Sandy

[kantuckid]

No kidding. But we just had a cold front come in. It got down into the 40s the last couple of nights and has barely hit the mid 60s by noon. This is January weather for around here. Since it will be a lot warmer in the next few days, I've been doing "projects" around the place. I need a break from "projects" so wax philosophical on the keyboard from time to time.

I did need to fix a tire on my dirt bike - pesky thorn let the air out of the tube. That was one of the "projects". I also needed to fix the damper in the fireplace chimney after a stray cat fell down the chimney. Don't ask .... we have no idea.?

Here's my "dead cat" story: There was this guy(~1977) that worked in the tech schools as myself & known to be a serious moocher, what with always wanting his car fixed for as close to free as humanly possible. So he sets us up to work on his exhaust on his surplus telephone company PU truck. We bring in a roadkill cat that's no longer "juicy" but sort of pliable. We tell him we have a "muffler" that will stick on there for free! The muffler is a 20# freon can and we weld it up under the truck and wire the cat to the "muffler" thinking it will be obnoxiously loud & of course as the cat cooks some stink too. The guy gets in and that Dodge truck purrs like a kitten-actually sounded real good. We did accomplish the stink part fairly well after he left.
Sad to say,I did crank one in my truck fan blade one winter...
The SS storm cap blew off our LR stove chimney when the tornado passed by us this March-not to be found.
As the New Madrid Fault is mentioned: I was on a ladder a few days ago when an earthquake rumbled through our place. We are used to the quarry 2 miles away shooting off @ noon but there was no sound this time and not noon. We are in the other end of KY from Madrid area so pretty scary! The epi center was south of us ~ 100k. Never know what Mother Nature has in store.
Lineman is one of the most hazardous jobs of all! And much more so in the Sandy area!

[henzilla]

Thank you and I will,he is back on his way home today and he'll be back tommorow. sorry if I described it to harshly please nothing personnel.good luck anyways!
Just after I posted this I saw on CNN a lineman that was attacked and is now hospitalized with a broke jaw wrecked teeth by a irrate local takeing it out on the wrong person sorry dude!

Saw the interview of the young man this morning...he was doing his job and got beat up...sad!

Had a few encounters as a lineman/supervisor thru a 30 year career. Hurricane Alecia in '83 had a group of angry folks holding shotguns on us until their power was restored...we had been working dawn to dark for about ten days when that happened. They were doing the mob scene well...we had one fellow ease over to a truck and call the dispatcher to get us some HPD help. That one ended OK after two cars rolled up and disarmed the three ringleaders.
My power was off for three weeks, my family stayed at my parents and I slept in a dark roof damaged house until I could get a day off to repair it. Yes, linemen also have issues.

Had a windshield shattered in my lap when someone shot at us one night a few blocks from the plant...took awhile to get that one out of my head.

Have been cussed and screamed at more than I can remember in some major damaged areas. Understand the frustration, but not the misplaced anger.

But have also had folks bring us coffee and donuts and a kind word...it makes it worth the few who have lost patience. I once found a case of beer and a hand written THANKS on my seat when I made it back for the ride to the church hall and a cot in the dark. Most hotels are either damaged or full with displaced locals.

Bottom line is you do not restore a system put up over many years in a few days...just not possible.The year Hugo wiped out lower Florida, you couldn't find enough poles,insulators and certain hardware in other parts of the country using the same suppliers. We put off capital improvement upgrades and only replaced what hit the ground as the materials just were not available. Sadly that became the mindset on maintenace budgets. I bet we were not alone in that money saving NOW model. You do pay for it sometime, we did.
Putting stuff underground has it's advantages...typically costs 3 times the price of overhead...especially with existing utilities and streets in place. You have to get all the utilities to buy in, power, cable & phone to make it happen easier.

On many trips to help other utilities, or when we needed help, the help is always plentiful and a lot of wasted time is caused by slow damage asessment and setting priorities ( hospitals,water plants,police and fire stations and main circuits) in restoration efforts. On more than one occasion, we were there to help and had no assignment for 2-3 days...trust me it eats up the moral of the linecrews to sit still. Sending a 8 man line crew out to remove a tree from one service line and restore one house is maddening..BTDT

You have to have a disaster recovery plan and practice various scenarios...some utilities have pushed that to the rear burner and pay the price with PR nightmares and folks inconvenienced way longer than the process should take. We practiced tornadoes, fires and terrorist attacks yearly. The year we prepared for the pandemic swine flu was the strangest...infrastructure was in good shape...we just had no people to fix anything...hard to plan around that one.

Anyways. hope all get power that need it and that all the lineman go home to their families SAFE.

[kantuckid]

When I watched Guv Cuomo ranting about how there was simply no excuse for not having enough poles,etc., stockpiled in adequate quantities, I thought-
Easy to use the podium & talk, realities are tougher...

[36654]

When I watched Guv Cuomo ranting about how there was simply no excuse for not having enough poles,etc., stockpiled in adequate quantities, I thought-
Easy to use the podium & talk, realities are tougher...

The never realized benefits of a deregulated market. Cheap products, produced with antiquated equipment that's maintained with the cheapest parts. And, delivered on wires that haven't broken, yet.

Just like the guy that drives a car that's running on it's last legs and the fuel gauge reads E. He's saving money, but he might not get to his destination.

[typ181r90]

I've got some downtime on the pipeline and was reading through some of this to kill time. I feel NJ residents are rather under-represented on this board and am pretty surprised at what I read (especially the earlier posts).

Some background info on myself. I live in Keasbey (north central NJ) on the coast, my home borders the Raritan River/Bay and the the Arthur Kill to the east, that's what separates Staten Island, NY from NJ. My home is on a hill and thankfully flood waters would have to be exceptionally high for my house to flood. Directly across the Raritan River from me is Sayreville and South Amboy. Now that the geography of my position is established let me clear some things up.

Contrary to what the big news outlets have shown, pretty much everything on the NJ coast was destroyed to some degree, not just the rich vacation homes on the barrier islands. When you experience a massive storm surge and record wave heights (I think they got one at 32.9 ft.) areas that never get flooded are bound to get wet. Thankfully during the storm I just lost flashing off my house and power was only out for 3.5 days. I was fortunate enough to pick up a generator the Saturday before the storm and I was well stocked on gas so I was ok in the power department. Echoing what another poster said earlier, I recall the news the Friday before the storm changing dramatically. Earlier in the day they were saying it might be a tropical storm (not really a big deal in the past for NJ residents) and weren't sure of landfall, in the PM hours it changed to a hurricane and expected landfall to be anywhere from the Del/Mar peninsula to NY Harbor, as it turned out it wound up being right in the middle. That was my oh !@#$ moment and I went out earlier Saturday morning to find a generator, actually got one at a BMW Motorrad dealership that has an adjacent Honda dealership. It's funny, I'd been meaning to get a generator for awhile, but you tend to forget about these things till you really need them.

Don has posted his experiences down the shore, but let me go on to say that in my immediate area (5 mile radius) Sayreville and South Amboy were without power for about 10 days. My buddy who literally lives on the other side of the river from my house was one of those people, he has a different power company than me and large sections of his town were destroyed from river surges and downed trees, while I on slightly higher ground fared much better. The waterfront area in Perth Amboy is still without power and Police are blocking off a large section of it. I've never seen flooding in Perth Amboy, much less any significant storm damage as the barrier island for my part of NJ is Staten Island! Many homes up here, like down the shore, were completely wiped out. I've seen boats flung onto rail bridges up here. I saw a house that we were looking to buy just a few weeks ago, whose owner had the house for over 40 years and never experienced flooding (not even for Irene) completely wiped out - I know he hadn't seen flooding because he was bragging about how he didn't have flood insurance on the home. The Red Cross is still in this area and there are still some active relief centers.

I can understand how people feel about people building homes in flood prone areas, I myself was critical during hurricane Katrina of building on the coast below sea level and having to rely on massive pumps to keep a city dry. In the case of Sandy, it wasn't just flood prone areas that were affected, virtually anywhere near a body of water was affected because no one accounts for storm surges that big or for all the weather and tide elements to fall into place like they did all at once.

If you want to see a very small snippet of some of the damage by me, here's a link to my blog entry concerning the storm, even is relevant to BMWs:

http://symphonyofshrapnel.blogspot.c...-bmw-even.html

Besides only having a cell phone camera that wasn't working that well, I really didn't want to gawk and take too many pictures next to people that are trying to pick up the pieces (mainly in Keyport), and there are photos from other places that I credited. I also included a map to depict the area I covered, you'll see my town in the top left, Staten Island is on the top right, and Keyport is on the bottom right, only about 10 or so miles of travel. I didn't get anywhere near Don or the other areas that you'd most likely have seen on the news.

[PGlaves]

I've got some downtime on the pipeline and was reading through some of this to kill time. I feel NJ residents are rather under-represented on this board and am pretty surprised at what I read (especially the earlier posts).

It as always easier to blame the victim than to take a critical look at the society, of which we each are a part, when trying to explain an unfortunate event. Whether it is a motorcycle crash, a rape, a windstorm, or a flood.

I fully understand and support the notion of individual responsibility I hear so much about, but in most any culture, going back to the Paleoindians, and maybe the caveman, it is always been the manner in which a group interacts and supports one another that has determined how well that culture survived. The Texas Big Bend is dotted with early signs of community, and is also dotted with the skeletal remains of lone travelers who lacked just such community.

[deilenberger]

There was an interesting special "NOVA" on PBS tonight about Sandy.. most of the show concentrated on NY and it's immediate suburbs, but what it pointed out was no one planned for a 35 foot tidal surge (including wave action) in lower Manhattan, or any of the other areas that were hit. Luckily the surge was less "down the shore" (you have to be from NJ to know that phrase..) - I've seen about 12-20 feet depending on where you were. Even that is not something that has been seen in any recorded history, so chances of anticipating it, or planning for it beforehand are really quite slim. Some communities that built large tall-wide dunes survived with very little damage (although a lot of the dunes were found on the streets running along the ocean.) Towns with simple lower dunes or no dunes at all suffered from unimpeded ocean action hitting their communities. I suspect a lesson is being learned from this - at least I hope so. Apparently the flood-authorities and several government agencies are doing quite detailed recording of the pre-storm beach condition and the post-storm beach condition and damages to the area.

Some towns are simply in the wrong place - and not much can be done to save them. One - Sea Bright relies on a stone sea-wall about 12' high - but a lot of the town lies just above the normal high tide line, and it's got the ocean on one side and a bay/river on the other side. It was heavily damaged (almost destroyed actually) but part of the fault was the town itself - it's planning officials allowed the building of large beach-club buildings on the ocean side of the sea-wall, which were toppled off their pilings, rolled over the wall and in some cases washed into homes and businesses on the other side of Ocean Avenue. It didn't require any genius to predict this would happen (I did when they were built), but bet the beach clubs try to rebuild in exactly the same spot.

I've done my own rides up along the ocean - dodging boards with nails sticking out - and have some photos on my Facebook account of what I've seen. Despite the local feelings of "We have to rebuild" - I'd hope that the officials in the towns hardest hit take some pause and think of the future - and storms that could be just as bad or worse before allowing the same thing to be rebuilt in the same spot.

Our family owned a waterfront home on Barnegat Bay for many decades. After the passing of my in-laws we finally decided to sell it (they had made it their year round residence for retirement) a few years ago. We are thanking whatever deity you prefer that we made that decision when we did. We heard from the woman who lives across the street that her house had 8 foot of water in it. That would mean ours would have had 9 feet. I can't imagine anything that can be saved with that sort of soaking, and to build a new home on the lot will require many difficult to obtain permits and variances.

It's hard to tell someone they can't rebuild, but given the choice of offering a one time buyout for what had been fair market value, vs repeatedly subsidizing rebuilding it after any major storm, I think the one time buyout (perhaps with a right of tenancy until the family passes or the home is destroyed) is the wiser and less expensive course of action. It's been done in other parts of NJ that are prone to river flooding, I'm hopeful it will be looked at for the damaged properties from Sandy. FWIW - most of the people it's been offered to gladly take the offer. There have been very few holdouts.

[typ181r90]

Two towns here in wisconsin picked up and moved because of constant flooding.Soldiers grove,site of the great river road rally(Madison Wi. Bmw Club)moved to high ground, so has Gay Mills Wis. These should be examples to cut down on loss'es.This could be done out east.

That's fine and I get your point, my point is that there are plenty of areas in NJ affected that don't get constant flooding. Both Don and myself pointed out how big of a factor the storm surge had on the damage to NJ. Many of the homes that were destroyed (including up by me) had been in place for over 100 years and survived to this point

[deilenberger]

That's fine and I get your point, my point is that there are plenty of areas in NJ affected that don't get constant flooding. Both Don and myself pointed out how big of a factor the storm surge had on the damage to NJ. Many of the homes that were destroyed (including up by me) had been in place for over 100 years and survived to this point

It's true that many of the flooded areas were ones that existed for over a century with no history of flooding. But others - well - they've flooded or washed out in just my memory of the shore (which goes back to around 1956 or so, and more intensely since around 1965..) some of them multiple times. In Sea-Bright, I always used to joke you could spot the points where break-through (between ocean-bay/river) had previously occurred by looking for the newer construction. And sure enough - Sandy made break-throughs at exactly the same points.

An interesting viewpoint by a knowledgeable person: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/13/opinio...tml?hpt=op_t1#

I've never seen the idea that Federal Flood Insurance can cause deaths, but as with many unintended consequences - it becomes somewhat obvious once described and thought about. I think his proposal for how to handle the issue are well thought out and reasonable.

In today's local papers - there are a number of articles on rebuilding, including one that mentioned that the state (Governor mostly) has approved a rule allowing for rebuilding of many public structures (roads, bridges, etc.) without having to go through an approval process. The intent is to speed up rebuilding - the unintended, but recognized consequence is - the rebuilt structures are very likely to have the same risk factors and hazards as the structures they will replace.. in other words - nothing will be made better and we can expect that if another storm like this occurs - the same catastrophic damage will occur. Pretty much what Paul Glaves expected would happen I think.

The areas that never flooded before? Well - the risk there is if there is a changing weather pattern (which the NOVA special suggested there could be) that will make this sort of storm (size, intensity, where it makes landfall) a more likely occurrence. If so (and they admitted they don't "know" for sure) - we'll have repeats of the same sort of damage we saw this time in the future, and all the US will end up paying for it.