WhatFinger


Mega Storm Sandy Crushes New York City, New Jersey

Restless in New Jersey



I woke up this Friday morning and went outside my home in New Jersey at 6 a.m. to the sight of a mile-long line of cars waiting to re-fuel at a small gas station at the end of my block in the aftermath of devastating Hurricane Sandy.
There’s no gas at the gas station, but they wait anyway. Several hours later, they leave. No gas is forthcoming and the station will remain closed. The storm warnings that came last Sunday proved true. At first, the reaction was of denial and that this was the usual media hype and how did they know that a massive storm in the Caribbean was going to hit land in the New York City area and cause havoc here? On Monday, people living in the Tri-State Area, were told to prepare for the worst, and by Monday night at about 6 p.m., the first winds hit, 70 and 80 miles per hour, mostly hitting central New Jersey and New York City. For the next 12 hours, low lying areas would be flooded by massive waves of water and wind. Fires that jumped from roof to roof would destroy 50 homes in one neighborhood in Queens, New York. Staten Island, New York, New York City’s least-known borough is a disaster area. Wind smashed power lines and toppled trees into homes. By the end of Tuesday, eight million people would be without electrical power, including two million in New Jersey. As of Friday, 1.6 million people in New Jersey were still without power.

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People have been sorted into two groups – those without power and those with, besides those who have lost their homes. Sandy damaged and shut the major gasoline refineries in New Jersey, and all of sudden there was a fuel shortage, and people waited in cars in gas lines similar to those in the 1970s. Distressed residents of our town without power about 50 percent of the people here have come to our house to store their frozen food in our freezer and to take a hot shower. This weekend, neighbor friends, are staying at our house as the temperature is supposed to drop into the 40s and 50s. My place of employment in lower Manhattan, which was evacuated before the storm, is closed until further notice. Even if it were open, I could not get there because the New Jersey Transit railroad has suspended service, and the PATH train that runs from Hoboken, New Jersey, under the Hudson River to the financial district is filled with water and nobody knows when it will open again. To drive into the city, the authorities have required that each car have at least three riders in it. Driving anyway is a nightmare with two and three-hour waits at the Lincoln Tunnel that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. Each day, I received text messages with status reports about the potential re-opening of my office the next day, but by Thursday I was told not to expect to return to work until this coming Monday. New Jersey Transit announced its re-opening Friday (today) with limited service in the northeast corridor that brings commuters into New York City from its New Jersey suburbs. Commuting into Manhattan, which even before the storm was always difficult if not a daily miracle, will become even more tenuous next week with many bridges and tunnels still damaged and impassable. The storm knocked off the front page of internet sites the presidential election and President Obama’s mishandling if not malfeasance associated with the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. But that does not mean that politics has disappeared. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has raised hackles by his overly effusive praise for President Obama’s response to the storm. In an effort to avoid playing politics with the storm, which seems reasonable, Christie’s welcoming the president to New Jersey in the storm’s aftermath and appearing to buddy-buddy with Obama dismayed conservatives. Rush Limbaugh suggested that it was a “rope-a-dope,” and that by getting Obama to come to New Jersey, Christie had removed the president from the campaign trail for an extra day or two in these final important days before the election next Tuesday. Equally appalling was New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, supposedly a Republican, but really a RINO, a Republican in Name Only, endorsing President Obama for president in the wake of the storm. The reason: Climate Change. That’s a secular response, and most of the people in these blue states, you can’t talk to them about politics or common sense; it’s pretty much pointless. For people who believe in the Bible, and don’t believe one storm creates scientific fact, we have another reason for the cause of the storm: Weather. In fact, many people could draw some other conclusions from this storm. Is New York City getting too big and too bad? Rents of small apartments in Manhattan in new buildings can approach $5,000 per month. Pornography and strip clubs can be found pretty much everywhere. Buildings are getting taller and taller and the city is becoming ever more densely populated. The city that at one time had a significant manufacturing base is now a two-industry town: finance and media. I noticed that I was somewhat prescient earlier this year when I wrote in article about the difficulty of living in New Jersey and now it is even worse. Here is what I wrote:
Commuting from the suburbs by either passenger train or coach bus with New Jersey Transit… pretty much steals from a person at least two hours every day of one’s life riding back and forth from work. It’s mentally and physically draining.
And I also wrote:
Car culture: Unless you are going to New York, public transportation can be sketchy in New Jersey, meaning that to get from one New Jersey town to the other depends on driving a car to get there.
What this basically means is that people in New Jersey have built their whole lives on two things: either being able to get into Manhattan by public transportation or having a car to drive them to their job or really any other place. Now with the infrastructure badly damaged, people’s lives have come somewhat to a halt, not to mention the loss of electrical power. Nevertheless, life marches on. Friends of ours without power have left the area to stay with relatives for the next few days, although how many days that will actually be is anybody’s guess, because the damage is so extensive that in some cases a whole new infrastructure must be built.. As for me, I’ve spent some very high-quality days wearing dress-down clothing, interacting with my family and writing my book. I’m grateful that besides for some minor damage to my home, the storm pretty much left us unscathed. It must have been the “Go Away Sandy” sign that my little girls painted and put in our front window the morning before the storm.


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Daniel Wiseman -- Bio and Archives

Daniel Wiseman is an independent political commentator, who focuses on national and international affairs. He spent nine years as a professional journalist in Wyoming before working in fund-raising, non-profit management, and is now working in New York City. Wiseman focuses his writing on how to bring the United States back to its Constitutional moorings.  He writes exclusively for Canada Free Press.


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