Escape From New York



Waiting in a seven block long gas line

Several people have asked me to write about my recent New York experience. By which I mean, one guy I think may have in a Facebook comment. Same thing.

As most of you know, I'm both a xenophobe and a world traveler. Which makes for an interesting mix. Like drinking Red Bull and NyQuil to see which one will win out. But I love visiting New York. Its got everything you can imagine all within a short subway or taxi ride: irreplaceable art and architectural treasures, rapacious and vulgar displays of wealth (what up, Carlyle Hotel?), vigorous and intense capitalism, third world hovels, middle American utilitarian functionalism (who in the hell goes to New York and eats at the Times Square Red Lobster? I guess if your life consists of living in Terre Haute, you're basically just marking time til you die, so the Times Square Red Lobster would seem like making it to French Laundry to you or me. Well, to me, mainly...most of you aren't nearly as cool as The Captain). And there's people from all walks of life; the proverbial sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads.... rich people, poor people, people hunched over carrying 17 plastic bags as they walk down the street talking to themselves and yelling at pigeons. I always see people from all over the world, often dressed in their colorful native garb (and who, inexplicably, continue the same lifestyles as if they were still back in Boogerglob, Yugoslavia or whereever the hell they're from; one of these days I just know I'm gonna see one of them herding sheep near the Reservoir). So I like to go to New York every now and then. Just to check out the rest of the world.

But this was New York in a crisis. I was interested to see how they would cope. Plus I spent a small fortune on tickets to the Giants vs. Steelers game, and didn't want to see that go up in smoke.

I arrived on the Thursday after the storm, which hit late Monday night. The airports were closed until that Wednesday afternoon. The trains between Newark (where I flew) and Manhattan were off line, but I was able to take a shuttle van (although it took about three hours between the airport chaos and the traffic through the Lincoln Tunnel). My hotel in the Flatiron District, the Nomad (really good place, actually, check it out), was open, fully staffed, and had electricity. That was one thing about the areas with electricity. Even if they could open, many of their employees lived in Brooklyn or Queens or New Jersey, and faced a nightmare coming in to work. I heard reports of people waiting up to three hours in Brooklyn to get a bus into the city, since the subways had been flooded. Mayor Bloomberg ordered all bridges between New Jersey and Manhattan closed to all vehicles with less than three riders. Though designed to ease the traffic flow and conserve gasoline, it actually made the traffic worse as the cops had to slow everyone down to verify compliance.  Within most of Manhattan, things were pretty good actually. Above 26th Street, or so, most people had electricity could cling to something of a sense of normalcy. Though some city services had shut down (like parks), trains and buses were running, and taxis were available.

I followed the news reports pretty closely while I was there. And, walking around the city I could observe a lot. A number of things struck me as I took in the storm's aftermath, which I recount below. I can't prove I'm right about any of these opinions, and haven't even tried. But having been through some hurricanes, having known a lot of people who've been through even more hurricanes, and having been walking around New York in the immediate recovery period, here's just some things that seemed to stand out.

When they tell you to get out, get out. Now! I read so many comments from locals, before the storm hit, saying that they had always ridden out storms and didn't see any reason to leave now. People, look, storms aren't all the same. Some are bigger than others. The fact that the last one didn't hit you that hard says nothing about what the next one will do. Plus, since when did everyone become a meteorologist? I know it looks like anyone could do it, given all the Weather Bimbettes that often do the local weather. [Sidebar: Jillian Barberie was a weather girl on local LA television. 'Nuff said.]. Don't you think all those NOAA and Weather Channel people may know a little more about the storm than you do? Say what you want about the "local authorities." I know they're all out to take your money and spy on you. Whatever. But usually they're so in the tank with the Chamber of Commerce about promoting local business that if they're telling you to get out of town, you should pretty much get out of town. They're not just saying that to hear themselves talk.

Don't count on the government for anything. Count on yourself. I don't care how much they promise, the government can't do anything in less than a week. You'll die of dehydration, or looting, or benzene exposure, or whatever, about three days before the first government supplies arrive. Five days after the storm hit, I saw lots of soldiers and pallets full of MREs and water...in the Village. NOT in Staten Island or Brooklyn or New Jersey where people actually needed it. The government can reasonably effectively help people get out ahead of the storm, it can help with long-term recovery, and it can to some extent hold down the looting and immediate post-storm perils (like downed power lines). But as far as bailing you out of the danger zone (which you should have evacuated before the storm), or feeding and clothing you in your flooded out ruin that used to be your home, I wouldn't count on the Federales being of much help. All over the hardest hit areas, people were complaining that they hadn't received any government help. Hell, they were even complaining that the Red Cross was only handing out blankets, not water. The problem is these people had the bizarre notion that the government was going to come in the day after the storm, and fix everything with its magic governmental wand. You know, since everything else the government touches turns to gold. It just doesn't work that way. I don't care what politicians promise.

Make sure you're in the South or in Texas when the shit goes down. Look, you may know all about how to drive and land planes in a snow storm, but y'all don't know what the hell you're doing in a hurricane. Everyone thought it would be the same as some tropical storm they had last year. It wasn't. The local and state governments were lackadaisical about urging evacuations, telling people the storm wouldn't be that bad. It was. As far as I could tell, based solely on reading accounts and talking to people, no one did the "usual" preparation: boarding up windows, moving belongings upstairs, getting batteries and candles, running water into storage, filling your gas tank. Nor did the government pre-position its resources. The stupid utility, Consolidated Edison, didn't even think to shut down a key substation serving lower Manhattan. When it got flooded out, the results were...anti-awesome. After the storm knocked everything out, people were wondering around waiting for the government or "someone" to come in and save them. Instantly. Uh, it doesn't work that way. Ask New Orleans.

It takes society about six hours after the event to start breaking down. Lord of the Flies is pretty much a documentary. Reports of looting throughout lower Manhattan, Staten Island, and New Jersey started rolling in not too long after daybreak on that Tuesday. People were pretty much helping themselves to whatever was in deserted stores. And, predictably, later that day, photos of "looters shot on sight" signs posted in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and lower Manhattan began popping up. So much for Bloomberg's treasured gun ban. How were these people going to shoot looters? Didn't they know guns were illegal in New York City?

Whether its New Ulm, Texas, New Orleans, Louisiana, or New York, New York, local government is all the same. Basically hucksters for their town, more concerned about image than substance. That idiot Bloomberg hung on to running the New York Marathon like a fat kid hanging on to the very last Twinkie. And he downplayed the impending storm's severity, not wanting to scare away tourists and business travelers. Then when it was painfully obvious things were a whole lot worse than he predicted, he and his army of sycophants spread out to all the local media outlets to talk about how the city government was completely on top of things, how help was even now on the way, and how reports of danger were baseless. These guys had nothing on the Iraqi Information Minister. "We are POUNDING the Americans! There are NO Americans at the airport!"  That guy. Over in Jersey, Chris Christie looked like he hadn't slept in about four days, and was directing resources 24/7, while every time Bloomberg went on camera he looked like he was pissed that people weren't asking about all his pet projects, like downsizing soda portions, or banning trans fat. You could practically see the thought bubble above his head: "stupid storm...stupid people...the Marathon is gonna be AWESOME!!! You just wait and see!" 

Society can't exist without electricity. Which is weird because we basically had a highly advanced society before power. People settled continents, traveled the world, performed surgery, built incredible homes and buildings, built the railroads...etc. The Pyramids? The Parthenon? The Eiffel Tower? Yeah, those people didn't have electricity. But in 2012, outside of, I don't know...the Amazon Rain Forest, nothing works in our world without electricity. Its like Sister Morphine. Elevators stopped working, so a lot of people, particularly the elderly, became trapped in high rises. Trains wouldn't work. Nor street lights, traffic lights, computers, TVs, cell phones...even if battery operated they couldn't recharge. Automatic gates meant to keep out the riff raff, wouldn't work. Sorry Yoko.  Security cameras, garage doors, and most critically...gasoline pumps, wouldn't work. In short, strip 2012 humans of electricity, and all the technology and machines we rely upon every day suddenly becomes useless.

The electric companies deserve thanks. An electric system is an extraordinarily complicated thing. It consists of generation plants, substations, transmission and distribution lines, and various circuit breakers and other elements designed to shut portions of the system down to protect it from faults at other areas. The system is extraordinarily vulnerable to storms: trees and branches fall on lines, winds knock over poles or blow other objects into poles, flooding can cause ground faults in underground lines, and so forth. The system is all interconnected as well. That gives it strength, because resources in other locations can make up for local faults or outages in particular locations. But it also means you can't just "spot restore" power. The utility has to start at the generation plants and basically work outward from there along the lines. And with widespread damage, that can strain the available supply of workers and replacement parts. It just takes a long time to get the system back up and running, and the more distant a particular location is from generation, the longer it takes. Con Ed, Long Island Lighting, and other local utilities may not have planned for the storm very well, but they certainly threw themselves into restoration. Crews worked round the clock for days on end. Hospitals and other critical public facilities came back on line very quickly. Plus, other companies from all over came to New York to help. The nation's electric utilities have a lot of problems, but one thing they do very well is to support each other in times of disaster. Utilities from around the country, large and small, sent crews and replacement parts to New York. I saw their staging area in Union Square. Trucks bearing company logos from all over the country were massing in that spot, checking in with Con Ed, receiving instructions, and coordinating with each other. We pay for this in our electric rates. But we reap the benefit when the storm hits our own city, when other utilities come help us too.

Diverse transit options help guard against damage. On an average day, people move around New York by many different means: subways, trains, taxis, private cars, buses, boats, bicycles even. There's an inherent advantage in this respect over somewhere like Houston, where its pretty much your own car, and maybe a bus depending on where you live. The storm knocked out the trains, and the subways in part, for a couple of days. But the other means continued running. People just shifted over to them temporarily. This didn't lack inconvenience of course; many people faced lengthy waits. But the diversity ensured that some transportation options survived even a major storm. As contrasted to somewhere like Houston, where a storm only has to knock out some key highways to throw the entire city into chaos.

Its time we rethought people living right next to the water. This one issue warrants a much longer post. We all subsidize the flood insurance business. We're all going to pay billions to rebuild right next to the water. Where it will just get flooded or blown out in another few years. At some point, after we've rebuilt infrastructure and housing right next to the water several times, just so a bunch of rich people can enjoy their "bay views," we need to ask ourselves whether its reasonable to spend all this money so people can live in flood zones. I know, I know, lots of you think its really cool living right on the beach. I'm sure it would be really cool living on the lip of Mt. St. Helens, but I wouldn't want the government spending millions for me to do so, rebuilding my house every time the thing erupted.

Finally, its time to stop "engineering" flood control. Time to let God and Mother Nature do it. We've spent billions on flood control projects, and I'm thinking particularly of South Louisiana, where we've let the coastal marshes and wetlands disappear over the years (as Mississippi River silt gets channeled into the Gulf instead of through the marshes). Those wetlands protect inner coastal areas from storm surges just like the one that hit New York so hard. If you look at Manhattan, its just water butting right up against Battery Park and South Street Seaport. Whatever natural wetlands may have existed at one time have long since given way to development, particularly port development. So nothing lay between the mammoth storm surge and lower Manhattan. Just like in Biloxi, there was nothing between downtown and the Gulf except a thin strip of beach. In Galveston, where Ike smashed much of the town, the ancient Seawall did protect some of the town from the storm surge, but did nothing to help the areas closer to the highly dredged and developed Galveston Bay, which were developed in the aforementioned "right next to the water" style. You can't fight City Hall, but not even City Hall can fight Mother Nature. Time to go "organic" when it comes to future coastal planning. That might mean we catch less shrimp, or we have to move the container facilities a little further up or down river, or have to move the awesome bayside clubs back some feet, but with rising sea levels an inevitability, however caused, we're never going to engineer our way out of this problem.

NEXT-the men's locker room demands a certain code of behavior. You people aren't observing it. I tell you why.