Storm problems were predicted decades ago

From the AP:

More than three decades before Superstorm Sandy, a state law and a series of legislative reports began warning New York politicians to prepare for a storm of historic proportions, spelling out scenarios eerily similar to what actually happened: a towering storm surge; overwhelming flooding; swamped subway lines; widespread power outages. The Rockaway peninsula was deemed among the "most at risk."

But most of the warnings and a requirement in a 1978 law to create a regularly updated plan for the restoration of "vital services" after a storm went mostly unheeded, either because of tight budgets or the lack of political will to prepare for a hypothetical storm that may never hit.

Some of the thorniest problems after Sandy, including a gasoline shortage, the lack of temporary housing and the flooding of commuter tunnels, ended up being dealt with largely on the fly.

"I don't know that anyone believed," acknowledged Gov. Andrew Cuomo this past week. "We had never seen a storm like this. So it is very hard to anticipate something that you have never experienced."

Asked how well prepared state officials were for Sandy, Cuomo said, "not well enough."
It wasn't as if the legislative actions over the years were subtle. They all had a common, emphatic theme: Act immediately before it's too late.

The 1978 executive law required a standing state Disaster Preparedness Commission to meet at least twice a year to create and update disaster plans. It mandated the state to address temporary housing needs after a disaster, create a detailed plan to restore services, maintain sewage treatment, prevent fires, assure generators "sufficient to supply" nursing homes and other health facilities, and "protect and assure uninterrupted delivery of services, medicines, water, food, energy and fuel."

Reports in 2005, 2006 and 2010 added urgency. "It's not a question of whether a strong hurricane will hit New York City," the 2006 Assembly report warned. "It's just a question of when."

A 2010 task force report to the Legislature concluded: "The combination of rising sea level, continuing climate change, and more development in high-risk areas has raised the level of New York's vulnerability to coast storms. ... The challenge is real, and sea level rise will progress regardless of New York's response."

The Disaster Preparedness Commission met biannually some years, but there are gaps in which there is no record of a meeting. However, some administrations, including Cuomo's, convened many of the same agency heads to discuss emergency management. But even under Cuomo, who has taken a much greater interest in emergency management after three violent storms in his first two years in office, there are still three vacancies on the commission.

Calls for gas stations to have generators

From Bayside Patch:

A second elected official from northeast Queens is now calling for local gas stations to have back-up generators to allow for the operation of fuel pumps during power outages.

Earlier this month, state Assemblyman David Weprin, D-Little Neck, introduced legislation that would force gas station owners to have back-up power sources in the case of a storm.

Under his bill, the generators would need to be available for use no later than 24 hours after a disaster and gas stations would have to get a transfer switch installed by a professional electrical contractor.

Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Whitestone, has now filed a legislative service request for the law on Nov. 13 in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s visit to the city. Residents in Halloran’s district have been forced to wait in long lines for gas.

“After seeing the effects of power outages at gas stations throughout the city, it seems a no-brainer,” he said. “The stations that had power in the early aftermath of the storm quickly ran out of gas, while the stations that had gas had no electricity to pump it.”

He said forcing gas station owners to install a generator would help to prevent the type of gas shortages through which city residents have suffered in recent weeks.

Bloomberg doesn't know best

From The Real Deal:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s suggestion that one way to limit the impact of flooding from future storms would be to give large building owners more flexibility about where generators — generally kept below grade — are placed. However, the Fire Department of New York, along with some contracting professionals, expressed concerns about the potential dangers and challenges of keeping backup generators on higher ground.

“Change the building code to put generators on the roof,” not in the basement, Mayor Bloomberg said during a press conference Sunday.

The city’s Fire Department, for one, has reservations about the mayor’s suggestion.

“Placing generators on the roof of a large building does create many challenges such as how fuel is brought to the rooftop and where the fuel will be stored,” Frank Dwyer, Fire Department spokesperson, said. “In addition, the roof is a crucial location for firefighters fighting a fire, so generators can create problems.”

Currently, rooftop generators are rare, but permitted by the FDNY in some cases, in which safety measures are in place.

An absolute disgrace

From Crains:

Since Hurricane Sandy struck on Monday, more than 500 largely elderly and disabled patients had been living without heat or power in a public nursing facility and hospital on Roosevelt Island.

For four days, Coler Nursing Facility patients had been marooned in unlit rooms, fighting the cold with extra blankets and socks.

Power was partially restored to the facility on Friday evening, according to a Bloomberg administration spokeswoman, and this afternoon it has been fully restored, she said. Space heaters are being used, and heat and hot water is also set to be restored this afternoon as temperatures are expected to drop to the 30′s tonight.

Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, D-Manhattan, who represents the area, said she had been “very concerned about the patients” but that residents had “generally expressed” a desire to stay.

As tropical storm Sandy hit Monday evening, the backup generator and boiler system both failed at Coler, a 1,000-bed facility on the northern tip of the island that sits in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. Earlier, more than 100 of the most vulnerable patients (many on ventilators) had been evacuated to Goldwater Hospital, another chronic care facility on the island, which is operating on backup power, according to the mayor’s office.

But some 550 residents had remained at Coler without heat or power. A source provided The Insider with photos taken inside Coler on Friday. They show a nurse walking through the children’s unit, and a dim hallway in the adult patient unit.

Coler is located in Zone B and was not among the areas of the city with the highest flooding risk. The Bloomberg administration spokeswoman said a decision not to evacuate Coler had been made in part because it appeared at one point that tropical storm Sandy might be weakening.

“Because of the risks inherent in the large scale evacuation of elderly patients, a decision was made to shelter in place,” she said in an email, “at which time the most up to date information indicated that the storm was weakening and would be less severe than Irene.”

So let me get this straight... while the rest of us had heard for days that the "Superstorm" or "Frankenstorm" was going to hit southern NJ, then weaken over land, then slam into a cold front from the west that would cause the storm to change course and strengthen as it headed toward NYC, Bloomberg was hearing the opposite?

Interesting.

Roosevelt Island may technically be considered part of Manhattan, but is attached to Queens, so that explains the nonchalance and crappy treatment. They even have one of the generators that was supposed to be used for the marathon sitting outside now, but it's not in use.

Some nursing homes still haven't evacuated

From the Huffington Post:

The previous few nights in New York have been quite cold, and temperatures are expected to plunge into the 30s over the weekend.

"I slept under a pile of blankets and coats last night," said Ray Velez, who lives on Beach 115th Street across from the burned-out section of stores and homes. At the height of the storm, as water flooded the peninsula, Velez was rescued from his home by firefighters in a boat as high winds whipped the flames around. Like other residents, he said he was grateful for the efforts of first responders, but surprised that priority hadn't been given to food and clothing aid.

One block from Velez and the burned businesses, 182 residents and dozens of staffers of Park Nursing Home were getting through another day.

The lobby of the building is a sodden, sandy mess, flooded by several feet of ocean water. So are a few dozen rooms and offices on the ground level.

Patrick Russell, the manager, said that the Office of Emergency Management did not try to move residents out of the nursing home before the storm. As The Huffington Post previously reported, the office did not evacuate any of the multiple nursing homes in the Rockaways ahead of the storm, even though the entire peninsula was in a mandatory evacuation zone.

But the facility in many ways is fortunate: The kitchen, though also on the ground floor, is on the uphill side of the building, and was spared from the flooding. So was the generator. There is plenty of food and heat, though hallways are dark and elevators aren't running. After the storm, his staff delivered 200 cream cheese and jelly sandwiches to the residents of another nursing home across the street, which had lost all power and were evacuated later that day.

Why is the Huffington Post the only news outlet reporting this major lapse in judgment by OEM? How many nursing homes still have residents inside them with feet of water in the lobbies and no elevators, preventing emergency access and food delivery?

And check this comment out:

"I have been working in nursing homes for over 25 years and I have never experienced anything as horrific as this. Our staff started preparing for evacuation days before the storm. We worked endless hours to prepare for what we thought would be an order to evacuate. Many hours go into planning the evacuation of a nursing home. Nurses and nurses aids are assigned to groups of residents so they will have familiar faces with them during this dificult time. Transportation was set up with ambulance, ambulette and bus companies to transport the residents. Every family was called to inform them where there loved one would be during the storm. Trucks were rented to transport beds, medications, food, wheelchairs, walkers, water, linens, diapers, wound care supplies, medical charts and more. It is an immense amount of work, but work that we understand is necessary to keep our residents safe. We waited for Mayor Bloomberg to issue the order to evacuate and were in disbelief when he announced the mandatory evacuation of zone A except for all nursing homes and hospitals. If a facility is perfectly organized and ready for evacuation, it still takes a minimum of 12 hours to evacuate. There are only so many ambulances and ambulettes to go around. How do you explain leaving the city's most vulnerable residents directly in a path of oncoming destruction. This storm was not a surprise, every channel was reporting for days how powerful and dangerous this storm was going to be. It was not a possibility, it was a certainty. We kept hoping that with every press conference and every NYS Department of Health notification, they would give the order allowing us to evacuate. But it never came."

Not the city's fault there's blackouts?

From NY1:

Grocery stores and gas stations could soon be shelling out sacks of cash on electrical upgrades.

The Daily News reports state legislators are mulling over a bill requested by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that would require stores to be blackout ready.

It could cost store owners up to $20,000 to rewire buildings to make them able to quickly switch to alternative power sources.

They would not be required to install backup generators.

The city says the legislation would ensure residents have food and fuel in an emergency, and that stores would benefit because they could continue making money.

The bill affects grocery stores with 60 or more employees or 20,000 square feet of space and gas stations with 25,000 gallons of fuel capacity.

The legislation is based on task force findings after the city's 2003 blackout.

Sure thing, why upgrade the power grid? Make the small business schmucks pay for it!

Hospital generator generating a lot of noise

From BushwickBK:

Wyckoff Heights Medical Center is causing its neighbors some pain.

The hospital parked a generator and a cooling unit on Stockholm Street last month in order to power its ailing air-conditioning system.

But nearby residents complain that the generator’s constant rattling is keeping them up at night and that its diesel fumes are causing respiratory problems.

"It’s like being in a wind tunnel or a really noisy factory floor where all the machines are roaring all at once," said Deborah Brown, a community board member, whose studio is a block away. "It is constant, ambient noise, not episodic bursts."

St. Nicholas Avenue resident Hilda Shen even filmed the generator in action and called 311 several times — which led the city to issue the hospital two violations for noise and air pollution.

And the city found further problems — the hospital was operating the generator without a permit, which earned them another violation and an Environmental Control Board hearing on June 15.

Shen is demanding that the hospital move the generator or shut it down completely.

"The noise of these machines has been enormous, and affected the sleep and health of the neighborhood," said Shen. "The machines run all the time, and the noise is inescapable."