Saturday, August 4, 2007

Disaster warnings

This is Battery Park in 1938. Think this can't happen in the future?
Well think again!
Areas that could potentially be flooded, the researchers said, include the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan and eastern Staten Island, from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.

Rising Seas and Stronger Storms Threaten New York City (old but still valid)

Photos from Live Science

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the great storm of 1938
that my mother often spoke of and she had witnessed 2 years before I was born.

She often pointed from our 5th floor apartment window to a southern spit of land in the area of Classon Point (Bronx) where we lived before we later moved to Queens and gestured as she spoke,

"In Harding Park....over there....all those houses (some were partially built out on stilts on the water with little boat docks attached) were washed away onto the sound".

I imagined that they had floated out like fairytale houseboats. Sinbad the Sailor was in command.
No such luck. They were violently seized
by huge waves and thrashed about like a box of toothpicks!

There is a six story high 90 year old Beech tree in my Flushing backyard that has the year 1938 carved on it commemorating that year it had survived that frightening storm !

Anonymous said...

You shouldn't mention anything about that tree in your yard. One of our anti-green politicians may hear of it and send somebody to cut it down.

Anonymous said...

Over my CDB will anybody come and lay a finger on that tree in my yard !

Anonymous said...

Suna (aka Silvercup) knows he is taking what should be public land for his private real estate grab, and he knows that he is putting people's lives at risk in this, a flood hazard.

I want billionaire Suna to explain why my taxes should bail him out.

I want the politicians, community board, and the newspapers to explain why they refuse to discuss this with the public.

This is a scandalous.

Anonymous said...

We are all going to die!!!!!

Anonymous said...

There's a movie from 1937 called "Hurricane" in which a whole Pacific island gets wiped out by enormous waves. Everybody on the isle dies except for a man, woman, and child who cling to the one thing that remains standing: a tree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1937_film)

Anonymous said...

For centuries, New York's shoreline was ringed by sand dunes and marshes, which reduced the impact of storm surges. Today, seawalls ring our city's shoreline.

Much of the blue-colored area on the map used to be water and wetlands, before land reclamation. Nature is rewriting the map to the way it used to be.

Anonymous said...

It's not nice to f--k with Mother Nature.

She'll "bitch-slap" all that vulnerable shoreline
and all the walls will come tumbling down !

Anonymous said...

Scientists without a political agenda scoff at the notion of a 3-foot rise in sea level by 2107 or even an 18-19 inch rise by 2050. And even if the article's authors are correct, under their worst case hurricane scenario the "inundation" the "inundation" area is only slightly increased.

Having said this, we are totally unprepared for a strong hurricane in NYC. The storm of '38 was only a Category 3 when it hit L.I. (by today's scale, about 135 mph winds) and the eye was in Speonk-Westhampton with the worst of the storm to the east of that.

However, that hurricane had the distinction of moving north at extraordinary speed - 60 to 70 mph. Add that to the counter-clockwise winds, and if you are on the east side of the storm, the combined speed could reach 200 mph! Literally off the scale.

It was comparatively weak on the NYC side.

What if that happened with a direct hit on NY harbor? Brooklyn & Queens would be blasted. Have you ever even HEARD of an evacuation plan? There's enough streets to enable people to reach high ground, but where will the million or two people who live in the danger zone go?

The truth is, there's nothing we can do to stop a hurricane. And we are not going to stop living in those areas.

So, don't worry. Be happy.

Anonymous said...

"The truth is, there's nothing we can do to stop a hurricane. And we are not going to stop living in those areas."

Ha ha ha here is a bright light.

Mister, when a major hurricane hits you, there is no area left to live in.

Shhssh. Another fireball from City Planning.

Anonymous said...

There exists a frightening archival photo
of a beached ferry boat lying on its side
in what used to be Flushing Airport (College Point)..... the aftermath of the 1938 hurricane !

And just how far was that from the Bronx....
(old Classon Point Ferry dock) side ?

Imagine the force needed to move
that behemoth multi-ton craft that far!

Goodbye Queens West !