Showing posts with label New York City. Show all posts

Monday, October 29, 2012

Sandy. Millions Without Electricity. Trees Down. Massive Flooding. Live Video Coverage.

Watch live: Raw video of Hurricane Sandy from high above New York City

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Crane Dangles from NYC High-Rise, Clearing Streets

Verena Doblik Published: Oct 29, 2012, 9:17 PM EDT Associated Press

AP PHOTO/CHARLES SYKES

A construction crane atop a luxury high-rise dangles precariously over the streets after collapsing in high winds from Superstorm Sandy, Oct. 29, in New York.

NEW YORK — A construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds Monday and dangled precariously, prompting plans for engineers and inspectors to climb to the top to examine it as a huge storm bore down on the city.

Some buildings, including 900 guests at the Parker Meridien hotel, were being evacuated as a precaution and the streets below were cleared, but there were no immediate reports of injuries. City officials didn't have a number on how many people were told to leave.

Authorities received a call about the collapse at around 2 p.m. as conditions worsened from the approaching Hurricane Sandy. Meteorologists said winds atop the 74-story building could have been close to 95 mph at the time.

The nearly completed high-rise is known as One57 and is in one of the city's most desirable neighborhoods, near Carnegie Hall, Columbus Circle and Central Park. It had been inspected, along with other city cranes, on Friday and was found to be ready for the weather.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said later Monday it wasn't clear why the accident happened.

"It's conceivable that nobody did anything wrong and there was no malfunction, it was just a strange gust of wind," Bloomberg said.

Engineers and inspectors were planning to hike up 74 flights of stairs to examine the crane. The harrowing inspection was being undertaken by experts who are "the best of the best," city Buildings Department spokesman Tony Sclafani said.

Hurricane Sandy a Chance at Redemption for FEMA

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ERIC LIPTON

Published: October 29, 2012

WASHINGTON — As Hurricane Sandy approached landfall Monday, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials here were struggling with the question of how to deploy resources in the face of a powerful, far-reaching storm that was bearing down on a string of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.

Based on forecasts and calculations, the officials decided to focus their resources on the southern part of New Jersey, where they had hundreds of thousands of ready-to-eat meals and bottles of water and hundreds of staff members prepared to respond.

In Lakehurst, N.J., in the center of the state, in collaboration with the Defense Department, the agency had created an “incident support base,” where it had blankets, cots, diapers and generators, along with the meals and water. A similar center was set up at a military base in Chicopee, Mass., near Springfield.

Other federal departments, like Health and Human Services, stood by to help evacuate nursing homes and hospitals. The department also sent a 50-person medical team to New Jersey to provide backup if hospitals are overwhelmed. And the American Red Cross has hundreds of workers, who have set up shelters

In a news release on Monday night, FEMA provided its most comprehensive information about the response, saying that several search and rescue teams had been deployed to the Mid-Atlantic and that inspectors had been placed at all nuclear power plants that could be affected by the storm. The agency said that 139 ambulances had been positioned in New York and another 211 would soon be sent there.

FEMA, with the authorization of President Obama, had as of Monday afternoon declared a disaster in eight states and the District of Columbia, allowing them to begin to request assistance, before the worst of the storm hit.

Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator, said the real challenge is waiting to see just where the storm hits the hardest and which communities need help.

FEMA has not seen a test on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, in 2005, when delays in delivering emergency relief, failures in its communications system, and problems with the emergency housing program combined to produce widespread criticism.

Since then it has tried to strengthen its ability to respond to a major disaster, both by rebuilding its own supply management system and personnel, and by fostering stronger ties to outside parties, including the Defense Department and even the owners of big box retail stores, which Mr. Fugate said might be turned to as a backup for emergency supplies.

But FEMA still has some weaknesses — which could be exposed during this storm — including insufficient management of its disaster assistance employee program, according to an audit released this year by the Government Accountability Office, which found inconsistencies in how it hires and trains staff.

Senator Susan Collins, from Maine, said Monday in an interview that FEMA has more experienced leadership — for example, Mr. Fugate once led Florida’s emergency management agency — and it is doing a better job coordinating its response with local and state governments than in the past.

read more at http://www.nytimes.com

Hurricane Sandy blows away campaign plans

Both candidates abandon the campaign trail, as President Obama focuses on emergency response and Mitt Romney urges supporters to give aid. But it's unclear how the storm will sway voters.

People in Youngstown, Ohio, line up for a campaign rally with former President Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden. (John Moore, Getty Images / October 29, 2012)

By Mark Z. Barabak and Paul West, Los Angeles Times

October 30, 2012

WASHINGTON — For months, the two presidential campaigns have been bracing for an October surprise, and it finally arrived in the form of rain, wind and snow curled like a fist 1,000 miles wide.

There has never been anything like it in modern American history, a natural disaster so massive and so close to election day, and for all their minutely-plotted moves there was nothing for the candidates and their strategists to do but improvise and hope for the best.

President Obama scrapped a campaign appearance in Orlando, Fla., and hurried back to Washington to oversee the emergency response to Hurricane Sandy. Speaking to reporters at the White House, he brushed aside questions about the political implications.

"I'm not worried, at this point, about the impact on the election," he said. "I'm worried about the impact on families. I'm worried about the impact on our first responders. I'm worried about the impact on our economy and on transportation. The election will take care of itself next week."

His Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, sought a balance between political imperative and concern for others. Campaigning in northeastern Ohio, he said a win in that Midwestern battleground state would ensure victory next Tuesday.

"We're counting on Ohio," he said in a stop outside Cleveland. But so are others, he said, urging supporters to donate to the Red Cross or find other ways to give. "The people in Ohio have big hearts, so we're expecting you to follow through and help out," he said before moving on to a stop in Iowa.

Obama abandoned his campaign schedule for Tuesday and may do so beyond that. Romney planned a "storm relief event" in Kettering, Ohio, where he earlier advertised a campaign stop. Both suspended fundraising emails in a broad area affected by the storm.

But their TV ads blazed on, creating a jarring juxtaposition as the heat of the campaign butted against the sober warnings of emergency officials and scenes of flooding and other damage from Hurricane Sandy.

"In what was already becoming perhaps the most unpredictable election we've had in a generation, this adds one more level of unpredictability," said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster in Wisconsin, another of the home-stretch battlegrounds.

History suggests a few things. Fairly or not, Obama was treading the highest wire, since he is the face of Washington's response. He will be measured over the next week in a way he has not been up to now.

Hurricane Sandy: More than 225,000 lose power in Connecticut

http://www.latimes.com

Thousands of Con Edison customers lose power due to Hurricane Sandy through New York City and Westchester County

Con Edison opted to pull the plug because the “storm surge threatened to flood the underground electrical delivery system,” according to a statement.

A woman stands on this piece of wood with a flash light to get a better view in Dumbo Brooklyn as the tide comes in on the East River on Monday October 29th, 2012. (

JOHN TAGGART FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

As power went out throughout New York City, a woman stood on a piece of wood with a flash light to get a better view in Dumbo, Brooklyn as the tide rose along the East River on Monday night. (John Taggart/for New York Daily News)

Hurricane Sandy: More than 2 million already without power

Matt Moran, a trimmer with Townsend Tree Service, cuts a fallen tree limb from a power line on 19th Avenue that fell as a result of the strong winds from Hurricane Sandy, Monday, Oct., 29, 2012, in Sea Cliff, N.Y. / AP PHOTO/KATHY KMONICEK

Last Updated 9:41 p.m. ET

Hours before Hurricane Sandy makes landfall, utilities have already reported power outages for customers in several states. More than two million customers were without power in Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, and several other states.

How to keep your food safe if Hurricane Sandy cuts electricity

Connecticut

Connecticut Light & Power (which offers outage reports in both map and tableformats) says about 398,235 customers were without power Monday.

Delaware and Maryland

Delmarva reports over 84,000 customers lost power, with over 900 active outages.

BGE reports restoring service to over 38,000 customers Monday; about 102,852 are still without power.

PEPCO had at least 12,000 customers out, with over 500 active outages.

Over 17,000 outages were reported by Mon Power and Potomac Edison.

Massachusetts

NStar reported about at least 152,709 outages Monday evening. National Grid had over 37,600 outages Monday afternoon.

Additional outages were reported by Western Massachusetts Electric Co. (about 3,683 customers) and Unitil (28,995 customers) Monday evening.

Maine

Central Maine Power reports at least 49,600 customers without power. Bangor Hydroreports over 506 customers affected.

New Hampshire

Unitil reports over 12,000 customers lost power in the capital area and over 19,000 on the sea coast.

Hurricane Sandy wreaks havoc on small businesses

NEW YORK - Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on small businesses along the East Coast Monday, keeping employees and customers away.

At Angelo's Civita Farnese, a restaurant in Providence, R.I., the lunchtime crowd didn't materialize and few customers were expected for dinner. By 12:30 p.m. — hours before the worst of the storm was expected to hit — there were about 10 customers inside, and owner Bob Antignano had no hopes of getting the usual 200 to 250 he usually serves for lunch. He had a smaller staff prepare fewer meals than usual, but most of the food was going to have to be donated to charity.

"It's a wasted day and it looks like tomorrow probably will be as well," Antignano said.

For many small businesses, opening depended on whether employees lived close by or could work remotely. Businesses vulnerable to wind and water damage and power outages were forced to close. The storm also ruined business trips, meetings and presentations.

Antignano serves between 400 and 500 meals a day between lunch and dinner. The loss of two days' revenue will wipe out his profit for the month. He would suffer losses if the restaurant lost power. He would have to close, and the food in his walk-in refrigerator and freezers could spoil.

The storm also created woes for small business owners based in other parts of the country.

read more at http://www.cnbc.com/id/49602412

Watch Hurricane Sandy Live. Devastation Imminent. Updated Articles.

DEVASTATION IMMINENT

Officials prepare for Hurricane Sandy

Have you been affected by Hurricane Sandy? If so, share your images and footage with CNN iReport, but please stay safe.

Hurricane Sandy speeds towards landfall

A view of the East River ahead of Hurricane Sandy October 29, 2012 on the east side of Manhattan in New York City. Sandy, which has already claimed over 50 lives in the Caribbean is predicted to bring heavy winds and floodwaters to the mid-Atlantic region. / AP

Last Updated at 4:27 p.m. ET

NEW YORKA superstorm threatening 50 million people in the most heavily populated corridor in the nation gained strength Monday, packing winds of 90 mph and picking up considerable speed just hours before it is expected to make landfall, forecasters said.

The National Hurricane Center said Monday afternoon that Hurricane Sandy is moving northwest at 28 mph - up from 18 mph a few hours earlier. At 4:00 p.m. ET the Category 1 hurricane was about 55 miles east-southeast of Cape May, N.J. The storm's top sustained winds are holding at about 90 mph with higher gusts.

Gale/tropical storm-force force winds were reported from North Carolina to southern New England.

Hours before the storm made landfall, high winds had already knocked out power to more than half a million customers in several states by mid-day Monday.

Sandy is expected to hook inland Monday, colliding with a wintry storm moving in from the west and cold air streaming down from the Arctic. Forecasters say the storm's center will make landfall along or just south of the Southern New Jersey coast Monday evening.

Sandy’s wrath brings water to Grandview Island in Hampton, Va. Facebook/Sherry Winstead Martin

Hurricane Sandy shuts down film and TV production on East Coast

The CW's "Gossip Girl" was one of several TV shows that shut down production because of Hurricane Sandy. (Giovanni Rufino)

By Richard Verrier and Meredith Blake

October 29, 2012, 11:40 a.m.

Hurricane Sandy has put a temporary halt to film and TV production in New York City.

New York City officials announced that all film permits in the city have been revoked for Monday and Tuesday because of "Hurricane Sandy and continuing safety precautions,'' according to a statement from the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. "There will be no City authorized outdoor filming within the five boroughs."

At least nine TV shows were affected by the shutdown, including "Blue Bloods" (CBS), "Elementary" (CBS), "Gossip Girl" (CW), "Person of Interest" (CBS), "666 Park Avenue"(ABC) and "The Following" (Fox).

Rough surf of the Atlantic Ocean breaks over the beach and across Beach Ave., Monday morning, Oct. 29, 2012, in Cape May, N.J., as high tide and Hurricane Sandy begin to arrive.

Hurricane Sandy Liveblog: Sandy on track for record low barometric reading (+video)

Hurricane Sandy has turned toward the East Coast and intensified with a barometric pressure reading of 940 millibars. Sustained wind speeds are 90 mph up to 175 miles from the eye.

The eye of Hurricane Sandy is now 2-3 hours from the coast of New Jersey, according to the latest National Hurricane Center advisory. Winds are still at 90 mph, and Sandy's still moving at about 28 mph. Some have speculated that since Sandy is arriving sooner than forecast, and ahead of the high tide (between 8-9 p.m. tonight), that the storm surge won't be as bad as predicted. But that reasoning may be wrong.

Already the storm surge at New York City's Battery is at 6.1 feet, well above last year's peak during Hurricane Irene. Atlantic City is reporting a 5- foot storm surge. New Haven, Conn. is at 5 feet, and Boston has seas 4.2 feet above normal.

As previously reported, the expected storm surge in the NYC area is 6 to 11 feet. Even if Sandy makes landfall before the high tide, the winds whip around the backside of Sandy will push sea levels higher.

Monday 3:05 p.m.

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure has dropped to 940 millibars. Wind speeds are holding at 90 mph,according to the 2 p.m. National Hurricane Center update.

Sandy is turning toward the East Coast and has sped up to 28 mph. Even as it makes a left turn, "it also is swapping energy sources to become an extratropical cyclone.

The shift from tropical to extratropical tends to intensify the storm for a period, as well as redistribute winds and rainfall in ways that can shift the regions most heavily affected by wind and rain," writes Pete Spotts, the science writer for The Christian Science Monitor.

If Sandy retains the current barometric pressure, or it drops further, at landfall, the location would go into the record books as experiencing the lowest barometric pressure of any spot in the US north of Cape Hatteras, according to data compiled by the Weather Underground.

Hurricane preparedness: 5 things you can do to keep safe

Monday 2:50 p.m.

Google has put together a crisis map for Hurricane Sandy, which overlays lots of different data about the storm – including its current position and forecast track, storm surge probabilities, traffic conditions, and emergency shelter locations – into a single interactive image.

Also, be sure to check out this mesmerizing map of wind conditions across the United States. It was developed a few weeks by Google data visualization experts Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, in part to help people conceptualize the potential of wind energy, but the map is particularly striking on a day like today.

How does Hurricane Sandy compare with Irene, which battered the East Coast from South Carolina to Maine last year? Take a look at this interactive image from the Wall Street Journal.

Irene was the fifth costliest hurricane in US history.

If you're interested in how Sandy compares to every cyclones recorded since 1851, check out this graphic from the Guardian.

Finally, if you haven't had enough scenes of reporters getting pelted by sea foam, people buying bottled water, or Fox News weathercaster Janice Dean throwing air quotes, have a look at Poynter's collection of animated gifs of hurricane clichés.

Monday 1:45 pm

What's all the buzz about Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure? (And does it have anything to do with inducing labor in pregnant women?)

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure is really low, especially for a Category 1 (winds between 74-95 mph) hurricane.

Generally, the lower the barometric pressure, the higher the winds.

Barometric pressure is a measurement of the weight of the air. "Baros" is Greek for weight, and the Greek word for measure is "metron." A barometer measures the weight of a column of air directly above a given point in terms of inches or milibars of mercury displaced.

The normal sea level pressure is 1013.25 millibars.

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure was 943 milibars Monday morning, according to the Hurricane Hunters, the US Air Force pilots that regularly fly into the eye of hurricanes. That reading was a drop from the previous reading, indicating an intensification of the hurricane.

Hurricane Sandy's barometric pressure is now roughly equivalent to the typical Category 3 or Category 4 storm on Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. But Sandy is not a typical hurricane; it is, in the words of Weather Channel meterologist Stu Ostro, a "meteorologically mind-boggling combination of ingredients."

But we digress from role of barometric pressure. Suffice it to say, Sandy's barometric numbers are low, and they are helping make it a very big storm.

How low are Sandy's barometric readings? The storm isn't (yet) in the US Top 10 most intense (as measured by low barometric pressure) hurricanes. But Sandy's getting close. No. 10 on the list was a Hurricane Carla, a 1961 Category 4 storm with 931 millibars.

The lowest barometric pressure ever measured in a US hurricane was 882 millibars, in Hurricane Wilma in 2005. Wilma had sustained winds of more than 185 mph, making it a Category 5 storm. The cyclone with the lowest recorded barometric pressure in the world was the 1979 storm Typhoon Tip, in the western Pacific Ocean, with a measurement of 869.9 millibars.

A gas station displays a sign saying they’re out of gas in Branford, Ct. Facebook/Kevin Clancy

Hurricane Sandy headed toward Russell Crowe's 'Noah' ark

The Oyster Bay, N.Y., set of "Noah," featuring a massive ark from the biblical epic. The set is in the path of Hurricane Sandy. (Dan Wagner/New York Magazine)

Hurricane Sandy has shut down production on at least half a dozen New York television shows and feature films, but none more ironically than Russell Crowe's “Noah.”

Writer-director Darren Aronofsky’s film about the biblical flood and ark postponed shooting Monday, but the more pressing question is what will happen to the movie’s colossal boat. Aronofsky’s production team built two massive ships—one inside a Brooklyn sound stage, the other in the water at Oyster Bay, N.Y.

And Oyster Bay, a small inlet on the Long Island Sound, is very much in the path of Hurricane Sandy, with local flooding and wind gusts of up to 63 mph reported in the area.

The outdoor ark, which measures 450 feet long and is 75 feet tall and 45 feet wide, was not intended to be seaworthy. With production on the film wrapping up soon, the ark was scheduled to be used only sparingly in the weeks ahead and was partially dismantled over the last several days. But if the storm damages the Oyster Bay boat materially, “Noah” may need to organize some flood repairs.

Emma Watson, who co-stars in the film opposite Crowe, sent out a Twitter message Sunday night saying, “I take it that the irony of a massive storm holding up the production” of the film was not lost on her director or Crowe. Aronofsky used his down time to catch up on some movies, seeing “Cloud Atlas” and “The Master.”

Paramount Pictures' “Noah” is set for release in March 2014.

ALSO:

Hurricane Sandy leads to closed New York theaters

source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-hurricane-sandy-headed-toward-russell-crowes-noah-ark-20121029,0,5318685.story

A man looks down at a boarded up Broad Street subway station across the street from the New York Stock Exchange in New York October 28, 2012 as residents of lower Manhattan evacuate the city in preparation for Hurricane Sandy. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Hurricane Sandy doesn't stop sentries at Tomb of the Unknowns

Spc. Brett Hyde keeps guard over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during Hurricane Sandy at Arlington National Cemetery, Va. (Sgt. Jose A. Torres Jr. / U.S. Army / October 29, 2012)

WASHINGTON — Federal offices are shuttered. Schools are closed. Busses and subways have stopped running.

But the uniformed sentries at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknowns continued to stand guard Monday even as drenching rain from Hurricane Sandy doused the nation’s capital.

Volunteer soldiers, one by one, are taking turns guarding the tomb, dedicated in 1921 and long among the most visited sites in the nation's capital.

PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy approaches

"They will physically guard the Unknowns until conditions are no longer safe," said Maj. John Miller of the 3rd U.S. Infantry. “When the weather makes it unsafe to stand outside, the sentinel will move inside the awards room in the amphitheater where he can still see the tomb, but is out of the elements."

The soldiers are guarding the tomb in two-hour shifts.