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A Year After Sandy, Do You Approach Disaster Differently?
A year ago today, Superstorm Sandy struck the northeastern U.S.
The storm destroyed homes — in some cases entire
neighborhoods — and brought unprecedented disruptions to the New York City area's infrastructure, interrupting
transportation, communications, and power delivery. It even
damaged
a Space Shuttle. In the time since, the U.S. hasn't faced a storm with Sandy's
combination of power and placement, but businesses have had some time to rethink how much trust they can put in even
seemingly impregnable data centers and other bulwarks of modernity: a big enough storm can knock down nearly anything.
Today, parts of western Europe are recovering from a major storm as well: more than a dozen people were killed as the
predicted "storm of the century"
hit London, Amsterdam,
and other cities on Sunday and Monday. In Amsterdam, the city's
transportation system took a major hit; some passengers had to shelter in place in stopped subway cars while the storm passed. Are you (or your employer) doing anything
different in the post-Sandy era, when it comes to preparedness to keep people, data, and equipment safe?
Summary is misleading.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
So, uh, I live in Arizona, so we're pretty much still not bracing for any sort of natural disaster other than it being hot again this summer...
I now carry a copy of all the Bear Grylls episodes on my smartphone, just in case.
Today, parts of western Europe are recovering from a major storm as well
Yeah, we're uhh, clearing some trees and that's it?
Not sure if it's the same thing as Sandy..
My employer and I are still located in the Midwest, and still do nothing to prepare for hurricanes.
Generally speaking the east coast is a dangerous place to put anything critical, they get a lot of strange weather. My thought is look for places where weather is more predictable. For instance states such as Colorado, Utah, and perhaps Arizona. Granted Colorado had floods last year, but one would hope you would place a data center in a location that is a lower to non-existent risk of that, such as Denver or Colorado Springs area. The power is underground, so heavy snow storms are less likely to take power for any significant amount of time. Anywhere in the mid-west could get tornado's which are very unpredictable. Plus, in the cooler states such as Colorado and Utah, you can use natural cooling for a fair amount of the year, thus reducing utilities.
Nope. I still run away until it's over.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
It's only called "Superstorm Sandy" because of the pathetic response of government and the self-centered hubris of nor-easters. It was just a hurricane; the Southeastern US getting far stronger storms much more often.
Being someone who goes RV-ing often, knowing how to dry camp (this doesn't just mean parking at the local Wally World or Tesco, but actual boondocking in the woods), it does help to teach someone what they actually need come a disaster. The main thing is that a power outage just means to fire up the generator [1] used for the travel trailer, plug extension cords for the fridge, a room A/C, computers, and an electric stove element, and go from there. With a motorhome (even a type "B" rig that is a converted van), one can just use that and still have a functioning kitchen, refrigeration, hot showers, and the usual things needed even if there is no water or electricity available at the house.
The best thing for a disaster is a small motorhome or campervan. Not just for bug-out reasons, but the ability to live comfortably for an indefinite amount of time until power and utilities are restored.
[1]: RV-ers tend to use inverter generators. They are much quieter than the normal contractor type, and the inverter gives clean power output.
Tax dollars weren't used to relocate owners of expensive beachfront properties that washed away, instead they were used to rebuild the same beaches and homes.
Which are already washing away again...
Chris Christie stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide.
I wonder if anybody is thinking twice about having a datacenter on the 17th floor of an office building, in a city by the ocean? Unless there is some specific need for you to be close to Wall Street, It's probably a good idea to make sure your servers are hosted where there is minimal likelihood of natural disasters, and also in a place that is easily serviceable from the ground. Although having it on the ground would have likely been worse in some cases, being a lot further inland where flooding is pretty much impossible would be even better.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So many worse storm disasters have happened in the last few years, and people get worked up over Sandy?
Because the problem lies above me, with the move towards centralized control of everything. Power wouldn't've been a problem if the system was more decentralized. Same with communications. Cellphones were designed as dependent devices from the beginning, no p2p mode to be found. Same with the data centers. A lot less productivity would've been lost had people taken charge of their data instead of trusting 'the cloud' for everything.
The rest of it is really just a case of shit happens. Most of the time, hurricanes aren't a big deal up here.. They knock some trees down and create a ruckus that is recovered from in a few days to a week or so, but that's about it.
The week before Halloween on 2011 we had a freak snow storm on the East Coast. It came in the middle of a MILD Fall so the leaves were still green-ish. It was a a lot of heavy snow... so trees and branches went down all over the north-East. New Jersey was without power for a while... my town was without for a week, many longer. No power meant no heat for many, so it was a cold week.
A year later, almost to the week, was Sandy... just before Halloween 2012. Obviously Sandy was a lot worse for the coastal cities because the water crept in and the wind tore up the boardwalk... but further inland it was the same s**t different year. No power or heat for a over a week, loss of many services, etc. This one was a big more wide-spread though, and getting gasoline was a BIG PitA. But otherwise it was the same pain for those more inland.
As an ex-boyscout I try to be ready for these things anyway... I have plenty of flashlights and batteries, canned food, a couple gallons of drinking water, a lighter to start the stove, warm clothes on-hand, etc. I was able to deal with mostly everything fine except the gasoline situation. After a week most of us were running low.
According to various shows and friends, being prepared for the next major storm/earthquake/tsunami/fire/drought/etc. is to have a large gun and ammo cache, an underground bunker, food and water for a year, off-grid energy generation and the willingness to shoot the roaming hoardes of looters, bandits and otherwise famished and unprepared bleeding-heart hippies that will try kill your dog, rape your mother and steal your food.
In the meantime, past experience indicates that 5 days of food and water is plenty of supplies to wait out the rebuilding effort, along with a house that matches the local building codes. Society is not going to collapse, Mad Max will not come to pass, and I'll be most worried about paranoid neighbors shooting me as I come to check in on them.
So my plan: backup important data across the network, have food and water for a few days and hunker down while the roads are cleared and energy access is restored. If I get bored, I can always hunt turkeys in the backyard.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I still flirt with disaster, but I'm not looking for anything serious.
More music, fewer hits
That level of prep is meant to defend against societal collapse. A storm does not cause this.
Its like getting thrown clear of a car wreck when not wearing a seat belt.
Except without the windscreen/vehicles/pedestrians/the ground/buildings/trees impacting your face.. is not wearing your seatbelt seriously considered safer by some people? Give me a seatbelt and airbag to the face over being thrown down a road at 70mph anyday..
which is totally what she said
I put a flashlight down there, batteries, a mattock to "break out" if necessary, and 2 cases of water. No food, but I figure if I'm down there that long, I've got bigger problems than eating.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
As anyone who deals with marine equipment can tell you, salt water and electronics don't mix well.
I wonder how much societal collapse could be caused by a storm. Sure, not complete societal collapse, and not national societal collapse, but it seems likely that many parts of a single city's society could collapse if there was a big storm. Maybe in the US, this is much less likely, because the government would send in disaster relief, but look at what happened when Haiti was hit by that earthquake. Had the world not come to their rescue, things could have been much worse, and they were pretty bad anyway. Many cities in less better off nations could be pretty much completely ruined by a large storm.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Earlier this month Atlas struck the Black Hills of South Dakota. 4-8 inches of snow were forecast for the higher elevations (5000+ feet), but here on the foot hills at 3500', we got 31" of snow. It was a wet, heavy snow that snapped power lines and tree limbs. 60+ mph winds made for zero visability and took out a large number of power poles.
Our little datacenter lost utility power Friday evening, and promptly switched to UPS, which had a lifespan of about 2 hours. Power was restored after 85 minutes, but the decision was made to power off all the servers in case we lost power again, with an eye towards starting recovery procedures in a day or two. The data center was restored to full functionality by Sunday noon, even though the businesses didn't re-open until Monday noon.
We have a complete DR plan, so if the outage persisted for another day, we could have resumed operations at a sister site. The key takeaways here were backup validation for off-site replication, lines of communication between Operations and the affected managers, and validated, sequenced shut-down and power-on check-list. I was able to get on-site through the storm thanks to my big 4x4 and coordinate the shutdown and power-on processes. Without being onsite, we would have had some more challenges due to area wide loss of network connectivity.
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Sandy did not change my view of disasters. I still remain prepared for disaster, and when stuff looks like it is going to happen, I use my brain instead of burying my head in the sand and thinking things like "oh it won't happen to me" or "oh well Government will be there to save me," which is exactly what happened in New York.
The entire city lived in a state of denial leading up to Sandy, and continued to live in that state for a week afterward, even having the nerve to attempt to hold the NYC marathon despite there being people in need of the resources that were being used for it. Marathon organizers had generators, clean water, gasoline, and everything they wanted, while thousands of people all over the city had no power, no water, and no means of transportation out of the city.
Mayor Bloomberg is a disgrace.
Summary is misleading.
Was it really misleading, or did your ability to assume really stoop to that level of ignorance in thinking there are actually lung-breathers here on earth who think a storm is large enough to escape the very atmosphere it thrives in to damage an object in orbit...
...and that said lung-breathers congregate here.
Thanks. Appreciate that.
That's at least one level above those that consider having gun and ammo and becoming part of the roaming hordes of looters enough...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Summary is misleading.
Was it really misleading, or did your ability to assume really stoop to that level of ignorance in thinking there are actually lung-breathers here on earth who think a storm is large enough to escape the very atmosphere it thrives in to damage an object in orbit...
...and that said lung-breathers congregate here.
Thanks. Appreciate that.
Go home Aqua Man you're drunk.
even worse, Enterpise isn't even a real shuttle, it's a full scale glorified mock up, to do glider tests et. c.
Disaster recovery was already part of our operations. When Sandy hit, it took out a couple of branches for a few days, but operations were just DRed over to other geographic areas. We have fiber cuts all the time, and traffic just gets rerouted or DRed to another area.
Pretty much when Sandy hit, everything happened exactly as it was supposed to.
Yeah, sometimes things like "disaster recovery" and "security" get a bit out of hand and/or miss the point. You get people really into the idea "If a nuclear bomb hit my office, I could get my operations back up and running from another location immediately, because all my data is immediately synced to a location on the other side of the country." Well yeah, that's great, until you realize the person has confused a "sync" with a "backup", and besides if a nuclear bomb hit your office, you'd have bigger problems.
What few people will admit is that most of us can afford to be out-of-commission for a few days. You might not like it, and you might lose some money, but the world would keep turning and life would go on. It can be tremendously expensive to protect yourself against every possible disaster scenario, and you may end up spending a bunch of money to save yourself only a little, for a scenario that almost never happens. And then, of course, there's also the possibility of some weird nightmare scenario that gets past all of your safeguards, which you couldn't have predicted.
Sometimes you're better off accepting that bad things happen, instead of trying to protect yourself from every possible bad scenario.
Of course. The next, obvious question though is: what is going to bring about societal collapse? And the answers I get to that range from riots to super storms to earthquakes to hyperinflation to asteroid impact to brand new plague. Most of the answers also mysteriously assume that those events are likely enough to warrant shelling out multiple thousands of dollars immediately.
The reality is that we've been through everything short of an asteroid impact, and civilization has not collapsed. Especially not western civilization. Maybe that's why Europeans are non-plussed by all these possibilities, and look at the US like a family does at its crazy uncle who is raving about government brain scans: they've been through all of it, and they've come out alright. True, there were a few World Wars that came about from some of those events, but it wasn't a collapse of civilization. If anything, it proved that civilization was rebuilt pretty much instantly by citizens working together and sharing their meager means.
Full disclosure: my parents still tell me stories of The War. It's as close as Europe ever came to total collapse, and it didn't.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
And there are never raging storms on the ocean!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since Sandy, disasters don't approach me at all, actually....Its been about 12 months now, I think, since I was last approached by a disaster. They have given up I think.
DARPA X-Prize Project, build a multi use robot that can dismantle a Red Tagged home. Not demolish, dismantle. Pile everything up, neatly. Personal items in a pile. Building supplies in another. Because everyone knows what's going to happen When OSH, Lowe's, and Home Depot opens in the morning. Why not make this a War College exercise. And how does one dismantle a home one nail at a time? I hear that Katrina, and Sandy may have some interesting test sites here and there.
Another thing, with 10 million under employed, or out of work engineers in America; that they can't figure this out? One word, Blender3D.
Over the past two years I lost power for about 4 weeks.
The last two weeks were miserable because it happened in early November when the weather was cold.
So I spent about 5k for a good multi-fuel generator and installation of a manual transfer switch. So now a prolonged grid outage will at least not leave me freezing in the dark.
You must not have been in New Orleans after Katrina...
It would help to get an amateur radio license before hand so you can contact what's left of the authorities to regroup (or just let them know not to shoot you). A CB would work just as well, but you're more likely to get in touch with them on the amateur 2 meter 144 MHz VHF frequencies than the CB 11 meter 27 MHz HF frequencies. 70 centimeter 440 MHz UHF frequencies may also help if you want to link up with others operating FRS/GMRS radios, and a GMRS license will give you the privilege of working the GMRS emergency repeaters.
Possibly North Korea. For the simple fact that it's likely they would have denied access to foreign aid workers.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Not to mention, how many "storms of the century" have there been in the past 5 years?
I have several customers on long island, and my customers were some of the quickest to recover (they just had to get themselves back online) as all data and POS systems are in the cloud. I keep 3 separate geographic locations of server clusters and a fourth backup at our office. Those IT guys who think data centers / companies are infallible have not been around long enough to see a data center go under financially, or have servers raided because the police don't understand what a virtual server means. Much less an actual natural disaster. IMHO there is very little reason to be 'down' these days, with on demand services from rackspace and S3, it just takes proper planning.
neorush
Protip: During a disaster, the authorities won't gave a rats ass whether or not you are licensed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For this area it was an overdue storm (1938 was the last bad flood event here), and for decades people lived as if the area would never have high flooding again. The question is, will we be prepared next time, or will people forget the past?
>> I wonder how much societal collapse could be caused by a storm? I can answer that for you. Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of death and destruction. Everything fell apart here for a lot of people. The people trapped in the Superdome and Convention Center turned on each other like animals. Society is back to normal now but for a few weeks this place had a total societal breakdown.
No. No, I don't view disaster differently, because I choose to live in one of the majority of places in the US that don't tend to get life-threatening disasters.
No, because I don't live in a backfilled coastal flood plain and then cry to FEMA when my McMansion gets washed away.
I don't live in tornado alley. I don't live in earthquake central. I don't live on the downslope side of the Rockies.
Once a century a hurricane will come close enough to tear a few shingles off the roof. Once a decade a blizzard or ice storm will knock out power for a day or two. And... That about covers the serious local disasters.
If you can't say the same - Move. Simple as that, really.
If something of the dimension of Phailin hits US, it won't hit just one big city. We all live in only one planet, extreme weather will hit every place eventually. And most people don't care about the causes, there is profit still to be made, lets worry about that later.
The storm that hit London does not even begin to compare to Sandy or other disasters. I don't know about you guys, but I don't count a storm that mostly doesn't more than inconvenience people (yes, I know, a few people died from having trees fall on them, but c'mon, that's more of a freak accident than anything.) There was a lot of bitching about disrupted commutes- not even entirely disrupted, just made more difficult- but man, I'm of the opinion that disasters require major consequences. If it's just business as usual, it's not really a disaster. It's just a shitty thing.
There is a point to be made there. Being a doomsday prepper after a real disaster would make you more of a target than anything else. Anything more than one or two guns and a few days of supplies would be like hanging up a big sign that said "Come raid here!" And going on a national TV show and bragging about it is probably not the smartest move either.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
It damaged a decommissioned space shuttle on earth
Summary is misleading.
It is pretty "rare" for oceanic / atmospheric events to reach into space. Besides, all of the space shuttles are decommissioned.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Cannibal Korea is best Korea.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Although that's what Enterprise ended up being, the original intention was to refit Enterprise to be fully spaceflight-capable, but changes to design specs during the late 70s meant a teardown and rebuild was too costly.
So we have the irony where Star Trek fans successfully campaigned to rename the first shuttle, which ended up never actually going into space.
Sure, but knowing what you're doing (and having practise) before the disaster comes rolling in is probably a really good idea.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You are incorrect, uninformed, and perpetuating misinformation. Licensees participating in ARES (amateur radio emergency service) and RACES (radio amateur civil emergency service) drills practice not only how to operate their stations in power blackout situations, they also practice operating frequencies under net control conditions and how to report and relay relevant emergency information in concise, brief messages that won't interfere with any ongoing emergency response efforts. A disaster is the time in which it is most important to be licensed, understand how the equipment works, and understand protocols and procedures for operating on the air so you don't interfere with the ongoing radio communications during the disaster. The last thing that will help is someone who doesn't know how to work their radio, how to follow authorized operating protocol, and how to be helpful and keep your head screwed on under duress. What will get you a stern talking to in a time of peace will get the book thrown at you in a time of crisis when there really are lives on the line. You will also be more likely to be caught operating illegally during a time of crisis since that's when the powers that be will need that resource the most.
"But what percentage of those in major quake zones have an escape bag? You know, one you grab as you flee, just before your house comes tumbling down. The 5 second bag."
That's just something for you young whippersnappers. We old ones firstly, don't care, secondly we have a 75 second bag ready because we already know we'll never come back.
NOLA shouldn't have residential areas below sea level. No reason other than sentiment exists to rebuild them there.
I have the option not to live in areas absolutely guaranteed to get hammered by hurricane storm surge. Not living there is part of my "disaster prep". The US is vast and so are ones choices of domicile.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I do want to clarify that any radio on any frequency may be used if the threat of human life is clear and present and no other means of communication are available, but it is much better to be able to make contact out with a licensee callsign. It's even better to know how to operate the radio and follow established procedures and protocols of the amateur service so you can be helpful rather than have to get help from someone on the air just to know how to operate the device. That radio is little more than an electronic brick in the hands of someone that doesn't know how it works.
65 billion worth of damage aint 'minor'.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Build an elevated, reinforced concrete shell around it. Have proper sump pumps etc for seepage, have doors you can seal, and bunker down. Build it tough enough and no storm surge will bother it, but you might lose your connectivity to the outside world.
Bunker tech isn't rocket surgery. Lose the idea that conventional structures will protect your stuff, build bunkers with internal systems (such as ISO containerised data centers) you can upgrade relatively easily, and you are protected.
Don't build weak support systems, or you get "Fukushima". There is zero reason that whole plant couldn't have been built like the German U-boat pens at St Nazaire except that it wasn't built for safety.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I actually do have friends who are preparing for the end of times. Storing guns and ammo for the looters, stashing gold and silver at home.... The wackos on TV are real, and they are among you.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
That's becoming my #1 concern: if the end of civilization DOES happen, the preppers are ideally prepped to be looters and bandits. They have a well-fortified homebase in a far-off location, lots of guns, lots of ammo, lots of prepared food, and zero ability, tools and seeds to grow their own food. They will run out of food before they run out of ammo, and then they will most likely become what they feared the most themselves.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I Live in Amsterdam, and on this faithfull day I just looked out of the window to see if the weather was passable. So when I got on my bicycle and drove to the other end of town, everything looked more or less ok.
Ok, a tree fell on the spot i was just 6 seconds before, but all in all it was no big biggy (I've seen much worse). People weren't blown from their bikes, and no dogs where blown in the river.
Only when I arrived in the office did I found out that there was officially a 'code red', and that all my coworkers has decided to work from home. I still think people are overreacting.
There was flooding with Floyd. Massive flooding.
Gas shortages could have been dealt with by eliminating "price gouging" laws (which really amounts to government theft of private property) and letting the price adjust for the lack of supply. It would have discouraged people from buying gas they didn't need (and where, pray tell, are you planning on driving to when no place has power and the roads are all closed).
I have a few relatives who told stories about fleeing the genocides which surrounded those wars.
I'm sure that Europeans have 'been through all of it, and come out alright.' That's because they are alive to consider how they came out alright. I'd ask my grandmother how her mother felt about the situation, but she is in some unmarked grave in Poland.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Inquiring minds want to know: where exactly in the country do you live?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
My parents live in NOLA and did not flood. Total damage to their property from the entire ordeal was one refrigerator and a couple shingles.
The fact that their house was habitable was irrelevant to the fact that the city had no power, no sewage, no running water, and no order during the 3 months they spent living in Texas waiting for the national guard to OK returning while they pumped 10+ feet of water over the levees. It turns out that in addition to a house, you also need things like a grocery store, a gas station, etc.
There was no looting in their neighborhood cause an ex-marine lived next door with his guns, ammo, generator, and enough supplies to last... Everyone makes fun of the crazy gun nut next door until Katrina hits and then you deputize him and throw him a party.
I was there the Christmas after Katrina and it was creepy. Almost 6 months later, half the city was still dark and there were still trees laying in the streets. The day the Pop-Eyes opened up they had a line for the drive-threw that was 3 blocks long...
The argument that people should not live in New Orleans because it floods is shallow and short sighted. The same argument could be applied to California, Oklahoma, the north-east, etc. There are very few places free from risk of natural disaster and saying 'you knew the risks, you deserved it' ignores the real complexities and benefits associated with any one location.
Well, for starters, Jared Diamond wrote a fascinating book about it called "Collapse". It's a more popular-scientific expansion of the scientific work of Joseph Tainter "The Collapse of Complex Societies" (but I've never tried to read that).
Basically, IIRC, the first point where you notice that your society is in collapse, is that long-term regular maintenance of infrastructure isn't done anymore. For example, in Nîmes in a dry part of France, the Romans built a large aquaduct. But aquaducts need to be maintained, otherwise the kettle stone (limestone) and moss clogs up the flow over the years.
Being in the periphery of the empire, Nîmes faired probably a lot better than central Rome, but when the aquaduct was no longer maintained, less people probably wanted to live there.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
It's just been that sort of century.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
After a human invoked disaster and then Hurricane Ike causing me to lose most everything I had of value twice in a five year period I approach life differently in general.
I am adopting a less hard-core version of the Buddhist "we become slaves to our possessions" philosophy. I've always believed in durable, simple, usable things, I use a cast iron skillet for about 75% of my cooking for example. I used to have a lot of books and physical media. I'm starting to use digital media, if I lose all of my physical belongings I can buy a new Kindle and get most of my books back, buy a new just about anything thanks to Google Play and have all of my music back, I would still be missing 95% of my movies, the prevalence UltraViolet and Amazon video being included with a bunch of my new disks will save a few of those. I've been ripping my disk and putting them on a local hard drive for years, I'm considering a "disk to digital" service so I don't have to worry about movies anymore. I've actually been giving my books away over the past couple of years and even reducing my tech junk laying about that I'm not using.
After the theft and the flood I'm now expecting the fire. When it comes I want it to have minimal impact. I want to buy new clothes, a few electronic devices and continue on. "The cloud" is how I intend to make that happen. My data is my most valuable possession. I need to get my pictures uploaded somewhere - thanks for making me think of that.
Once I get to where I want to be data backup wise with the exception vehicles which have escaped the past disasters, $5,000 to $10,000 should be enough to get me everything I really want and need. I just got married last weekend to someone who does not share in my reduced physical goods philosophy - so my estimates are based on a few months ago thinking. (considering I adopted the mindset a couple of years after the last disaster I'm not setting a good enough example, I haven't been wiped out since Ike). We'll see where that takes us.
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I've had friends of mine who worked overseas and saw collapse in Haiti and other places. Once the food trucks stop moving in, give a city 72 hours, and the place will turn into one big Donner party with people turning on each other. The national guard isn't going to risk life and limb going into a place with looters running rampant with the bullets flying everywhere. They will let the predators eat the prey, then each other, and after that, come in to secure things.
Another example of this was Houston. When the last hurricane hit the area, an evacuation was called a number of days beforehand. Due to the bad traffic and lack of roads out, there were still people on the highways (and had to leave their cars) when the hurricane hit. Most US cities don't have the infrastructure to get people out in any reasonable time. The town where I live (Austin) can't get people in and out when it comes festival time, much less if there were a real disaster.
And the storm did seem to pick and choose areas to damage. In the beaches closer to NYC/NJ area there was devastation, while in L.I.'s more eastern town of Southampton, the storm actually improved Coopers Beach, adding sand and widening the beach area. (Coopers Beach was voted the best beach in the NY area for summer 2013 on websites that determine yearly beach quality, since beaches in NJ and NYC took such a beating from Sandy.)
So, while some areas near to the ocean sustained major flood damage (NYC had major basement and subway flooding in lower Manhattan, subway tube 'plugs' and a costly levee system for lower Manhattan are being evaluated now), for the majority of the area it was like most hurricanes here, basically another windy rain, and some longer than normal power outages. Very little loss of life because of Sandy. If your home was affected, it's a costly and a difficult process to rebuild, an inherant risk to living near an ocean.
Build an elevated, reinforced concrete shell around it. Have proper sump pumps etc for seepage, have doors you can seal, and bunker down. Build it tough enough and no storm surge will bother it, but you might lose your connectivity to the outside world.
Well you won't get flooded, but a normal data centre on the 17th floor won't get flooded (or if a flood does get 170' above sea level there's bigger problems)
However when you run out of fuel, that's a lot of steps to climb with buckets of fuel.
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/11/se-podcast-36-we-got-hit-by-a-hurricane/
You are correct regarding standard hurricanes. You expect to pack up and leave, spend 3 nights in a hotel, then come home. Or spend three nights reading books by candle light and boiling your water if you elected to ride the storm out.
Katrina, however, resulted in a large city being mostly abandoned for several months and a large portion of the population that for whatever reason (there are many that we will not debate) decided not to leave happened to also coincide with the large criminal portion of the New Orleans population.
Looters set one of the malls on fire and then shot at the firefighters who responded to put the fire out. They shot at the rescue helicopters... I do not know why these people decided shooting at the national guard was an appropriate response, but they did. The looting really was just as bad as they reported on TV.
These people decided that since the city was mostly abandoned they were justified in setting random parts of the city on fire and stealing things. There were also normal, sane people who stayed behind and enforced law and order in various places. The easiest way to do this was to post a sign that said 'we shoot looters' and then make good on that promise because the only person making sure some asshat didn't come and burn your house down for fun was you.
Normal society works because the sane people vastly out number the nut jobs who like to hurt other people and set things on fire. Sane people also happen to be the type of people who see a cat 5 hurricane heading towards a city below sea level and get the fuck out of town before it hits. When most of the sane people leave, that leaves only the nut jobs who think it's ok to set other people's things on fire and no one to stop them.
Police stop crime because someone is there to report the crime. When no one can report the crime, criminals don't worry about the police.
You are incorrect, uninformed, and perpetuating misinformation.
And you, sir, are what we call an ECommie. Get your reflective vest and callsign hat, and jog off. We don't need no stinkin' badges. Your radio ain't going to dig you out of a fallen house. What you need is a good set of demolition tools, food, water, first aid and tarps. Get to know your neighbors and help them when the shit hits the fan. CERT training can help but just don't go all happy with it and make it your whole life. Enjoy the now.
If you want a radio for emergencies, then get one on your state EOC frequency so you can bypass all the ECommie wannabes.
I've got a VHF-low Maxtrac channeled up for Washington State CEMNET and the Red Cross. I'll be grabbing that before I grab my 2m.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
If you buy a generator, buy one now, have an electrician install either an interlock system on the circuit breaker or a transfer switch. (Interlocks are code safe, and allow you more freedom to choose what circuits you want on the generator, but a manual transfer switch is a lot more idiot-resistant.)
When disasters strike, generators go immediately at the hardware stores, so it can't hurt to at least have a portable one (or two Honda 2000 watt models that are paired) to keep the computers and refrigerator running.
My company's email went from Exchange to Office 365 and we gave Amazon a lot of money for offsite backups. We also have a generator and a few hundred feet of extension cable now. At home, it just meant we bought some bottled water and Sterno. Aside from that, business as usual
Obligatory: no.
But seriously, no, I don't, and while I'm not in IT, I don't think my company does either? (But we're in a totally different geographic location - we've *always* had to worry about earthquakes, and to a lesser extent, fires, but not really hurricanes.)
Inquiring minds want to know: where exactly in the country do you live?
About 400 miles North of where Sandy obliterated. Within an hour of two cities. But my specific location by no means counts as unique.
Most of the US doesn't have the problems we hear about in the disaster-porn loving news reports. Just an hour inland from the coasts, not in the 100 year flood plain, and not living on the banks of an "engineered" river protects you from most "wet" damage - Except, that relatively tiny sliver of land framing the country contains 39% of the population (according to the 2010 census). Not in "tornado alley" doesn't mean you'll never see a tornado, but the rest of the country gets much smaller ones, and only rarely. Not in California (really, only a small fraction of it) means you laugh about "the big (3.5) one" around the water cooler rather than having a reinforced shelter-core in your house.
The US has a truly staggering amount of places with weather you would call "boring". People just seem to want to pack in to the places with the most volatile climates.
if there was a loss that big, then it's a major storm. you can't point to its second largest cost in US history and call it 'minor'. storms are much more than merely the measure of their top wind speed.
besides, at one point she had a windfield of roughly 1200 miles, the largest in atlantic basin history. right before landfall the total energy in her tropical storm-force windfield was higher than in any atlantic storm in the last 40 years+. that's a big fuckin' deal.
come on. it was clearly a major storm.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Usually i would advise people to avoid anything considered knowledge in Florida. After all, if you can't even run fair elections how smart can you be? But one thing that we in Florida do know is hurricanes. And having just watched national new showing Breezy Point in the area smacked by Sandy it is obvious that they are screwing up big time.
First stick built homes are no good in hurricanes. Any home in a storm zone needs lots of really good concrete. You do not put an overhang on a roof more than a few inches. In order too keep a roof on a home you simply must not have much overhang. Items like large double doors are a disaster as are large windows. The windows that you do have should be made of storm proof glass . Doors should be small and strong. The sand barriers they are packing up between them and the sea will often be as much of a negative as a positive. We see homes filled to the ceiling with sand after storms. With large waves the sand simply adds to the weight of the wave. If there is anything left of the sand barrier after a few waves it may well stop water from draining back into the sea.
The beach area is probably best built with a lower floor designed to blow out in a storm which leaves the second floor standing on concrete supports. I noted that several home owners elevated their new homes by 14 feet. Frankly 20 feet would be better and 30 feet better yet. We have seen storms where people floated out of third floor windows when a storm surge strikes.
I have lived in Florida for 60 years and went though many storms. One mistake is to think that you know about storms. Storms are each unique and can do things you would never think they can do. But i can tell you that the storm that hit Breezy Point was so mild by our standards that when younger I actually enjoyed motorcycling and even bicycle rides in stronger winds. Until winds get above 130 mph I rarely pay any attention at all and usually enjoy the heavy rains.
Tornadoes can cause tremendous damage where they hit but they have a very small footprint compared to a storm like Sandy. Tornadoes will never approach the total damage of a Sandy but it still sucks if you happen to be in their narrow path.
unprepared bleeding-heart hippies that will try kill your dog, rape your mother and steal your food.
What about those that want to kill your mother, rape your food and steal your dog?
Learn to love Alaska
How functional was New Orleans after Katrina?
Learn to love Alaska
European storms have nothing to do with US east coast hurricanes. The later appear in a warm ocean, typically in tropical zone, and move toward to the poles. Europe has no southern tropical ocean and therefore cannot ever have this kind of hurricanes.
Gold? What use is gold? You can't eat it or make tools from it.
Learn to love Alaska
Let's review:
* November 7–11, 1913 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 claims 19 ships and more than 250 lives.
* October 4, 1914 - The Burdur earthquake was centered near Lake Burdur in southwestern Turkey and the mainshock and subsequent fire destroyed more than 17,000 homes, and caused 2,344 casualties.
* January 13, 1915 – An earthquake in Avezzano, Italy, registering 6.8 on the Richter scale kills more than 29,000
* July 1–12, 1916 – At least one shark mauls 5 swimmers along 80 miles (130 km) of New Jersey coastline during the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, resulting in 4 deaths and the survival of one youth who requires limb amputation.
* May 21, 1917 – Over 300 acres (73 blocks) are destroyed in the Great Atlanta fire of 1917.
* January, 1918 – 1918 flu pandemic: "Spanish 'flu" (influenza) first observed in Haskell County, Kansas.
* January 15, 1919, - Boston Molasses Disaster: A wave of molasses released from an exploding storage tank sweeps through Boston, Massachusetts, killing 21 and injuring 150.
* February 20, 1920 - Gori earthquake: An earthquake hits Gori in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, killing 114.
* 1921 - Russian famine: Roughly 5,000,000 people die.
* January 13, 1922 – The flu epidemic has claimed 804 victims in Britain.
* July 10, 1923 – Large hailstones kill 23 in Rostov, Soviet Union.
* July 10, 1924 – Large hailstones kill 23 in Rostov, Soviet Union.
* February 28, 1925 – The 1925 Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake strikes northeastern North America.
* October 20, 1926 – A hurricane kills 650 in Cuba.
* February 14, 1927 – An earthquake in Yugoslavia kills 100.
* February 12, 1928 – Heavy hail kills 11 in England.
* November 18, 1929 – 1929 Grand Banks earthquake.
* November 25, 1930 - An earthquake in the Izu Peninsula of Japan kills 223 people and destroys 650 buildings.
* February 3, 1931 – Hawke's Bay earthquake: Much of the New Zealand city of Napier is destroyed in an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale.
* March 21, 1932 – A series of deadly tornadoes in the south kills more than 220 people in Alabama, 34 people in Georgia, and 17 in Tennessee during a two-day period.
* March 3, 1933 - A powerful earthquake and tsunami hit Honsh, Japan, killing approximately 3,000 people.
* May 11, 1934 – Dust Bowl in North America: A strong 2-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the region's worst dust storms.
* April 14, 1935 - Black Sunday, a particularly severe dust storm, was one of the worst dust storms in American history and it caused immense economic and agricultural damage. It is estimated to have displaced 300 thousand tons of topsoil from the Prairie area in the US.
* March 17 – March 18, 1936 – St. Patrick's Day Flood: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, suffers the worst flooding in its history.
* May 6, 1937 – Hindenburg disaster: In the United States, the German airship Hindenburg bursts into flame when mooring to a mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, 13 passengers and 22 crew die, as well as one member of the ground crew.
* February 6, 1938 – Black Sunday at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia: 300 swimmers are dragged out to sea in 3 freak waves; 80 lifesavers save all but 5.
* January 13, 1939 – Black Friday: 71 people die across Victoria in one of Australia's worst ever bush fires.
* November, 1940 - The Armistice Day Blizzard (or the Armistice Day Storm) took place in the Midwest region of the United States on 11 November (Armistice Day) and 12 November 1940. The intense early-season "Panhandle hook" winter storm cut a 1,000-mile-wide (1600 km) path through the middle of the country from Kansas to Michigan. A total of 145 deaths were blamed on the storm.
* April 15, 1941 - Colima earthquake
* November 28, 1942 - Cocoanut Grove Fire
* February 27, 1943 - Smith Mine Disaster
* D
I have no tag line
When Katrina hit, nobody outside the country offered any assistance whatsoever to the people in need, and in fact there were many people in Europe gleefully gloating about the disaster with a nice glow of "ha-ha" schadenfreude.
Well, the rest of the world outside the US is obviously just terrible... At least, maybe you could credibly claim that if what you are saying were actually true. Many, many countries offered and provided aid after Katrina. Some of it was delayed due to the US initially refusing it, of course.
Ecommie wannabe? Only group of folks I've heard refer to hams by that moniker operate their Maxtracs under their employers' public safety LMRS licenses. I certainly hope you're not bootlegging that on 30-50 MHz.
In the time since, the U.S. hasn't faced a storm with Sandy's combination of power and placement
Am I the only one bothered by this line? The implication is clearly that Sandy was a monstrous storm that has gone unrivaled in the time since it swept through New York City. Sure, that's technically correct, but it gives the wrong impression, since Sandy was actually a fairly middling hurricane, and both the 2012 and 2013 hurricane seasons have been extraordinarily tame. Were the 2013 season ANY other season from the past decade, the summary's statement would be false, since we would have seen hurricanes of greater strength since Sandy. From 2003 to 2011 we had at least two Cat 4 or higher storms each year (except 2009, when we had just one), and then in 2012 we only had only two Cat 3 storms, of which Sandy was one, followed up by the 2013 season which has only had two Cat 1 storms (making it the tamest season in decades, I'd wager, though I only checked as far back as 2002).
Sandy was remarkable, to be sure, but it was not because it was a powerful storm. It was a perfectly ordinary one like dozens of others in the past decade, with its only unusual trait being that it just happened to hit the wrong spot. A Floridian living in a house that's built to code wouldn't even bat an eye at a Cat 3 like Sandy unless the eye was heading straight overhead (at which point they might evacuate). New York is clearly not designed to handle hurricanes like Florida is however, and that's the only thing that made Sandy particularly interesting. It wasn't its power. It was simply its placement.
Nope, operate under State authority for the tribal EOC. Wouldn't want to lose my ham ticket or radio-telephone license. I'm also good with my county radio officer. I just don't play the vest & badges game. When the shit hits the fan, they know who I am.
It's not like I don't have my ICS-400 and shit.Hell, I even put up a D-Star box on the tribal tower so we can go digital with the county EOC. You just won't find any laminated card around my neck or me checking in each week on the net. When you've built broadcast stations, radio becomes just a tool.
I haven't talked on the radio for months. But I still know how to pass traffic.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Well Manhattan, Ansterdam, Venice and Hong Kong should not have been built on coastal land only few feet above sea level. And your point again was?
I got no problem voting with my feet.
Nice to know you've been so sheltered until now.
There doesn't need to be anywhere near a total collapse (interesting that you hedge with a rather extreme definition of "collapse") for public services and safety to degrade to a level that adversely affects the health and safety of ordinary citizens for a period of days to months. One only need to look to Latin America's last big economic collapse, the Syrian War or the roughest periods of post-Communist Eastern Europe to witness a massive drop in police protection, civil service resources and public utilities.
By the way, hundreds of thousands families in World War II were instantly displaced or caught in harrowing deadly situations by army movements, massive bombings, deliberate targeting of civilians and frequent rounds of genocide. In many major cities services were disrupted for weeks, months, even years. A Jewish family, much less *any* family in Europe in 1939 would have been well served by some survival training, spare supplies, escape plans, safety plans and a even a serviceable, concealable weapon in many cases.
I got no problem voting with my feet.
Very nice! Yeah, I didn't mean to come off as one of those folks because I'm not. I just didn't want people thinking that having the equipment was all you needed because the training and exams and licensing are pretty important. Either way, have a good one and 73, sir.
I'm pretty sure that regardless of how "total" the collapse may be, any collapse lets people benefit from whatever survival training and preparedness they may have. Even if you don't need it, it never hurts to have it.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The trick is to take them out and run them a bit on a regular basis. Not only will it keep the machine in better working order, but it also improves your understanding of the equipment. Fix a minor quirk here and there, you'll find your generator is more useful to you in a disaster, since that's when you're likely to need that experience.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!