Superstorm Sandy: Gasoline runs short, adding woes to recovery

[BSB]

Superstorm Sandy: Gasoline runs short, adding woes to recoverySuperstorm Sandy: Gasoline runs short, adding woes to recovery

Kate Zernike, The New York Times | Updated: November 02, 2012 12:40 IST
 

Union, New Jersey: Widespread gas shortages stirred fears among residents and disrupted some rescue and emergency services Thursday as the New York region struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Tiny increments of progress - some subway and bus lines were back in service - were overshadowed by new estimates of the storm's financial cost, struggles to restore power and by the discovery of more bodies in flooded communities.

The lines of cars waiting for gas at a Sunoco here ran in three directions: a mile-long line up the Garden State Parkway, a half-mile line along Vauxhall Road and another, including a fleet of mail trucks that needed to refuel before resuming their rounds, snaking through a back entrance. The scene was being replayed across the state as drivers waited in lines that ran hundreds of vehicles deep, requiring state troopers and local police to protect against exploding tempers.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/superstorm-sandy-gasoline-runs-short-adding-woes-to-recovery-287504?pfrom=home-trending

[hnumpah]

As I watch the news reports of tempers mounting, people demanding rescue, demanding the government bring them food and water, et cetera, I always wonder a coupe of things...

Why didn't these people heed the warnings and get the hell out? This storm was forecast for days to be heading for that area. I realize some people, for whatever reason, might not have been able to get out, and I realize the storm took a sudden turn and sped up and came ashore a few hours earlier than expected, but the majority of people, when they see a freight train coming at them, get out of the way.

And the ones who stayed, why were they not better prepared? We go through hurricanes regularly in the south. If we stay, we fill up our fuel tanks, gather up jugs of water, make sure we have food stores that don't require heating (electricity and gas may be out for days) or refrigeration or freezing (ditto on the electricity), make sure we have disposable plates, cups, cutlery, etc. We know it may be days before the power comes back on, or the water is safe to drink, or before help can reach us or we are able to make our way out. It's only been 3 - 4 days and I already see people crying for help, that they are starving.

I sympathize with the people up there, I do, but there is so much more many of them could have done to help themselves.

[BSB]

Yeah, well this isn't as much a matter of who was prepared and who wasn't as it is a matter of who was told to evacuate and didn't.

I've been preparing for hurricanes all my life. We had two major ones here when I was a kid. We aren't strangers to the procedures up here.


BSB

[Plane]

The Evacuation was more effective than the evacuation for Katrina, and the landscape was not as bad because not as many people were trapped in low areas.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It is certainly also helpful that NYC is not actually below sea level.

I am not sure whether New Orleans was once above sea level and sank, or whether they built on the higher ground first and then expanded into the lower areas after putting in the levees.

New Orleans before the Civil War was a very unhealthy place, due to malaria, yellow fever and other nasty diseases.

[Plane]

New Orliens is indeed sinking , slowly it has been sinking ever since its founding.

Not only that, but the delta lands south of New Orliens are diminishing , such that there is less buffer between the city and Ocean weather all the time.