Mega-storm Sandy

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Latest count puts the dead at 82- what caught a lot of people by surprise was how houses were destroyed by fires resulting from ruptured gas mains, and firefighters couldn't get to them because of the very thing they use to fight fires, it's a sick irony

[fgalkin2]

The subways are starting to come back; I was able to get to a pre-screening for a job so things are looking up.

Only up to 34th street. That's not even close to where I need to be.

Hopefully, they'll get the subways running by the time I actually need to get to work.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

Also, technically, they've been always undercounted. If you want to look at it that way, not only is the 2010 census wrong, but you know, every census probably throughout the 20th century too.

The obvious approach is to take the ones you can count and multiply by a reasonable number.

Figuring out a reasonable number is tricky but possible, if you have the right kind of knowledge.

[UnderAGreySky]

As someone who survived the 26th July 2005 flood in Mumbai (I walked 5 hours through sometimes waist-deep water), it's heartening to see a similar response across the Eastern coast of the US. There is a long way to go, though, and it never really goes out of your system - just as Bombay now gets nervous about especially heavy rain, NYC and NJ and other cities will now watch every new storm with just that little apprehension.

Also, spare a thought for those in various islands in the Atlantic that died and had their lives devastated.

[Dalton]

I've got power back at my house, but most of LI is still in the dark. Finally going home tonight.

[Slacker]

You can pretty much get around north of Penn Station-the 3 is still out, but there's adequate coverage in general. God help you getting between Brooklyn and Manhattan, or south of 34th. The LIRR is a nightmare. My principal wants me to come in tomorrow for a meeting on basically how to make up the week we lost and I'm not exactly going to kill myself trying to get in. This is why people invented Skype.

[Broomstick]

Being human, we tend to focus on the human loss in such a storm (currently 70 in the Carribean and 90+ and growing in the US) but there are animal losses, too. And in this case, the animals lost were an important part of medical and scientific research:

Hurricane Sandy: Thousands of rodents drown at NY lab

Thousands of lab rodents have drowned after storm Sandy caused flooding at a university centre in New York.

The genetically modified mice and rats were being used to study illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, autism and schizophrenia.

The animal colonies at the Smilow Research Center in Kips Bay were considered among the most important of their type in the US.

Sandy left over 80 people dead in the US, causing havoc on the east coast.

On Monday, medical and research staff at New York University (NYU) had to work hard to protect their human patients - and others threatened by the storm - at its three facilities in Kips Bay in Manhattan.

Although most of the animals were unharmed, teams could not save those in the basement of the Smilow centre.

"The combined tide and wind resulted in extensive flooding in the building, and unfortunately, my mouse colonies were wiped out," Dr Fishell, associate director of the NYU Neuroscience Institute, told the New York Times newspaper.

"These animals were the culmination of 10 years of work, and it will take time to replace them."

He said that his lab alone had lost some 2,500 mice in the flooding. According to estimates from the university, other labs at the Smilow Center lost about 7,500 more animals.

The colonies were genetically altered to carry some of the genetic mutations suspected to contribute to disorders in humans such as high blood pressure, cancer and epilepsy. University officials said that, despite the losses, research in these areas was broad-based and would continue.

The Smilow building was designed to withstand storm surges 20% higher than those historically recorded.

Scientists at two other US research centres have already pledged to donate animals to re-start some of the colonies at the New York facility.

A source told the New York Daily News that power to the building - including emergency power - had also failed during the storm, with the loss of scientific reagents - such as enzymes and antibodies.

The storm cut power from millions of homes and paralysed transport.

Sandy made landfall on Monday night in New Jersey, where some 20,000 people remain trapped in their homes by sewage-contaminated floodwater.

In New York City, the storm brought a record tidal surge that swamped the subway system and caused widespread blackouts.

Earlier, it killed nearly 70 people in the Caribbean and caused extensive crop destruction in impoverished Haiti.

[Irbis]

I wonder how it is possible - they had a few days of warning, couldn't they move them out of basement?

Mice breed fast, if moving them all was impossible, they could have picked 2-3 cages and move these, it's not like top floors lack room for that or anything...

[Mr Bean]

I wonder how it is possible - they had a few days of warning, couldn't they move them out of basement?

Mice breed fast, if moving them all was impossible, they could have picked 2-3 cages and move these, it's not like top floors lack room for that or anything...

Great so you don't mind bunking up with the HIV mice right? There are a reason experimental mice are in the basement and typically behind sealed doors with big giant biological warning signs on them. Lab mices job is not to sit there and sqeek but to be injected or infected with all sorts of nasty things to study them and the general method of control is to slap a bio-hazard label on the entire bunch and tell the cleaning staff to stay the hell away.

Unless they had an exact inventory moving the mice could have resulted in the T-Virus or who knows what getting lose in the hospital.
Also even if moved, there is lots of other things that can not be moved. For example several hospitals I've been in the vast majority of cages are not mobile as in they are not the pick up and go kind but wall after wall of giant cage structures built to house 1000 mice at a time. You just can't move those sorts of things up an elevator which requires getting 1000 mice cages because mixing the mice is just as bad as letting them lose.

[Broomstick]

Not to mention that if the choice is between devoting resources to 10,000 threatened mice or devoting resources to critically ill patients in ICU most people will say to hell with the mice... even if they are valuable mice.

Re-read the article - we're talking about ten thousand or more animals that would have to be moved (often, as noted, from immobile cage racks), housed, fed, watered... in a city were there isn't currently enough to go around for humans, hence the bipedal migrations seen between (as an example) lower and upper Manhattan every day.

[General Zod]

You can pretty much get around north of Penn Station-the 3 is still out, but there's adequate coverage in general. God help you getting between Brooklyn and Manhattan, or south of 34th. The LIRR is a nightmare. My principal wants me to come in tomorrow for a meeting on basically how to make up the week we lost and I'm not exactly going to kill myself trying to get in. This is why people invented Skype.

I need to get to Brooklyn later today. Thanks to all of my normal routes being down it's going to be a huge pain in the ass and take about an hour and a half more than usual.

[Slacker]

Getting into work today was a fucking nightmare. Two plus hours on the Ronkonkoma line. Penn Station is a ghost town.

On the other hand, the run north on the 1 wasn't so bad.

[fgalkin2]

The fuel situation is getting really desperate. I've just spent allof the morning waiting in three different lines for gas, each one more than half a mile long( the first two stations ran out of gas way before I got there). Even then, they were only giving $20 worth of Supreme.

The authorities are promising that the situation will improve soon, but for now, a station that had both fuel and power is an extremely rare thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Soontir C'boath]

You can pretty much get around north of Penn Station-the 3 is still out, but there's adequate coverage in general. God help you getting between Brooklyn and Manhattan, or south of 34th. The LIRR is a nightmare. My principal wants me to come in tomorrow for a meeting on basically how to make up the week we lost and I'm not exactly going to kill myself trying to get in. This is why people invented Skype.

I need to get to Brooklyn later today. Thanks to all of my normal routes being down it's going to be a huge pain in the ass and take about an hour and a half more than usual.

Yea, looked like you needed to take a train from Jamaica to get down there.

Maybe we should have made that cross-town subway connection from Jackson Heights down like they wanted to decades ago.

[General Zod]

You can pretty much get around north of Penn Station-the 3 is still out, but there's adequate coverage in general. God help you getting between Brooklyn and Manhattan, or south of 34th. The LIRR is a nightmare. My principal wants me to come in tomorrow for a meeting on basically how to make up the week we lost and I'm not exactly going to kill myself trying to get in. This is why people invented Skype.

I need to get to Brooklyn later today. Thanks to all of my normal routes being down it's going to be a huge pain in the ass and take about an hour and a half more than usual.

Yea, looked like you needed to take a train from Jamaica to get down there.

Maybe we should have made that cross-town subway connection from Jackson Heights down like they wanted to decades ago.

Whelp. Today has been nothing short of a total clusterfuck. I might have actually made it on time if I'd gone with my original plan of going down to Sutphin station but noooo. I thought I'd be clever and take the B62 from Queensboro Plaza. Thanks to waiting on the bus for nearly an hour I was late by 30 minutes. The thing that really pisses me off is the job I was trying to apply to today was originally supposed to be on Monday but got canceled due to Sandy. So that's two chances Sandy's cost me.

[Raj Ahten]

The fuel situation is getting really desperate. I've just spent allof the morning waiting in three different lines for gas, each one more than half a mile long( the first two stations ran out of gas way before I got there). Even then, they were only giving $20 worth of Supreme.

The authorities are promising that the situation will improve soon, but for now, a station that had both fuel and power is an extremely rare thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

How did everyone take the wait? Media reports have made a big deal of fights at gas stations and police needed to keep the peace. In your experience is that a fact on the ground or an exaggeration?

[LadyTevar]

Found out my Big Brother is now stationed in Brentwood NY, helping the local Fire Dept make runs.

In WV's hardest hit counties, Preston & Tucker, the National Guard is helping deliver food to trapped families. One helicopter crew managed to reach a mother and her 2month old baby and check them out. The mom decided to stay, but another close neighbor they were checking on chose to Evac. The crew walked them off the mountain to a waiting Humvee. The Guard is also helping clear roads, deliver food and fuel, clear roofs of snow before they collapse, and aiding First Responders.

We have only six (6) confirmed dead in the state, which includes an older woman who was found buried under 3ft of snow. The family believes she had been outside trying to feed her dogs. Authorities are warning against older citizens trying to shovel the snow, as it can trigger heart attacks. It's a very heavy, wet, packed snow, that's caused several roofs to collapse.

[Sephirius]

The fuel situation is getting really desperate. I've just spent allof the morning waiting in three different lines for gas, each one more than half a mile long( the first two stations ran out of gas way before I got there). Even then, they were only giving $20 worth of Supreme.

The authorities are promising that the situation will improve soon, but for now, a station that had both fuel and power is an extremely rare thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

How did everyone take the wait? Media reports have made a big deal of fights at gas stations and police needed to keep the peace. In your experience is that a fact on the ground or an exaggeration?

As if we didn't need any more evidence that Donald Trump is a fucking asshole:

Is Donald Trump Getting Special Gas Favors?

An insider who works for “a certain blonde haired blow-hard who has an obsession with our current president” has tipped us that a fleet of 15 passenger vans will be getting fuel from gas stations in Yonkers or New Rochelle that have otherwise been closed to the public.

It’s pretty certain that there’s thousands of storm victims who could put that gas to better use— hell, letting a monkey drive a go-cart around would be a better use— so it seems especially odious that the fuel is being used for something as fundamentally insipid as Trump’s show.

So, about 17 of these vans will be cruising up the Westside highway tonight around 10 PM, beneficiaries of a special favor that’s at best questionable.

I hope the gas stations at least really gouged him on the price.

[Slacker]

The fuel situation is getting really desperate. I've just spent allof the morning waiting in three different lines for gas, each one more than half a mile long( the first two stations ran out of gas way before I got there). Even then, they were only giving $20 worth of Supreme.

The authorities are promising that the situation will improve soon, but for now, a station that had both fuel and power is an extremely rare thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

How did everyone take the wait? Media reports have made a big deal of fights at gas stations and police needed to keep the peace. In your experience is that a fact on the ground or an exaggeration?

That's largely a fact on the ground. The gas stations by me all have cops directing traffic and the lines are LONG. We're hearing gas on Sunday. I have just enough in the tank to get me through Monday, probably Tuesday, and I imagine by then we'll be in a better situation.

[Slacker]

Found out my Big Brother is now stationed in Brentwood NY, helping the local Fire Dept make runs.

Ooof. I've taught there. That's really not a nice neighborhood, to put it nicely. They got hit pretty hard, too. Hope he stays safe.

[Edward Yee]

Basement was entirely submerged with almost all in there except two TVs a loss; uncle's now living on the floor above with us, power's out and restoration time uncertain, no heat because the oil boiler was contaminated with seawater, my house has mostly become a T-Mobile dead zone, have yet to even contact FEMA (the assemblyman's office on our block had no power) to see if we could get rembursed for a boiler repair on Tuesday, and no flood insurance because my dad hadn't seen a flood in 30+ years here.

[fgalkin]

The fuel situation is getting really desperate. I've just spent allof the morning waiting in three different lines for gas, each one more than half a mile long( the first two stations ran out of gas way before I got there). Even then, they were only giving $20 worth of Supreme.

The authorities are promising that the situation will improve soon, but for now, a station that had both fuel and power is an extremely rare thing.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

How did everyone take the wait? Media reports have made a big deal of fights at gas stations and police needed to keep the peace. In your experience is that a fact on the ground or an exaggeration?

There were no fights, but there were line-jumpers and the mood was very tense. There were cops present at every station. You can see the pics here.

Not surprising, considering that Northern NJ is pretty suburban outside of a few places, and our mass transit is somewhat decent if you want to get from Point A to NYC, less so if you're trying to get from Point A to Point B in NJ, so being left without gas means being effectively stranded.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[The Yosemite Bear]

I'm trying not to go there but part of me wnats to make a joke about someone acidentally mistaiking sandy surviviors for Occupy folks....

[fgalkin]

I'm trying not to go there but part of me wnats to make a joke about someone acidentally mistaiking sandy surviviors for Occupy folks....

No, the only thing they'd get mistaken for is FEMA. Considering there are areas in the city that still haven't seen a government official or a cleanup crew, Occupy has been running their own relief effort to the places the National Guard or FEMA hasn't yet gotten to (or is afraid to show their face in).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

Ghetto edit: Like so

As the lights come back on in lower Manhattan, the power imbalance in parts of the city worst hit by Sandy is more literal than ever. Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods like Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens were able to celebrate Halloween as usual, but just blocks away, many residents of the Red Hook Houses, the city’s second-largest housing project, are without electricity, heat, or running water, and growing increasingly desperate. Red Hook, like other areas with overheard power lines, could wait another ten days or longer for juice, according to Con Edison. So far, Red Hook has received little help from the city or FEMA, and a team of Occupy protestors have been heading relief efforts.

“I can’t take this no more,” said Alisa Pizarro on Friday, wiping tears from her eyes. The lead community organizer at Red Hook Initiative Center on Hicks Street, which has become a hub for relief efforts, she is also a resident. “It’s too much. We have no light. We have no water. We have nothing. I’ve been washing with a little bottle of water. You hear stories about people looting other people’s apartments. I have pepper spray in one hand and a flashlight in the other. I don’t want to go through another night.”

In an outcropping of 30 buildings, some of them high-rises of 14 stories, the Red Hook Houses hold some 6,000 tenants, and about half the buildings remain without power. Red Hook Initiative, which usually offers services like tutoring and college counseling, has been joined by about 15 people from the Occupy movement who have set up infrastructure and logistics for running hot-meal operations serving 500 to 1,000 people every day, bringing in medics, gathering information about people who are elderly or disabled and can’t leave their apartments or get down stairs, and broadcasting calls for volunteers and supplies from flashlights to ice for storing insulin.

Two more volunteers from Trinity Grace Church in Park Slope, who have been working with the Occupy team, convinced the Housing Authority to open the Miccio Community Center this weekend as a larger base for the donations that are pouring in, and PS 27 opened as an overflow space for donations. More hubs opened on Van Brunt Street for volunteer clean-up crews (also mustered by the Occupy-ers) to help small businesses, and at Visitation Church for more donations, but the Occupy team was still running much of the nerve center at RHI—or trying to. “Today has been hell,” said Zoltán Glück, an Occupy-er and CUNY student organizer. “We’ve had hundreds of people filling out forms. We’re trying to build a database, and it flopped. It’s not like, Oh, we screwed up. It’s like, Oh, I guess people aren’t being fed or getting their meds.”

“It’s very third-world,” said Laura Papadimitropoulos, a pediatric emergency-medicine physician working as a volunteer medic. “I worked in a clinic in Honduras, and it was exactly like this.” She was sending Rick Malo, an emergency nurse from Bethlehem, PA, who volunteered in New Orleans after Katrina, as a medical runner to about 100 homebound people. “This is an already needy area,” he said, “that is now higher-need.”

“It’s crazy,” says Rasheed Johnson, who works at RHI as a youth ambassador. “My building is pitch black. No one wants to leave their house. When I go to the store for my mother, I have to knock in code or jingle my keys three times when I come back so she knows it’s me. I know people that have got stabbed and robbed for a flashlight. The police are around the area until it gets dark, and then they’re nowhere to be found.”

The Red Cross made an appearance on Friday to deliver MRE’s—freeze-dried meals-ready-to-eat—and left. The National Guard did the same in Coffey Park, and left behind a pallet of water that RHI volunteers then retrieved to distribute. FEMA delivered some informational flyers. The Housing Authority put up posters telling tenants where to pay their rent. The mayor hasn’t visited. “I don’t know who else to ask for help,” said Kirby Desmarais, one of the Occupy organizers. Private companies were starting to step in—Warby Parker, the eyeglass company, was coordinating a shipment of solar-powered bulbs from Colorado that could arrive by next Tuesday to light project halls and stairways. But the reality remained grim. “Rats and raccoons are taking to the hallways at night,” Desmarais said. “The basements are flooded, so they don’t have anywhere else to go.” And if the power stays off another week? “I’m terrified,” she said flatly.

“I’m tired,” said Deanna Cherry, a social worker on staff at RHI and a resident in the Red Hook Houses. “I turned the faucet this morning. Nothing. Tears just came down my face. My son said, ‘Mommy, I can’t take it any more.’ But we have nowhere to go.” She shook her head. “I’m used to helping other people, and now I need help.”

For more info on helping Red Hook, see https://redhook.recovers.org and http://www.rhicenter.org.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin