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Hurricane Irene Prompts Unprecedented Evacuation of NYC
oxide7 links this bit of sobering news, as reported by the International Business Times: "For the first time, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered a mandatory evacuation of 300,000 residents of the cities coastal areas as Hurricane Irene barrels up the East Coast. Buses and subways prepared to shut on Saturday as Hurricane Irene approaches as well. All New Jersey rail service will be suspended from noon Saturday, while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will institute a shutdown of trains and buses starting at the same time. The suspension will include subways, buses, the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and Access-A-Ride. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will suspend PATH train service at noon as well. 'This is a mandatory evacuation,' Bloomberg said. 'By five o'clock tomorrow you have to be out. Waiting for the last minute is not a smart thing to do. This is life threatening.'" Good luck to everyone in the storm's path: Irene is big. (Hat tip to Matt Lord.) What, if anything, are you doing to prepare? Having spent more than an hour in worse-than-usual D.C. traffic after Tuesday's earthquake, I shudder to think of leaving New York in a rush. Update: 08/27 06:43 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points out the official evacuation map (PDF), on the swamped NYC server, and suggests "Lets mirror this file anywhere we can ... put it on all social media. Make these systems do what they were supposed to — help us. I'm in Long Island City ~100 yards from the East River in the orange (highest risk) area."
What Category the storm is when it hits NYC is NOT the big issue. Wind damage is not what they are worried about. The size of the storm surge is the issue. NYC has an enormous amount of underground infrastructure. If water starts spilling into the subway system in quantity, the results would be catastrophic. See Chicago Flood, multiply by 1000.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I was working in World Trade Center #1, on the 95th floor, during the nor'easter of 1992, which if I recall was the remains of a hurricane. It was quite an intense experience; we had the space-saving "rolling file cabinets" that were rolling back and forth on their own, with one finally derailing and spilling files onto the floor (guess who had the job of cleaning it up). Bathroom stall doors were opening and closing by themselves, you could hear a definite creaking from inside the walls, and they were always shutting down the express elevator due to flex.
The thing that was really wild, though, and sadly not to be seen again, was looking out the window and being able to easily make out the other tower swaying as well. I had to keep telling myself "the buildings are designed for this...it's okay!" until it was time to go home.
I have a strong case of it, and the storm isn't supposed to hit here (Maryland) until Sunday at dawn. Thus far, I've been treated to:
1) CNN showing the idiots surfing at Wrightsville Beach, NC. Why encourage it?
2) An interview of some guy from the Discovery Channel with a supposedly hurricane-proof automobile.
3) An ever increasing national media frenzy replete with dramatic, spooky music and lots of interviews with people whose opinions don't count for much.
4) As the storm has decreased in power (so they can't rave about how Katrina-like it is), they've begun speculating about what the poor, benighted, ignorant citizens of New York will actually DO if they're stuck in their apartments for two or three days.
5) An absolutely jaw-dropping interview with Candidate Ron Paul who opines that we should go back to the way hurricanes were handled in 1900. He hails from Galveston, where the most destructive hurricane ever recorded happened in 1900. In other words, he wants the states to help out with funeral pyres so affected cities can burn their dead without Federal intervention.
Since I live in an area that gets the backlash of at least one good hurricane a year, here's what I've done to (gasp) protect myself:
1) Listened to the governor and the state emergency people, as well as the local weather forecasts.
2) Bought gas and hit the ATM.
3) Laid in a good supply of food and snacks that don't need to be cooked--sandwich materials, fruit, cheese, cookies. Likewise laid in a bit of beer. And dry dog food for the dog. Bottled water for self and dog.
4) Frozen up the picnic ice to add to the freezer if the electricity goes out.
5) Made a mental note to charge everything up--laptop, Kindle, iPhone.
6) Checked the flashlights and re-supplied on candles. The kind that Jewish people burn as memorials (that come in little glass jars) are available at grocery stores and make great, safe emergency candles. Blown the dust off the transistor radio and re-supplied it with fresh batteries.
7) Gotten out some lightweight cotton clothes because if the power goes out, it will be hot, unbearably humid, and damp.
8) Put my wellies by the front door.
The practice of people from different regions comparing their various disasters is ludicrous. If you don't think so, try listening to somebody from North Dakota comparing their flood this year to Katrina. It's not worth bothering with unless you happen to work in emergency services. People begin to sound like idiots after a very short time.
Tomorrow night, I'll probably go to bed. I'll be awakened by the storm sometime in the middle of the night, at which point I'll lie there and think about Nature's power and all that maudlin crap. Then, if it sounds bad, I'll get up and fill the bathtub with water (so I can flush), make sure the dog is OK, and curl up with a book until the lights go out--at which point I'll switch to my Kindle.
The only thing I can't do is persuade the dog that it's OK to pee and crap on some newspaper. He's going to be tying himself in knots.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
^^^ That reminds me of another caveat -- inrush current. Powerful fans, in particular, are hard to use with generators -- even big ones. I have a Vornado fan (circa 1995) that can almost blow the bark off of a tree when it's running at full speed. My first generator (a 4-stroke 2000-watt baby generator like the one I described above) couldn't run it. I plugged it into the extension cord, turned it on (after starting the generator and letting it stabilize), and the generator literally rocked about 3 inches in the air on one side and choked to a halt as though an invisible hand just grabbed the spinning rotor and forced it to stop. The same generator was able to start a cheap window box fan... but ONLY if I quickly turned the knob from "off" to "medium" and allowed it to stabilize before turning it up to 'high'. If I went directly from "off" to "high", it would stall the generator.
The microwave oven was another thing that the generator didn't like *at all*. I tried using the microwave with generator #2 (5600-watt Craftsman). It worked, but both the microwave and generator made really bad-sounding noises (hard to describe, kind of a buzzing hum that was REALLY loud), and I decided to just forget about trying to use the microwave on generator power due to worries that it would damage the oven, the generator, or both.
That reminds me... if you're in the hurricane's path, do all your laundry now. You can run a washing machine from a generator, but even a whole-house 24-kW Generac is going to struggle with an electric dryer. I don't know about the northeast, but in Florida, clothes lines just don't work during the summer. You can leave clothes hanging on them all day, and they'll STILL be damp when the sun goes down. Post-Wilma, my coworkers and I had to bring damp clothes to the office and hang them on makeshift clotheslines between cubes to get them to dry out in the air conditioning.
re: block party - the three streets of my neighborhood (Dallas, Texas) were out of power for almost two days recently from a spring storm. I was amazed at how friendly everyone was, just coping with the power outage and telling stories *gasp* being sociable. It was about 95F with 100% humidity at 10pm, and the entire neighborhood was out and about, sitting on the front porch with coolers full of ice and beer from the one corner store in the area that had power. I met all sorts of great new neighbors who lived around me. Sadly once the power (and more importantly) AC kicked back on, everyone went back inside and I haven't seen any of them since.
The neighborhood is full of houses with giant front porches and swing benches, with manicured outdoor seating areas in the front of the house. If you go north about 10 miles where houses were built after 1970 when AC became cheap and readily available, there's a striking complete lack of front porches, or even trees in the front yard. Technology like air conditioning has isolated neighbors, yet the internet brings complete strangers together.
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