From the New York Times...
New York Subways Are Shut Down as Hurricane Irene NearsBy JAMES BARRON
Published: August 27, 2011
New York became a city without one of its trademarks — the nation’s largest subway system — on Saturday as Hurricane Irene charged northward and the city prepared to face powerhouse winds that could drive a wall of water over the beaches in the Rockaways and between the skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan.
The city worked to complete its evacuation of about 370,000 residents in low-lying areas where officials expected flooding to follow the storm, and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said that more than a million people had been evacuated, mainly from four counties in the southern part of the state.
Officials warned that a big problem could be flooding at high tide, around 8 a.m. Sunday — before the storm has moved on and the wind has slacked off in and around the city, assuming it more or less follows the path where forecasters expect it to go.
“That is when you’ll see the water come over the side,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cautioned at a briefing on Saturday afternoon.
But despite the city’s efforts, opening 91 emergency centers that could take in 70,000 people, the mayor said that only 1,400 had arrived by 3:30 p.m. Saturday. The only other statistics available pointed to the difficulty of getting people to abide by the mayor’s mandatory evacuation order in what the city calls Zone A low-lying areas: He said 80 percent of the residents in some city-run buildings — but only 50 percent in others — had left by Saturday afternoon.
As the storm pushed toward the New York area, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops called up to help in — and after — the storm. Mr. Cuomo saw the first of them off from the 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, after saying they would assist the police, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He also said that some would be sent to Long Island, which could face heavy damage in the storm.
Mr. Christie said 1,500 National Guard troops had been deployed in New Jersey.
The mayor attributed one casualty to the storm, a 66-year-old man who fell from a ladder while trying to board up windows at his house in Jamaica, Queens. A Fire Department spokesman said the man, who was not immediately identified, was in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.
As the transit system prepared to shut down, police officers sounded the warning, strolling along subway platforms and telling people that the next train would be the last. The conductor of a No. 4 train that pulled into the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn at 12:14 p.m. had the same message.
“This is it,” he said, smiling. “You’re just in time.”
Soon subway employees were stretching yellow tape across the entrances to stations to keep people from going down the steps and into a subterranean world that was suddenly off limits, but not deserted. Transit workers were charged with executing a huge, mostly underground ballet, moving 200 subway trains away from outdoor yards that could flood if the storm delivered the 6 to 12 inches of rain that forecasts called for. The trains were to be parked in tunnels across the city, making regular runs impossible.
Mr. Bloomberg said the transit system was “unlikely to be back” in service on Monday. He said crews would have to pump water from tunnels if they flooded and restore the signal system before they could move the parked trains out. That would mean “the equipment’s not where you would want it” for the morning rush, he said. “Plan on a commute without mass transit on Monday morning.”
Mr. Bloomberg also said electricity could be knocked out in Lower Manhattan if Consolidated Edison shut off the power to pre-empt the problems that flooding could cause for its cables. (A Con Ed spokesman said later that the company, while prepared, had no immediate plans for that kind of shutdown.)
Other officials, including Mr. Christie, repeated what they had said on Friday: Evacuate.
Mr. Christie said that 90 percent to 98 percent of residents in parts of four counties in South Jersey had left — Cape May, Atlantic, Ocean and Monmouth. About 1,200 people who were evacuated from Atlantic County on Friday had spent the night without cots at the Sun Center arena in Trenton, where many people ended up sleeping in seats, he said. They were taken to the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, which Mr. Christie visited after a news conference.
In New York, Mr. Bloomberg said the evacuation and the transit shutdown, actions that he said had not been ordered before, were proceeding as well as could be expected, with officials going door to door in high-rise housing projects and firefighters driving school buses to help get homebound residents out of low-lying neighborhoods.
Phyllis Rhodie, 48, boarded such a bus outside the Redfern Houses in the slender peninsula of the Rockaways. She took along her boyfriend, three children, water, food, some medical supplies — and a case of nerves.
“I’m staying wherever they can put me up,” she said.
Officials said elevators in housing-project buildings would be shut off. And, for all the evacuation, some New Yorkers stayed put. The city did not evacuate inmates on Rikers Island because, a city spokesman explained, “It’s not in Zone A.”
The storm caused major disruptions long before the first bands of rain swirled by. The three major airports in the New York region stopped clearing flights for landing at noon. Officials said they would remain open for planes that wanted to take off, but most flights had been canceled on Friday, according to Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority.
Amtrak canceled most trains after 11 a.m., although there was some confusion at Pennsylvania Station. A northbound train that left at 10:15 a.m. was, the conductor said, the last one going in that direction and was sold out.
The National Weather Service said the storm would churn along the Interstate 95 corridor, keeping up its 14-mile-an-hour pace. That would bring the center to the New York area by Sunday afternoon — probably east of the city on Long Island, forecasters said, although they cautioned that the path could change at any moment. The city had been under a hurricane warning, its first since 1985, since Friday afternoon.
The storm’s potential path reminded weather historians of a devastating 1938 hurricane, a storm captured on black-and-white newsreels that television stations played as Hurricane Irene approached. The 1938 storm rearranged Long Island’s geography, carving an inlet through what had been a thin but solid stretch of land on the way to the Hamptons.
On Saturday, New York awoke to an odd, greenish-gray sky, overheated air that felt heavy with moisture and only a light, summery breeze. It was not just another sleepy Saturday in August — too many people were on alert too early. In Battery Park City, long lines of taxis waited to take evacuees who carried their possessions to the curb. Uptown, some were dismayed when they found that stores like the new Fairway on East 86th Street had closed.
“It fits into the whole alarmist nature of the city,” said Mike Ortenau, 44, who lives in the neighborhood.
Reporting for the hurricane coverage was contributed by Al Baker, Michael Barbaro, Matt Flegenheimer, Christine Haughney, Thomas Kaplan, Andrew O’Reilly, Anna M. Phillips, Jennifer Preston, Melena Ryzik, Liz Robbins, Noah Rosenberg, Fernanda Santos and Tim Stelloh.
Hurricane Irene passed through Nags Head, N.C.
Winds from Hurricane Irene battered Rodanthe, N.C.
Last-minute commuters boarded a train at Union Square in New York City before the subways stopped running.
More pics...
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/08/27/us/20110828-HURRICANE.html
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Topic: Hurricane! Oh My It`s Crazy (Read 1138 times)
September 04, 2010, 02:42:43 pm
