Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Hurricane Sandy

This is topic Hurricane Sandy in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-28-2012, 06:03 PM:

Surprised that there doesn't seem to have been any mention of it.

It's 23:00 here in London and our clocks went back this morning, so the MTA transport shutdown should be starting about now. I hope everybody on that part of the East coast that can be is home and safe, and that everybody will be ok.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-28-2012, 07:49 PM:

I just canceled my call for tomorrow/Tuesday due to Sandy. Our Governor (Maryland) has declared a state of emergency...closed the state government for Monday and also is shutting down all mass transit...bus, train...you name it.

In case you don't think it is serious...Atlantic City has closed the Casinos!!!!

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-29-2012, 03:42 AM:

There was also a tsunami warning for Hawaii over the weekend, but thankfully it turned out to be essentially a false alarm.

The weather seems to be weird everywhere. Although, admittedly, it's nothing like as big a deal as what is happening on the east coast of the US, we had our first snow of the winter here in north-east England on Friday. I can't ever remember it being this cold as early as late October. And this is coming after one of the wettest years in Britain since records began. And south-east California had an unusually hot summer, too: I was in Loma Linda from late July to early September, where the temperature went well into three figures (of fahrenheit) every day. Everyone was talking about it, not least when the electricity bills for the air conditioning started hitting doormats.

Hoping that everyone stays safe and that the disruption is minimal.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 10-29-2012, 06:52 AM:

It would appear that Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas are relatively safe as of Monday at 7 am.

Virgina may be more troubled.

Besides what the talking heads mention, heavy rain saturates the ground. Lack of tree pruning, keeping old poles in place 25 years past their replacement dates, and heavy wind are likely to cause troubles due to trees becoming uprooted. I do not see heavy flooding near Washington D.C..

Much worse Northward. Louis

Posted by Kerry Fleming (Member # 1657) on 10-29-2012, 08:35 AM:

We dodged the bullet down here in Florida again. Sandy passed by us several hundred miles off shore. Tore up the Bahamas. Few days of higher than normal winds & some rains (not as wet a tropical storm as Iasac) was all we got thank God. Sandy has evolved into a different storm since. Folks in the northeast are in for a rough ride!

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 10-29-2012, 11:55 AM:

We are starting to see the winds and alittle rain now. Between 4-8pm tonight it's going to get worse and landfall around Atlantic City area around midnight.

Hurricane Sandy sank the Tall ship H.M.S. Bounty off the North Carolina coast last night. They used this ship for the 1962 film remake with Marlon Brando.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-29-2012, 03:30 PM:

The Tsunami warning in Hawaii was not a false alarm Leo because a series of very small waves did strike the islands especially at the harbor at Kahului on the island of Maui with a five foot wave at about 10:30 Saturday night. I was watching DRACULA on Blu Ray when the civil alert alarm went off at about 7:30 in the evening. I stopped watching the movie and tuned in to all the news reports until it was determined that there were not going to be any destructive wave actions in Hawaii

Sorry to hear about the sinking of the replica of the HMS Bounty that was used in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, Bill. When the Blu Ray of the movie was released several months ago, I was very intrigued with the documentary about the construction of the vessel.

-Claude

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 10-29-2012, 05:58 PM:

Pulled this off a friends FB page:

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-29-2012, 10:21 PM:

That's a Photoshopped fake. There's various other fakes being passed around on the 'net. The folks making these things need a slap across the mouth.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-29-2012, 11:09 PM:

It's the wrong kind of cloud for a hurricane. That's a picture of a supercell. (A giant thunderstorm that often generates tornadoes.)

Up here, we're just getting rain and lots of wind.
It's supposed to get up to around 50 kts. tomorrow.

I was supposed to have a school group at the TREC tomorrow but they cancelled on account of weather. On the other hand, there was a school group, today, that got rained out of the outdoor activity they had planned so they came to the theater to get out of the rain. So, all together, it balanced out.

I'm not minimizing this storm in the least bit but I'm getting fed up with all cries of, "The sky is falling" that are plastered all over the news!

I'm sick of people here in Pennsylvania screaming about the hurricane that's coming.

No, we're not going to get a hurricane. We're going to get the remnants of a post-tropical depression. I'd like to see a hurricane that can make it over the Appalachians get this far inland.

I'm not saying this isn't bad weather.
Yes! It IS bad weather! Pretty DAMN bad weather!
But, up here, all we have to do is pull down the storm windows, batten down the hatches and stay inside until it blows over. If we're lucky, we won't have any big trees come down.

And pray for the people in New York City and New Jersey!

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-30-2012, 07:28 AM:

From the pictures we're seeing here this morning it's looking pretty bad. Water pouring into Hoboken PATH station, so its tunnels are probably flooded. Several Subway lines flooded, Brooklyn-Battery tunnel (Can't remember the new name for it) flooded several feet deep. Queens-Midtown tunnel closed. Holland tunnel flooded, not heard anything about the Lincoln tunnel. A 12 foot high underground car park entrance flooded to within a few inches of the top. Most of lower Manattan likely to be without power for several days. A fire at ground level; not sure what that is, gas pipes? Underground transformer vault? A number of deaths, several from falling trees, one electrocution from wires brought down.

It's going to take a lot of work to put this right; I hope everybody is safe.

Posted by Alan Plester (Member # 852) on 10-30-2012, 08:20 AM:

For anyone round the area,just hoping you will all be safe, my thoughts are with you.I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like. This is going to take a very long time to fix.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 10-30-2012, 08:25 AM:

Stephen the tunnels new name is Hugh L. Carey tunnel. The Lincoln Tunnel was still open. In Manhattan most of the power outage is 30th Street going towards downtown to Battery Park. All transit is out for now (MTA, New Jersey Transit, Path).
Right now it's just raining and some wind here.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 10-30-2012, 09:05 AM:

a report from a BBC crew said that they were around 33rd Street, and just about everything South of there was out, so that sounds about right.

From the picture of Hoboken PATH station by the ticket gateline at the East end of the station it doesn't look like that's going to be open for a while.

There was also a picture of a Subway station flooded at track level much further North, 86th Street I think it was.

There seems to be some fairly serious damage to electrical infrastructure.

When the PATH tunnel was flooded between the WTC site and Exchange Place it took quite some time to fix the damage and get Exchange Place station open again; I know that time they were doing other work as well as fixing the flood damage, but this time the flooding seems to be much more widespread.

Obviously, the main bridges would have been closed during the high winds but there is no information as to weather there is any structural damage. Presumably they will have to be fully inspected before they can be re-opened.

When you've got a city made up mainly of islands it's bound to rely heavily on bridges and tunnels and if several of them are out of service for some time that's going to cause real problems.

I fear it's going to be a long time before everything is fully back to normal. My thoughts are with you people over there.

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 10-30-2012, 10:35 AM:

The mayor just said it might take 3-4 days for some of the MTA subway to be restored to some service. The PATH will take longer to return to service. Limited MTA bus service will slowly start today with no fares. All bridges will reopen around noon today except one or two on east side. The Holland tunnel will remain closed because of flooding. All train service to the city will remain down because of flooding.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-30-2012, 03:32 PM:

Reported on the BBC World Service just now that power is expected to be restored to all of Lower Manhattan and Queens within four days, but that for some more remote areas of NY and NJ, it 'could be weeks rather than days'.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-30-2012, 06:08 PM:

Yes, it was a bad storm, yes, it was a REALLY bad storm. And every news station immediately went into hysterical hyperbole mode, liken it to The Perfect storm....The MONSTER storm. In NYC they were making it sound like Aramageddon!

Did this weather event require 3 days of round the clock, non-stop TEAM coverage, sending out poor reporters to look look like idiots, standing out in 60mph winds and in water knee deep (one on WCBS actually got blown over & completely submurged in water, microphone and all), just to basically tell me, "It's really raining hard!"? Did we need to see the same video clips over and over day and night? I got it in the first 5 minutes they showed a video of a crane that had detached with the top hanging to the main section in Manhattan; did I need to see that shot for the next three hours and hear a talking head repeat over and over his dire warnings -- pure conjecture of course on his part -- of how extremelly dangerous it was...."If that section detaches and falls, folks, it will be like TORPEDO PLUNGING INTO THE ASPHALT!" Ooooo...that's scary.

Time to turn it off and read a book.

Hype, drama, scare'em to death so they will keep tuned is what it's all about.

BTW, I live on OCEAN Ave in Brooklyn. Yah, it rained, but no more than any rainy day, and even that wasn't particularly heavy -- you wouldn't even call it a down-pour and lasted only a few hours (the crack weather TEAM was saying it would rain for DAYS). Yes, it was windy, but only a bit more than any other windy day in October, and it lasted for only a few hours.

Wonder how the news will cover the end of the world in December?! Ya think they will have TEAM coverage?

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-30-2012, 07:06 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
I got it in the first 5 minutes they showed a video of a crane that had detached with the top hanging to the main section in Manhattan; did I need to see that shot for the next three hours and hear a talking head repeat over and over his dire warnings -- pure conjecture of course on his part -- of how extremelly dangerous it was...."If that section detaches and falls, folks, it will be like TORPEDO PLUNGING INTO THE ASPHALT!" Ooooo...that's scary

By the way... That crane is still there.
It's still broken and the boom is hanging down but it survived THE BIGGEST STORM IN WORLD HISTORY.

[Roll Eyes]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-30-2012, 08:12 PM:

Frank, I'm so sorry that all of New York was DESTROYED by this MONSTER STORM's WRATH. Is it over yet? I heard it was supposed to last weeks.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-30-2012, 10:39 PM:

Yes, Armageddon is over. And yes, the crane is still hanging there, and so it's still the leading news story on the local channels here, even though there is nothing new to say about it. Hey, when a new director has scary video of a piece of a crain hanging from its top, he goes with the scary video -- that's basic Modern News Broadcasting 101.

What most people seem to miss, and which the news reporters never mentioned, is that NYC has one of the best groups of disaster response services in the country. Does anyone think, as the new reporters seem to imply, that this is the first time water got into the subway tunnels? Or that they don't already have a contingency plan to deal with such an eventuality? Or that there is no emergency procedures in place in the event that water gets into the Brooklyn Batter Tunnel -- the tunnel runs UNDER WATER...it's de facto LOWER than sea level. All night long they were running that "news" video of water gushing into the BBTunnel (long after it had receeded, mind you), yet the babbleing talking head who over and over lamented this horror, never once mentioned that the city and the Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the Port Authority had a plan in place to deal with the situation and workers were already getting the clean up started. They made it seem like no one never thought, "Gee, maybe we need to have a plan in place in case some water gets in the tunnel."

No doubt it was a massive storm, but those tunnels will be cleared and trains back running in a few days. Hell, ever look at the tracks in the subway system on a rainy day? They have water running thru them all the time -- the Flatbush Avenue stop has water constantly running between the track ALL THE TIME, like a little creek because the water table has risen over the years. The track bed is actually designed to funnel water and drain it through an elaborate drainage system.

But then, if the talking head said, they are on it, they are dealing with it and it is not a problem that doesn't have a solution, where would the DRAMA be? So long after the water has been stopped infiltrating and the tunnel is already being drained, there's those scary videos of water cascading over the entrance walls -- 45 hours after it's over.

As Linda Ellerbee used to close her newcast: "And so it goes."

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 10-30-2012, 11:22 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
What most people seem to miss, and which the news reporters never mentioned, is that NYC has one of the best groups of disaster response services in the country.

Sadly, they have had a lot of practice...

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 10-31-2012, 03:26 PM:

I live about 40 miles northwest of NYC, and may not get power back for several weeks. Being that the house is on a private well for water, that means no water in addition to no lights or heat. There are literally hundreds of trees and power lines down just in my immediate area. Fortunately, my house survived without any wind or water damage, so I am just being inconvenienced. Others, especially along the coast, fared much worse.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-31-2012, 05:26 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
As Linda Ellerbee used to close her newcast: "And so it goes."

I miss Linda Ellerbee [Frown]

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-31-2012, 05:32 PM:

Here in Boston, we just got rain and wind. Some people lost power for a few hours, but my lights barely flickered. The worst damage was some fallen leaves and tree limbs (and power lines).

NY and NJ got whacked pretty badly, however, especially along the coast.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-31-2012, 11:34 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
And yes, the crane is still hanging there, and so it's still the leading news story on the local channels here, even though there is nothing new to say about it.

As often happens, Dave Letterman put it best about the dangling crane: "It's very dangerous, but don't worry -- the police department put out a couple of orange cones."

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 11-01-2012, 12:12 AM:

Until the weather calms down and they can get a crew up there, that's about all they can do, right now. Right?

I think NY has bigger fish to fry, right now.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 11-01-2012, 09:22 AM:

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
live about 40 miles northwest of NYC, and may not get power back for several weeks. Being that the house is on a private well for water, that means no water in addition to no lights or heat.

I'm glad to hear that you're ok Mitchell. From what we're seeing here New Jersey is one of the worst affected areas; from what we've seen on the news Hoboken is looking pretty bad.

How are you managing without water; have you had to move out for a while?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-02-2012, 06:24 AM:

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
I live about 40 miles northwest of NYC, and may not get power back for several weeks.

Yikes - very sorry to hear that.

That's one of the many problems with disasters that cause major infrastructure damage. The news crews are there while the event is in progress, but as soon as it subsides they move on very quickly and living with serious damage becomes the new normal. After York flooded in November 2000, a friend was not able to move back in to her house until May 2002, thanks largely to different insurance companies and the council arguing over who should foot the bill for what. But within a week of the sandbags being taken away the TV crews went with them, and so no-one felt under any pressure to get things done. As an even more extreme example, the uncle of a colleague lost his car in the Minneapolis bridge collapse (not that he was complaining - I wouldn't, if I'd survived that fall uninjured!), and it was two years before the insurers finally coughed up.

It's surprising how quickly Sandy has disappeared from the news media, though. On Monday, it was virtually the only story on the front page of this paper's site. Now, it's not even on the front page.

Needless to say, I hope that Mitchell and everyone else without utilities, or worse, don't have to wait that long. The utility companies' engineers and techs have certainly got their work cut out for them in the next few weeks - that's for sure.

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 11-03-2012, 09:46 PM:

The aftermath of the storm revealed the consequences to be much worse than most people knew during it.
More than 80 lives were lost, and yesterday bodies were still being pulled out of the mud. A community at the tip of Rockaway Peninsula (Queens) caught fire and was destroyed, with 80 to 100 homes incinerated or totally destroyed by the surge, which contained waves of 20 feet above the rising tide. Firefighters were helpless--they couldn't get to the conflagration, and the high winds spread the flames across the rooftops.
Cooperation of city, state and federal officials was extraordinary, and frequent press conferences kept online and TV
viewers informed. The Gov. Cuomo called up 2,000 Guard soldiers. The Pentagon sent two warships, an airlift of
generators, food, water, troops and medical supplies, and barges of gasoline and diesel fuel, with priority to first responders, hospital generators, etc. Gas stations were mostly closed, lacking electric power to run their pumps, personnel to run them, and delivery of gas. Long lines of cars and people bearing gas cans at stations, waiting for them to open, erupted in fistfights, requiring police and National Guards people to keep order. Two major hospitals had to be evacuated, and some nursing homes as well, because of flooding, lack of power and
water. People in high rise buildings were without light, heat,
power and water, and of course the elevators could not operate, trapping people, especially the elderly and infirm. To get water to flush the toilets, people lined up at fire hydrants with buckets. As bus and train service slowly began to recover, they were run free of fares.
All the above was in New York City, with the worst in the Borough of Richmond (Staten Island) and lower Manhatten.
New Jersey is another story--barrier islands were reconfigured by the storm with houses swept to sea, boats deposited on main streets and railroad tracks, a Ferris wheel and loop-the-loop swept to sea, and landscapes left looking like the coast of Japan after the big tsunami.
My daughter volunteered her help in a rescue shelter, taking care of children, and my son-in-law with the Department of Sanitation. Many groups were formed, including my Temple, to collect food, clothing, etc. for those left destitute or needy by the storm.