DAY 6 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATE

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
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/10/day-3-hurricane-sandy-update.html 
DAY 4 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/11/nov-112-day-4-hurricane-sandy-update.html 
DAY 5 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES
http://israndjer.blogspot.ca/2012/11/day-5-hurricane-sandy-update.html 

DAY 6 HURRICANE SANDY UPDATES-HAPPENINGS 

ITS 9:30AM SAT NOV 3,12 AND BLOOMBERG HAS CANCELLED THE NEW YORK MARATHON FINALLY SAYING IT WAS CAUSING DIVISION.AS THE CITIZENS WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT RESOURSES BEING USED UP FOR THE MARATHON WHEN THE GENERATORS SHOULD BE GIVIN TO CITIZENS INSTEAD.LAST DEAD UPDATE I HEARD WAS 106 FROM HURRICANE SANDY IN AMERICA.1 IN CANADA AND 175 OVERALL.

Power returns to lower Manhattan, but many waiting

By Emily Flitter and Michelle Nichols | Reuters – 8:30AM NOV 3,12

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The lower Manhattan skyline lit up early Saturday morning for the first time since superstorm Sandy slammed into the U.S. Northeast while thousands of storm victims in New Jersey and elsewhere remained in the dark and awaiting disaster relief.The power restoration came as gasoline supplies headed to coastal zones devastated by the record storm surge and to motorists whose patience has been tested by gasoline rationing during the painstaking effort to rebuild.With the U.S. presidential election just three days away, about 3 million homes and business remained without power in a region choked with storm debris and long gas lines reminiscent of the 1970s-era U.S. fuel shortage. Angry storm victims wondered when their lives would return to normal.President Barack Obama won early praise for the federal response to Sandy, which hammered the U.S. northeast coast on Monday with 80 mile-per-hour (130-kph) winds and a record surge of seawater that swamped homes in New Jersey and flooded streets and subway tunnels in New York City.But continued television and newspaper images of upset storm victims could hurt the Democrat, who is locked in a virtual draw with Republican challenger Mitt Romney.The U.S. death toll hit 102 on Friday, after Sandy killed 69 people as a hurricane in the Caribbean. It struck the New Jersey coast on Monday as a rare hybrid after the hurricane merged with a powerful storm system in the north Atlantic.
Power utility Consolidated Edison, battling what it called the worst natural disaster in the company's 180-year history, restored electricity to neighborhoods such as Wall Street, Chinatown and Greenwich Village in the pre-dawn hours, leaving 11,000 customers in Manhattan without service."There's enough light and activity to get a lot of people on the street and get rid of that movie set look as if were in some kind of ghost town or horror movie," Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee told NY1 television.In New Jersey, the utility PSE&G said 612,000 customers were still without lights after power to 1 million had been restored.Con Ed said it had restored power to 70 percent of the 916,000 customers in the New York City area who were cut off. The company was still busy assisting tens of thousands more without power in New York City's outer boroughs, where some people complained of being ignored."We have nobody down here with video coverage," said Grace Lane, a grandmother who defied evacuation orders and rode out the storm in her second-story bedroom as water rushed through the first floor of her house.Eight people - Lane, her husband, their two daughters, their husbands and her two grandchildren - were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor of the upstairs bedroom, the last usable room in the house."At least my children are OK," she said.Many houses were gutted by 5 feet of floodwater that raced through Broad Channel, where residents hauled broken furniture and soggy belongings out of their homes on Friday.In a sign of security worries in the neighborhood, one garage full of debris stood open with a sign next to it reading: "LOOTERS WILL BE CRUCIFIED - GOD HELP YOU."
FUEL ON THE WAY
Moving to ease fuel shortages, the Obama administration directed the purchase of up to 12 million gallons (45 million liters) of unleaded fuel and 10 million gallons (38 million liters) of diesel, to be trucked to New York and New Jersey for distribution.The government announced it would tap strategic reserves for diesel for emergency responders and waived rules that barred foreign-flagged ships from taking gas, diesel and other products from the Gulf of Mexico to Northeast ports.The moves could help to quell anger triggered by growing lines - some of them miles long - at gas stations. Less than half of the stations in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey were operating on Friday.New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ordered gas rationing in 12 counties to begin on Saturday under an "odd-even" system in which motorists with license plates ending in odd numbers would be able to buy gas on odd-numbered days.New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also moved to tamp down rising anger in the most populous U.S. city by dropping plans to hold the city's annual marathon. The city had been expecting more than 40,000 runners in Sunday's event.

Obama, who is back on the campaign trail after touring the disaster zone this week, planned to meet on Saturday morning with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Federal Emergency Management Agency director Craig Fugate and others to discuss the storm response.After the meeting, federal officials will travel to hard-hit areas including Manhattan, Breezy Point, Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island and cities in New Jersey to review response efforts.Disaster modeling company Eqecat estimated Sandy caused up to $20 billion in insured losses and $50 billion in economic losses.At the high end of the range, it would rank as the fourth costliest U.S. catastrophe, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the September 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, according to the Insurance Information Institute.(Reporting by Reuters bureaus throughout the U.S. Northeast; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Vicki Allen)

Sandy washed away contingency plans across New York region

By Aaron Pressman and Joseph Menn | Reuters – 8:40AM NOV 3,12

(Reuters) - As Sandy hammered the northeast United States this week killing more than 100 people, contingency plans were washed away and businesses had to improvise as the storm knocked out power to millions and stranded entire communities.Internet sites were kept online only because an impromptu bucket brigade ferried 5-gallon jugs of diesel fuel up 17 stories to a rooftop generator. Billions of dollars of stock trades were frozen and sidelined. Even the United Nations closed its complex when flood waters knocked out power.Some of the world's largest companies had contingency plans but in many cases they could not withstand the fury of the raging waters that poured into parts of the five boroughs that make up New York City."Most companies have a disaster recovery plan or business continuity plan but never test them or practice them," said Vincent Renaud, vice president at the Uptime Institute, a New York-based research group focused on digital infrastructure."Mission critical infrastructure equipment - engine-generators, fuel storage, pumps, UPS, cooling systems - need to be placed out of harm's way," he said. "No one ever expected to have such a disaster on their hands like Sandy in New York City. Consequently, no planning for this level of catastrophe was done."Media mogul Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns Newsweek Daily Beast, Ask.com, Urban Spoon and other popular websites, had to close its headquarters when the flood waters from the Hudson River entered the building, which lost power during the storm.
"We are working to restore all building operations," an IAC spokeswoman said on Friday. "Most employees have been working remotely."While IAC's properties remained online, among the more noticeable website crashes was the Huffington Post, whose parent AOL Inc relied on a back-up center in Newark, New Jersey, about 11 miles from its main office in Manhattan. All three of the telecommunications providers serving the Newark location had outages the night Sandy hit."If I were Arianna Huffington, I would be as diverse geographically as possible," said Gartner analyst Akshay Sharma, adding that Chicago would be a safer back-up location.At Verizon Communications Inc, one of the top U.S. telecommunications companies, a giant switching station at 140 West Street in the financial district was knocked out by Sandy's floodwaters. The company had moved its backup generators out of the basement after 9/11, but left under street level the tanks of fuel and fuel pumps. So when they were soaked, downtown New York communications were ravaged.David Doddridge, who runs a construction and building code consulting firm in New York City, said fuel for rooftop generators is usually stored indoors and below street level for both practical and safety reasons. Fuel delivery trucks rely on gravity to load tanks, and roof-top fuel storage would raise concerns about lightning strikes and weather-related corrosion."The basement is really the most practical spot," Doddridge said. "Not every scenario can fit every situation. From a logistics standpoint, fuel storage is typically in the basement. And it's much safer to keep these inside."
ADVANCE WARNING

While Sandy was dubbed the frankenstorm because it was an unusual combination of a tropical disturbance and a colder system moving down from the north, scientists had been warning for years that a major hurricane could sweep up the Eastern Seaboard and deliver an overwhelming flood surge to New York.

Malcolm Bowman, a professor of oceanography at the Marine Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote in a 2009 paper that a so-called 100-year flood could overrun parts of lower Manhattan, Hoboken in New Jersey, Staten Island and New York's La Guardia Airport."It was just a matter of time," Bowman said after Sandy hit. "It was all almost prophetic."He argued that the region's piecemeal approach to address flooding needs to be replaced by a broad system of surge barriers or levees similar to those that defend low-lying European cities. Protecting individual facilities is "sensible and needs to be done," he said. "But at the end of the day, it doesn't protect you against a mega storm's knockout punch."Experts said companies have to weigh preparing for storm risks against other disaster scenarios, such as a terrorist attack or an uncontrolled influenza epidemic."Scary predictions appear all the time - sorting them through beforehand is tough," said Ernest Sternberg, chairman of the department of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo's school of architecture, who has studied New York's disaster preparedness."One must watch out for and prevent 'hindsight bias' in which we rashly judge people acting under great uncertainty when they are making decisions about future disaster possibilities."
TRADING TROUBLES

Some contingency plans never got a chance. On Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange initially planned to switch trading to an all-electronic platform in case of a weather emergency. But NYSE Euronext reversed that decision after some traders said they were not prepared for the plan.Many major trading firms, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, CME Group Inc's NYMEX, and Citigroup Inc, were in the flood-prone evacuation zone, which did indeed flood and as of Thursday still had no power.After the NYSE resumed trading on Wednesday, some firms still had trouble. Knight Capital Group in Jersey City, one of the biggest brokers for retail stock trading and exchange-traded funds, shut down its platform for half a day when fuel supplies for its back-up generator ran low.Knight has a backup facility in Purchase, New York, about 30 miles north of New York City and out of harm's way, but did not feel confident about switching over its service in the middle of the day. The firm asked clients to trade elsewhere "out of an abundance of caution.

Many companies have generators, fuel or pumps in the basement or at ground level in the flood zone. Others had only enough fuel to last a couple of days, having failed to anticipate a power outage lasting a week or more."It's liable to be up and down for the next week," said James Cowie, co-founder of Renesys, which measures Internet performance. "There are people now revisiting their best practices, a lot of people who did not do adequate tests."Web-hosting service Peer1's emergency generators were on the roof, but its basement fuel tanks were flooded. The Vancouver-based company scrambled and came up with a creative solution: It found new fuel in 50-gallon drums, and had employees pour the contents into 5-gallon jerry cans and take them in bucket brigades up 17 flights of stairs for 48 hours.Peer1 CEO Fabio Banducci said the team beefed up from three the first day to an eventual 35, including customers and friends.
MEETING IN 'BANTANAMO'

Sandy's punch also hit the U.N. building along Manhattan's East River, which was closed for three days after floodwaters breached its basement levels and is still not fully functional.The U.N. Security Council had an urgent meeting so it gathered in a spartan, container-like structure that housed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's interim offices - a building nicknamed "Walmart" and "Bantanamo" because of its utter lack of aesthetic value.The decision to locate critical facilities in the lower levels of the more than six-decade old U.N. building had been based on analysis of weather patterns going back to the 19th century, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Management Yukio Takasu said."This was a very unprecedented hurricane," Takasu said, adding that the U.N. management might consider relocating certain infrastructure after conducting a "lessons learned" assessment of the impact of Sandy had on the United Nations.(Reporting by Aaron Pressman in Boston and Joseph Menn, John McCrank, Louis Charbonneau and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Lisa Shumaker)

New York cancels Sunday marathon in wake of deadly storm

By Martha Graybow and Larry Fine | Reuters – 8:45AM NOV 3,12

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg abruptly reversed course and canceled Sunday's marathon, a beloved annual race that had become a lightning rod for people frustrated by the disastrous aftermath of megastorm Sandy.The decision on Friday came after a growing number of storm victims, some runners, and other politicians criticized Bloomberg's decision earlier in the week to go forward with the marathon, one of the world's most popular sporting events. They said the race, expected to draw more than 40,000 runners, could have diverted police and other resources from recovery efforts.

Bloomberg, hours after he repeated plans for the race to take place, issued a statement saying the event had become a "source of controversy and division" and would be scrubbed. The race will not be run again until next year, organizers said.The decision removes what could have a been a dark spot on the mayor's legacy. Public opinion in the past few days had turned against the mayor, with growing numbers saying it was inappropriate to run the race when so many New Yorkers were suffering.People angered by the marathon plans had set up online petitions calling for runners to boycott the 26.2-mile race, or to run backward from the starting line in protest.The uproar grew after the New York Road Runners Club, the race organizer, set up generators in Central Park for communications and other operations. It said it had paid for those privately, not with public funds, but some complained that the equipment should have been donated to those without power, electricity or heat.Some runners, hearing of the cancellation, expressed frustration."I have mixed emotions," said Christopher Miller, 34, of New Rochelle, New York, who would have been running his fourth New York City marathon. "Our hearts go out to people for their suffering, and also to the thousands who came from out of town and will leave without accomplishing what they set out to do months ago."

BAD RECEPTION FOR RUNNERS?
Another runner said the mayor should have stuck to the original decision, saying the race gives local businesses a boost and was set to raise large amounts for relief efforts."This was going to turn into a big recovery and healing event," said Usama Malik, 37, who works for a hedge fund. "I thought it was great that he (Bloomberg) made the decision to go on with it, to raise funds, to promote healing, and get people's minds off of everything else that's going on."Sandy, which brought a record storm surge to coastal areas, killed at least 102 people after slamming into the U.S. Northeast on Monday. Forty-one died in New York City, about half of them in Staten Island, which was overrun by a wall of water.The marathon starts in Staten Island and weaves through all five of the city's boroughs. Hundreds of thousands of people line the streets to watch the race.Run every year since 1970, the marathon attracts professional and amateur runners, and is so popular that organizers run a lottery system to determine who can compete. The field features elite runners from around the globe, and is one of the six World Marathon Majors.Among those who had been set to compete was Wilson Kipsang, the winner of this year's London Marathon, who had traveled 45 hours from his home in Kenya.In announcing that the race had been called off, Bloomberg insisted it would not have diverted resources from the recovery effort. Hours earlier he had previously drawn parallels with the decision a decade ago not to cancel or postpone the marathon after the September 11, 2001 attacks.However, he said, "we cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event - even one as meaningful as this - to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track."Mary Wittenberg, the head of the New York Road Runners Club, said that as the controversy grew, she also was concerned about the reception runners may have received along the route.

At a news conference, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said it had become clear that "something that every year brings joy and unity to this city had become divisive and painful, and this is a city that's had enough pain in the last week and I don't think we need to add more."(Reporting by Martha Graybow, Edith Honan, Emily Flitter, Julian Linden, Michelle Nichols, Anna Louie Sussman and Phil Wahba; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Eric Walsh)

U.S. disaster relief in a race against cold snap

By Joseph Ax and Jonathan Spicer | Reuters – 4:15PM NOV 3,12

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fuel supplies headed toward disaster zones in the U.S. Northeast on Saturday and a million customers regained electricity ahead of a coming cold snap that threatened to add to the misery of coastal communities devastated by superstorm Sandy.The power restorations relit the skyline in lower Manhattan for the first time in nearly a week and allowed 80 percent of the New York City subway service to resume, but 2.5 million homes and businesses still lacked power, down from 3.5 million on Friday.The power outages combined with a heating oil shortage meant some homes could go cold as wintry weather sets in. [ID:nL1E8M2DQD] Forecasters saw temperatures dipping into the upper 30s Fahrenheit (around 3 degrees Celsius) on Saturday night with similar low temperatures next week."There's no heating oil around," said Vincent Savino, the president of Statewide Oil and Heating, which usually supplies some 2,000 buildings across New York City. "I don't know how much fuel we have left: maybe a day or two."The long, arduous recovery was taxing disaster victims and first responders strained by a week of emergency services.The post-storm chaos also threatened to jumble Tuesday's election with President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney locked in a tight race.The storm's death toll rose to at least 110 with nine more deaths reported in New Jersey on Saturday, raising the total in that state to 22. New York revised its total down by one to 40.Sandy killed 69 in the Caribbean before turning north and hammering the U.S. northeast coast on Monday with 80 mile-per-hour (130-kph) winds and a record surge of seawater that swallowed oceanside communities in New Jersey and New York, and flooded streets and subway tunnels in New York City."It's just breathtaking," said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who ordered rationing that allows only half of all cars to buy gasoline each day. "I was there (at the Jersey Shore) yesterday and I will tell you, it looked like we had been bombed. There are homes in Bay Head on the beach that had been driven by the storm surge into the houses across the street."Tight gasoline supplies have tested the patience of drivers - fist fights have broken out in mile-long lines of cars - but fuel was making its way to terminals after the U.S. Coast Guard reopened New York Harbor to tanker traffic on Friday.Alleviating one of the country's worst fuel chain disruptions since the energy shortage in the 1970s, some 8 million gallons of gasoline and other petroleum products have been delivered since Friday and another 28 million gallons was to be delivered this weekend, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a news conference.Cuomo also announced the Defense Department would set up five mobile gas stations in the metropolitan area, providing people with up to 10 gallons of free gas.At least 1,000 drivers queued up at the Freeport Armory in Long Island, only to be told the gasoline would not arrive for at least eight hours more, one driver said."There's just so many people getting very frustrated. People don't know what to do," said Lauren Popkoff, 49, a history teacher who had been in line for four hours.
MARATHON CANCELED
New York City gave its overstretched police a break by abruptly reversing course on Friday and canceling Sunday's marathon, a beloved annual race that had become a lightning rod for critics concerned it was a diversion of resources.In one hard-hit Queens neighborhood, a garage full of debris stood open with a sign next to it reading: "LOOTERS WILL BE CRUCIFIED - GOD HELP YOU.""Hurricanes can be the stress equivalent of cancer," said David Yusko, assistant clinical director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania.Obama won early praise for the federal response to Sandy but faced continual television and newspaper images of upset storm victims.The storm damaged or destroyed thousands of homes and displaced voters, forcing election officials to improvise at affected polling stations.
Christie ordered county clerks in New Jersey to open on Saturday and Sunday to accommodate early voters."There's no reason why anybody shouldn't vote. We're going to have a full, fair and transparent open voting process," Christie said.Before heading to the Midwest on Saturday for a final weekend of campaigning, Obama visited Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington for a briefing, and told officials to cut through government "red tape" to help storm-ravaged areas."There's nothing more important than getting this right," the president said at the beginning of a briefing with officials from FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and state and local governments.Moving to ease fuel shortages, the Obama administration directed the purchase of up to 12 million gallons (45 million liters) of unleaded fuel and 10 million gallons (38 million liters) of diesel, to be trucked to New York and New Jersey for distribution.The government announced it would tap strategic reserves for diesel for emergency responders and waived rules that barred foreign-flagged ships from taking gasoline, diesel and other products from the Gulf of Mexico to Northeast ports.Power utility Consolidated Edison, battling what it called the worst natural disaster in the company's 180-year history, restored electricity to Manhattan neighborhoods such as Wall Street, Chinatown and Greenwich Village in the pre-dawn hours, leaving 11,000 customers in Manhattan without service.Con Ed said it had restored power to 70 percent of the 916,000 customers in the New York City area who were cut off.(Reporting by Reuters bureaus throughout the U.S. Northeast; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Obama: No "red tape" in federal storm response

By Mark Felsenthal | Reuters – 4:20PM NOV 3,126 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told emergency response officials on Saturday to cut through government "red tape" and work without delay to help areas ravaged by monster storm Sandy to return to normal as quickly as possible."There's nothing more important than getting this right," the president said at a briefing with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and state and local governments.With the presidential election four days away, the destructive storm has shifted some of the focus away from Obama's tight race with Republican Mitt Romney. While the natural disaster has afforded the president an opportunity to rise above the fray of campaigning, it has also raised the stakes for him to show his administration can respond quickly and effectively in a crisis.

Obama spoke by video conference with the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and municipal officials to discuss efforts to help the East Coast states reeling from Monday's storm that left 110 dead, millions without power, and whole neighborhoods destroyed by flooding."We still have a long way to go to make sure that the people of New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and some of the surrounding areas get their basic needs taken care of," the president told reporters.Obama said people working on rescue and relief efforts are making a "120 percent" effort, but urged those providing disaster relief to work without delay."We don't have patience for bureaucracy. We don't have patience for red tape," the president said.
Relief efforts are focusing on restoring power and pumping water out of flooded areas, Obama said.
"It's critical for us to get power on as quickly as possible," he said. Military equipment was being brought in from around the country to help with those efforts, the president said.,Relief work is also concentrated on meeting the needs of people affected by the storm, removing debris, and positioning National Guard to help getting transportation systems back to normal, he added.Patience had worn thin on Friday as millions remained without power and many drivers waited in long lines for gasoline.The government moved to ease the fuel crunch by tapping strategic reserves and buying millions of gallons of gasoline and diesel to be trucked to storm-damaged areas.(Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Jackie Frank)

Insight: Sandy shows hospitals unprepared when disaster hits home

By Sharon Begley | Reuters – 4:25PM NOV 3,12

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kim Bondy was in New Orleans seven years ago when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, and scores of patients died in flooded hospitals cut off from power. She never thought that she might face that danger herself.But on Monday night, as superstorm Sandy submerged parts of New York City, Bondy was one of 215 patients evacuated from New York University's Langone Medical Center after basement flooding from the East River cut off its electricity."Knowing everything that happened in New Orleans hospitals, I'm thinking, 'I am not going to be that story,'" said Bondy, 46, a New Orleans resident who was hospitalized in New York over the weekend with a blocked intestine. "Did you not pay attention to what we learned from Katrina?"The equipment failures at NYU and nearby Bellevue Hospital, the nation's oldest and one of its busiest, brought to the fore what emergency experts have warned for years. Despite bitter lessons from the recent past, U.S. hospitals are far from ready to protect patients when disaster strikes their facilities."I've been asking hospitals to look at their own survivability" after a natural or manmade disaster, "and I just can't get it on their radar screens," said Dr. Art Kellerman, an expert in emergency preparedness in healthcare at the RAND Corp. "If you asked me the one city in America that has its act together, I would have said New York. That tells you how much trouble we're in Dayton and Detroit and Sacramento."For most hospitals, "emergency preparedness" means being ready to treat a surge of patients from an earthquake or terror attack - disasters outside their walls. Even the federal program that coordinates hospitals' preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services has this mindset: it focuses on planning for mass fatalities and quickly reporting their number of available beds, not having redundant electrical systems.When the next Katrina or Sandy strikes, "we're going to have the same problems," warned a scientist who has led studies on hospital preparedness at a leading research institution. He asked not to be named so as not to antagonize hospital officials and others he works with.For hospital administrators trying to keep their institutions in the black, disaster-resistant infrastructure is expensive and lacks the sex appeal of robotic surgery suites and proton-beam cancer therapy to attract patients."People don't pick hospitals based on which one has the best generator," Kellerman said.
UNWILLING TO INVEST
A recent survey by the Joint Commission, a nonprofit group that accredits more than 19,000 hospitals and other healthcare facilities, found that only one-third planned to upgrade their infrastructure, said head engineer George Mills."Two-thirds said they were going to keep going with what they had and hope it was enough," he said. "Unfortunately, many of our hospital buildings are 50 or 60 years old."No national assessment has determined whether hospitals can survive a disaster, said a high-ranking HHS official.
Storm-hardened infrastructure is not cheap. Continuum Health, which operates St Luke's Hospital in New York where Bondy was sent, spent about $10 million over the last decade on generators and other emergency measures. Mount Sinai Medical Center, next to Manhattan's Central Park, is replacing four basement generators with four on higher floors for $12 million.And many hospitals do not factor in all of the potential threats. As Sandy barreled toward New York City last weekend, hospitals tested their generators and assured city officials that they had enough fuel to run them for several days, according to all the hospitals interviewed.NYU's "emergency power system was designed and built according to all safety codes," spokeswoman Allison Clair said. "We were confident we could withstand a (storm) surge of approximately 12 feet," but it was at least a foot higher.By Monday night, the NYU basement that houses one of its generators and fuel tanks for the seven on higher floors was under eight feet of water. Sensors shut down the fuel pumps, and the generators fell silent."There was no electricity and all the IV machines were going haywire," said Bondy. "I heard one nurse yell to someone, don't use that water, it's brown. I couldn't believe how fast things were failing."By all accounts, it could have been much worse had other preparations not been in place.The staff used flashlights to carry out the evacuation. Police officers fanned out through the building and on stair landings as staff members carried patients to safety, including critically ill infants. Waiting ambulances - organized days ahead by the Federal Emergency Management Agency - had come from hundreds of miles away. Bondy's driver was from Ohio, and needed to ask directions to the hospital that was due to receive her.At St. Luke's, staffers meeting evacuees had her checked in and settled in a room within 10 minutes. "Cupcake, don't worry about it; we've got you," a nurse told her.
HAND CARRYING FUEL
The response at nearby Bellevue was less coordinated. On Monday night, the power grid failed in its neighborhood and then its backup power stumbled as basement pumps meant to deliver fuel to the main generators on upper floors were flooded. Staffers hand-carried fuel for hours, but by Tuesday the situation was desperate. Bellevue began what became a full evacuation of some 725 patients.Other city hospitals went into overdrive to receive Bellevue and NYU evacuees, and no patient deaths were reported. Around midnight on Monday, Zahava Cohen, nurse manager of the neonatal intensive care unit at Montefiore Medical Center, was roused by a knock on her office door."They're calling from NYU," a colleague told her. "They want to know how many babies we can take," Cohen recalled.Hospitals that remained functional were either lucky or better prepared. They didn't lose power. But many were prepared if they had.Montefiore built a 5-megawatt co-generation plant for heat and electricity in 1995, said Ed Pfleging, vice-president of engineering and facilities, and doubled its capacity a few years later. The plants now supply 90 percent of the power at its main campus, allowing the hospital to run for days if the electrical grid fails."During the 2003 blackout, we were the only New York hospital with fuel power," he said.Mount Sinai took in 64 NYU patients and some two dozen from Bellevue. It did not lose utility power this week, but was prepared with 13 back-up generators and several separate power systems if it had. Instead, communications were an Achilles heel.Mount Sinai's chief medical officer, Dr. Erin Dupree, was on the phone with her NYU counterpart on Monday night to discuss the evacuation, But they were repeatedly cut off as landlines and mobile phones failed throughout the city."We literally had no communications with these people," she said. "They were in the dark, and we didn't know who was coming here."That also could have been predicted. Loss of communication contributed to the scope of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, when emergency responders were unable to receive instructions and information in the minutes before the collapse of the World Trade Center towers."We all lost telecommunications on 9/11," said Gail Donovan, chief operating officer of Continuum. "After Sandy we had limited cellphone capabilities at Beth Israel," one of Continuum's Manhattan hospitals, "so we used walkie-talkies."
EMERGENCY DRILLS LIGHT ON DETAIL
What hospitals must do to harden themselves against disaster is determined by a patchwork of federal, state and local regulations. The Joint Commission mandates a long list of preparedness steps, including running disaster drills.But many hospitals just go through the motions, said Dr. Dan Hanfling, special advisor on emergency preparedness at Inova Health System: "Until events of Sandy's magnitude come along, emergency preparedness is just a box that has to be checked."Virtually no emergency drills simulate a disaster inside a hospital. "I can't remember the last time a hospital ran a disaster drill where the hospital itself was the site of the disaster," Kellerman said.The Commission also requires hospitals to maintain back-up power equipment and test it 12 times a year for half an hour and for four hours once every three years. There is no requirement for war-gaming a situation that knocks out that equipment.Only with "new construction or renovation projects" are hospitals supposed to place such equipment above flood level, explained the Commission's Mills, and even in those cases it is something that "should" be considered but is not required. That means the stricken New York hospitals are not unusual."We are definitely making progress in preparedness, but many hospitals are still trying to figure this out," said Inova's Hanfling. "They would fare about the same" should another storm like Sandy roar ashore.(Additional reporting by Dhanya Skariachan; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Martin Howell and Jackie Frank)

NYC subway operating 80 percent of network, fuel headed to NY area: Cuomo

Reuters – 4:30PM NOV 3,12

(Reuters) - The New York City subway system is now operating along 80 percent of its network, and more of the network will come back on line through the weekend, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday.Addressing concerns about fuel shortages, particularly gasoline, that have hit the New York area since superstorm Sandy struck earlier this week, Cuomo also said 8 million gallons of fuel had been delivered since the New York Harbor reopened. Another 28 million gallons would be delivered this weekend, he said.

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said at the same press briefing in Manhattan that the U.S. Department of Defense would be trucking 12 million gallons of fuel to the area in the next few days to help alleviate the fuel crunch.Cuomo said most of the flood waters that had swamped the site of the World Trade Center memorial and museum had now been pumped out.(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Jackie Frank)