at flooding on Lake Erie, possibly Lake Michigan," she said. "We're looking at secondary flooding downstream as rivers fill with the remnants of Sandy and the water has to go somewhere."Sunday's New York Marathon will go on as scheduled, but Wednesday's Halloween parade through Greenwich Village and Thursday's National Basketball Association season-opening game between the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets were postponed.(Additional reporting by Michael Erman, Anna Louie Sussman, Atossa Abrahamian, Chris Michaud, John McCrank and Scott DiSavino in New York, Susan Heavey in Washington, Ian Simpson in West Virginia, and Mark Felsenthal in Atlantic City, N.J.; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Jim Loney; Editing by Peter Cooney)
