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'Frankenstorm' bears down on US east coast

It seems the worst of the storm has passed, the real work now is the cleanup and restoring power to cities. The initial response from authorities has been good so far, hopefully they'll keep at it.
Pigs (cops) are making utility workers life hell when it comes to recovery. They are blocking utility workers from reaching to disaster zones so they can assist elderly and helpless. Damn pigs are only good at parking there vehicles blocking roads with flashing lights.
 
Pigs (cops) are making utility workers life hell when it comes to recovery. They are blocking utility workers from reaching to disaster zones so they can assist elderly and helpless. Damn pigs are only good at parking there vehicles blocking roads with flashing lights.

Stop dishing out hate. The utility workers do not assist elderly and helpless. It is the cops, fire service men and those kinds who help elderly and helpless. You need to be thankful to these cops who are selfless when it comes to these kinds of situations.
 
A Dutch Solution for New York's Storm Surge Woes?


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Maeslant Storm Surge Barrier, the Netherlands

Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge did a number on New York City, flooding lower Manhattan, inundating the subway system, triggering fires and power outages, and causing other widespread damage that will take a long time to repair. As this New York Times story from September notes, the city has been only moderately proactive in prepping itself for the long-term risk posed by ocean floods, stressing how to respond when water breaches existing barriers rather than stopping floods altogether. That’s not surprising, really, because there is little political incentive to prep for something that hasn’t happened, even if you know it’s coming at some point. Now it has. Moreover, the risks are rising inexorably: sea level rise is happening at an accelerated rate along the East Coast. Every extra inch of sea level increases the annual risk of flooding. So what was once a vanishingly rare event becomes a rare one, then a common one. Existing systems just won’t cut it.

Matthew Yglesias suggests that New York (and by extension, other East Coast cities) think big and start looking at the Dutch flood protection model, which employs large-scale flood gates to repel storm surges off from the North Sea:

"The idea of essentially damning up New York Harbor sounds extreme, but that’s equivalent to what the Dutch did with the Zuiderzee Works and especially the Delta Works projects undertaken after the 1953 flood. Some of the Dutch works are permanent dijks, but others are open sluices that merely shut when storms are coming to block surges. You could imagine something similar at the Arthur Kill and across the Verazano Narrows or even between Sandy Hook and Rockaway. Projects like that wouldn’t immunize Staten Island or the beachfront parts of Brooklyn and Queens from storm surges but they would defend Lower Manhattan, the badly flooded Red Hook part of Brooklyn, Long Island City, LaGuardia Airport, and a big swathe of New Jersey."

Ultimately, I think something like this is exactly what we’ll see in New York and other coastal cities. It sounds fanciful, but New York is simply too big and important not to protect, and a system of surge barriers and other structures is probably the only way to protect it long-term. Which is exactly the thinking behind the Dutch system.

As it happens, I visited the Netherlands after Hurricane Katrina to look at how Dutch flood control worked, and how its success might apply to New Orleans. (It was part of a mega-series – worth rereading now – that looked for lessons in how other places, from Kobe, Japan to Galveston, had recovered from disasters.) After crawling over New Orleans’ crappy levees and floodwalls, it was like stepping from “Deadwood” into “Star Trek.”

The single biggest insight I came away with was, it’s not about the type of structure you build (though that’s obviously important). It’s about how you estimate and choose to manage flood risks. Dutch structures are typically designed to withstand a 1-in-10,000 year flood event. I’m oversimplifying this some, but if circumstances change, and risks grow more severe, then the Dutch system mandates that flood control systems be upgraded accordingly. That way the level of protection stays the same as the threat evolves.

We have nothing like this in the United States now and are unlikely to for the foreseeable future. Responsibility for flood protection is spread out among local, state and federal governments. Standards and protections vary wildly, mile-by-mile, and are vastly weaker than in the Netherlands. Which is understandable, because historically floods have not posed an existential threat to places like New York City.

So if you want visually spectacular flood control barriers, it helps to have flexible, adaptable technological systems. Such systems are exactly what we need in a world beset by not only rising seas and potentially stronger storms, but by environmental threats of all kinds. We’re transitioning to an era of rapid environmental change, and that means thinking about how to build those conditions into our infrastructure, and the policies and bureaucracies that maintain it. We’re not doing that yet.

But that doesn’t mean a Dutch-style system is totally out of reach for us. I suspect we’re going to start borrowing from it, in bits and pieces, in New York and elsewhere. In New Orleans, the Corps of Engineers ultimately did adapt a Dutch-style risk standard as the basis for its $14 billion in upgrades to the levee system, which include a new surge gate spanning an especially vulnerable spot. (Its standard is a 1-in-100 year flood event; in other words, it’s literally 100 times less safe than the Dutch system. But hey, it’s a big improvement over what was there before.)

Update: Harry Shearer notes that the Corps has had ongoing problems with a key node in the New Orleans system, pumps that expel rainwater from the city while canal surge barriers are closed; this raises questions on whether our existing institutions can really work on an ambitious scale.

A Dutch Solution for New York's Storm Surge Woes? - Forbes
 
Ever wonder after they passed the gay rights law this natural disasters are happening more. to the New England region? :undecided:
 
^ Nice theory, we needed it the most...:D
 
Ever wonder after they passed the gay rights law this natural disasters are happening more. to the New England region? :undecided:

Ah yes, the ol' Wrath of God theory, chapter 532, verse 1027.
 
Stop dishing out hate. The utility workers do not assist elderly and helpless. It is the cops, fire service men and those kinds who help elderly and helpless. You need to be thankful to these cops who are selfless when it comes to these kinds of situations.
Which bubble world do you live in now. I myself am in a tree business and my company is working on clearing most of the tree's in entire union county in NJ. Here you are talking out of your behind about fire, police and damn useless bamblance business. business, because it is a business than a protecting and serving moto. I laughed at this cop this fu(k!ng cop when he told me we cant pass through because of the tree on the road.

BTW, what is your local media feeding you in your channels.??????
People are literally on each others throats screaming about lack of gasoline.>>>
Gate at me with latest bull about your media is feeding you now.......I'm witnessing this mess with my own eyes.
 
Ever wonder after they passed the gay rights law this natural disasters are happening more. to the New England region? :undecided:
Surprised from your answer. They still named it after a women. Which contradicts with your analysis.
 
Ah yes, the ol' Wrath of God theory, chapter 532, verse 1027.

Then what would be the reason for GOD to forsaked his purels people in flash flood that ravaged Pakistan few years ago.???
 
I had a chance to drive into Coney Island, once a premier East Coast player ground before the 70s, today and the place was so desolated it had an eerie look of an abandoned desert town in the mid west. Sand and mud cover the black tops and all the street lights are off. Aside from a few cops sitting in their vehicles hardly a soul can be found.

Nearby Brighton Beach, a Russian enclave now a days, normally a bustling place was also deserted with cars zigzagged in weird angles due to 9 feet flood water. Merchants moved their wet merchandizes to the dried muddy sidewalks and pumping out their still almost full basements. I hardly seen a smiling face.
 
I had a chance to drive into Coney Island, once a premier East Coast player ground before the 70s, today and the place was so desolated it had an eerie look of an abandoned desert town in the mid west. Sand and mud cover the black tops and all the street lights are off. Aside from a few cops sitting in their vehicles hardly a soul can be found.

Nearby Brighton Beach, a Russian enclave now a days, normally a bustling place was also deserted with cars zigzagged in weird angles due to 9 feet flood water. Merchants moved their wet merchandizes to the dried muddy sidewalks and pumping out their still almost full basements. I hardly seen a smiling face.

I wished the national guards who were moving from West Orange Armory moving to South Jersey to Atlantic City had paid any attention to there neighbouring helpless citizens.
 
I had a chance to drive into Coney Island, once a premier East Coast player ground before the 70s, today and the place was so desolated it had an eerie look of an abandoned desert town in the mid west. Sand and mud cover the black tops and all the street lights are off. Aside from a few cops sitting in their vehicles hardly a soul can be found.

Nearby Brighton Beach, a Russian enclave now a days, normally a bustling place was also deserted with cars zigzagged in weird angles due to 9 feet flood water. Merchants moved their wet merchandizes to the dried muddy sidewalks and pumping out their still almost full basements. I hardly seen a smiling face.

I intend to drive across NY and NJ this weekend and want to see the damage. I heard it is pretty bad out there with even my office data centers in Weehawken and Jersey City flooded.

I wished the national guards who were moving from West Orange Armory moving to South Jersey to Atlantic City had paid any attention to there neighbouring helpless citizens.

Provide a link please or stop dishing out these false propaganda. You were doing the same earlier today as well in post #166. What is your agenda here other than undermining all the hardwork and a great job by the personnel including the cops, firemen, FEMA workers, National guards, governors and mayors?
 
I intend to drive across NY and NJ this weekend and want to see the damage. I heard it is pretty bad out there with even my office data centers in Weehawken and Jersey City flooded.


Two things you have to bear in mind: 1) Make sure your routes are open, if not, the alternate routes could be jam pack or you might get lost. So GPS can be helpful here. 2) Full tank of gas because the line can be long.

But I suggest you do go because it's always good for your mind to experience something out of the ordinary. The traffics can be unpredictable though so give yourself plenty of time would put the trip on a positive note.
 
Worst conditioned ever. Still no power, most shops are still closed and acute shortage of Gasoline in tri-state area. People wait hours to fill their Car yet to find out that there is no gas. War like condition. I have never experienced such conditioned. It's horrible. :cry:
 
I had a chance to drive into Coney Island, once a premier East Coast player ground before the 70s, today and the place was so desolated it had an eerie look of an abandoned desert town in the mid west. Sand and mud cover the black tops and all the street lights are off. Aside from a few cops sitting in their vehicles hardly a soul can be found.

Nearby Brighton Beach, a Russian enclave now a days, normally a bustling place was also deserted with cars zigzagged in weird angles due to 9 feet flood water. Merchants moved their wet merchandizes to the dried muddy sidewalks and pumping out their still almost full basements. I hardly seen a smiling face.

i've heard similar accounts.....very sad. Coney Island is also known as Little Pakistan.

many many restaurants and small businesses there; economy must have/be taken huge beating.


i've been to Sheepshead Bay and Brighton beach area.......nice area b/c you have Russians, Ukrainians, Pakistanis, Bengalis, Turks Greeks and Jews all working side by side making a living..


hopefully the city recovers quickly.....actually people of New York in general are very resilient and determined people. I have great respect for them.
 

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