US East Coast weather fun ahead

[Selby]

Massive explosion believed to be a transformer at the Con Ed Plant, E14th and FDR. This is what took out the power.

Looks like a pretty large transformer either failed under load or was breached by water and thus failed.

[Surlyboi]

Breached by water. One of my guys lives about three blocks from there and it wigged the shit out of him when it happened.

I've been iMessaging my teams for the past 48 hours, some are in the dark, most aren't. No one's under water or forced out of their homes, thankfully. All are probably drunk though. I've had a few light blinks here and there, but I still have power. Manhattan is dark below 38th street.

Parts of lower Manhattan, parts of coastal Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island are under water. The Illuminati hub is very probably under water.

We're still telling everyone to stay home 'til at least Thursday.

[Tale]

Guy out on his bicycle, downtown east side.

[Surlyboi]

Whitehall Street. That's before the lights went out and really dumb. He's about 200 yards from the water.

[Abagadro]

Stuff

Stay safe dude.

[Ghambit]

So what happens to these people w/o power when it dips into the 30's this weekend?

[Abagadro]

They seem to have pre-positioned a lot of stuff from outside of the affected area geared towards getting power back up. Since it is wind based (instead of ice based which is harder to deal with) hopefully they can make some good progress in short order.

[Tale]

[Surlyboi]

The top picture's two blocks from where I grew up, Tale.

This is so far, my favorite shot. It's from the supermarket downstairs from me.

[Abagadro]

Heh. One of the reasons NYC is boss.

I really hope the emergency management folks have it together. I think they will do okay. I do a ton of emergency management stuff in my job but it is all egg-headed legal parsing of the Stafford Act and tabletop/simulated game planning. Facing the real deal is a whole other ball game. EM learned a lot from Katrina and hopefully collectively can deal with Sandy much better.

[Tale]

The top picture's two blocks from where I grew up, Tale.

Do you know which stop it is? Al Jazeera journalist I got it from is asking: http://twitter.com/evanchill/status/263144150369701888

[Sjofn]

Jersey Shore? Destroyed?

Is anyone hoping that it DOESN'T get destroyed?

Me.

[Abagadro]

One thing that worries me is that I was just at a conference last week where a guy from Queensland was talking about the "inland tsunami" they had last year. That is scary shit and is worse than the storm surge since it is so fast moving. I hope we don't see that kind of thing from this storm.

[Surlyboi]

And another transformer just went up in Park Slope.

[Tale]

West Side Highway earlier - taken by the dude on the bicycle above.

[Mrbloodworth]

Kind of amazed NYC does not have flood doors on its subways and tunnels.

[disKret]

Hospital evacuated cause of malfunctioning power generators? Is there no obligatory periodical tests of this shit in US?

[Strazos]

Welp, I guess I'm not going to the casinos this weekend.

I must have terrible travel luck this year - protests in Cairo and Israel nearly derail my vacation, I had to suffer through a 7 hour overnight flight in coach with a wailing child, and a freak hurricane is looking to ruin the 1 week I'm going to be home on leave in a 2-year period.

[Sjofn]

Kind of amazed NYC does not have flood doors on its subways and tunnels.

It's not like this happens to them very often, and I don't know how much it would cost to retrofit it all (as the subway system itself is really old in some parts).

I do know after Katrina the MTA did a bunch of "how fucked are we if something like that happened to us" whatnot. The answer was "pretty fucked!" I honestly don't know what they decided to do about it, as I haven't discussed that particular topic with my father for years now (he is so fucking glad he's retired now though, I tell you what). :P

[Sir T]

Well I hope they have a way of draining the water out of the subway at least.

[Khaldun]

The NYC subway system has a network of pumps, some of them 75 years old and on the verge of failing on a normal day, that pump water out of the system every day, even when there's no rain. When there's rain, the pump system is always challenged and sometimes has to be kept working through heroic efforts by the people who maintain it. If the pumps have been damaged or ruined by being submerged, no, they don't have any way of getting the water out. Worst case scenario is that the subways won't be running for a very very long time.

[Signe]

Well, my idiot cousin who wouldn't evacuate from Sea Isle City was okay last I heard.  He did lose a van though.  He parked it at the fire station which is now under water.  He's lucky he didn't lose a wife and four kids.  Why did he not evacuate?  Because he wanted to get a head start on the clean up.  WHAT?  It's one thing to take a chance yourself, but to risk your four children just makes me sick. 

[Ironwood]

Yeah, that's retarded.

[Ghambit]

One thing that worries me is that I was just at a conference last week where a guy from Queensland was talking about the "inland tsunami" they had last year. That is scary shit and is worse than the storm surge since it is so fast moving. I hope we don't see that kind of thing from this storm.

About 1000 people got trapped late last night when an inland berm blew out in Jersey (just west of hoboken).  But that's the only type of that event I've heard.

[Lantyssa]

http://instagram.com/p/RYnio1s6gf/

The Illuminati getting flooded out is no loss.

[Lantyssa]

Hospital evacuated cause of malfunctioning power generators? Is there no obligatory periodical tests of this shit in US?

It's probably like when Allison hit Houston.  The generators, being as heavy as they are, are located at ground level or in the basement.  Water floods them, and they fail.  They had been fine through countless hurricanes, but one storm of the century and a cascade failure happens.  The entire hospital district here spent years and massive amounts of money elevating them to avoid that scenario in the future.

[Nebu]

You know, it's a sad fucking statement of Americans when the only way taxpayers will support the building of infrastructure is AFTER old technology has failed in a disaster. 

[Sjofn]

Well, my idiot cousin who wouldn't evacuate from Sea Isle City was okay last I heard.  He did lose a van though.  He parked it at the fire station which is now under water.  He's lucky he didn't lose a wife and four kids.  Why did he not evacuate?  Because he wanted to get a head start on the clean up.  WHAT?  It's one thing to take a chance yourself, but to risk your four children just makes me sick. 

Wow, glad they're alright. That is pretty dumb.

No one in my family has any power, but otherwise they're all fine. So now I can be selfish and be annoyed this hurricane fucked up my plans to go visit them this week!

[Ghambit]

You know, it's a sad fucking statement of Americans when the only way taxpayers will support the building of infrastructure is AFTER old technology has failed in a disaster. 

You think Florida is fucked up now?  Imagine if hurricane Andrew never happened.   

[Merusk]

Hospital evacuated cause of malfunctioning power generators? Is there no obligatory periodical tests of this shit in US?

Dude that costs money and requires justification to the bean counters at the insurance companies.  Hospitals don't make a ton, it's the insurance companies that do.

Not to disparage your family, Signe, but "get a head start on the cleanup" has always parsed as, "I want first dibs on looting" to me.  When my grandparents lived in Florida, the people who actually did cleanup said, "I'm staying to protect my property after the storm."  (usually while nodding to/ pointing at their guns.)

You know, it's a sad fucking statement of Americans when the only way taxpayers will support the building of infrastructure is AFTER old technology has failed in a disaster.  

It's the only way we can justify it.  Otherwise you're proving a negative. "Well it's been just fine so far!" "Because it hasn't been used to this extent, asshat. It's under-designed and woefully outdated." "Well bring me proof!"  

You know, it's a sad fucking statement of Americans when the only way taxpayers will support the building of infrastructure is AFTER old technology has failed in a disaster.  

You think Florida is fucked up now?  Imagine if hurricane Andrew never happened.  

Shitbunnies that's a frightening thought.

Reminds me of the Colorado fires 5 or 6 years ago that prompted all the fire code changes and required house design changes.  The sheer number of morons who rebuilt as fast as possible to avoid the protections afforded by those codes (and the "monumental" increase of $5k-$7 on a $350-$500k house) is staggering.

[Ghambit]

I'm not even talking about building codes or any of that.  I'm just talking about generic shitholes turned moderately liveable.  There is no greater example of this than post-Andrew Southern Miami-Dade and post-Katrina NOLA.  Florida natives half-joke about this stuff but in reality we're serious.  Gnasty storm comes in... "good, place needed to get cleaned up anyways.  wipe it the fuck out."

Hurricanes are nature's way of cleansing tropical regions of garbage (underbrush, decrepid trees, weak shorelines, brown people  , etc.), to go along with heat transfer.  Those rules dont change just because humans are there.  

Marketwise you get a gnasty bubble though once things are rebuilt.

[Nebu]

So... Hurricanes are like a city etch-a-sketch?

You may be onto something.

[Surlyboi]

Breezy Point in Far Rockaway looks like a scene out of Fallout.

The wife's office building's emergency generator kicked in when the power went out, but only had enough gas to run for 10 hours, so that's still shot.
Key points of the subway are still under water and the pumps are being run like demons.
Metro North has a 40-foot boat across a track somewhere.
The Brooklyn Battery and Lincoln Tunnels are still flooded.
Andrew Cuomo is still dating Sandra Lee.
My neighborhood is still eerily quiet for a Tuesday morning in Manhattan.
Aaaaaand of course, Donald Trump survived.

[Rendakor]

We lost power for an hour and a half this morning; I was more surprised when it came back on. Lots of local roads are still flooded but other than that we made it through intact here.

[01101010]

Hospital evacuated cause of malfunctioning power generators? Is there no obligatory periodical tests of this shit in US?

It's probably like when Allison hit Houston.  The generators, being as heavy as they are, are located at ground level or in the basement.  Water floods them, and they fail.  They had been fine through countless hurricanes, but one storm of the century and a cascade failure happens.  The entire hospital district here spent years and massive amounts of money elevating them to avoid that scenario in the future.

It's the Ford Pinto approach to cost vs. risk.