THE BIG ONE (Hurricane Cycle for NY now overdue)

NY Press ^ | September 2005 | Aaron Naparstek

[Terabitten]

He's the baptist bozo who posted the sign that stated "New Orleans is Sodom & Gamorrah" in the path of the displaced refugees.

Ahh, got it.

I'm not a member of his cult. It was an attempt at sarcasm. Sorry it didn't come across as intended.

[cyborg]

thanks...needed the time off to concentrate.

[hedgie]

Not to mention NYC's 35,000 cops, none of whom will cut and run...

[wtc911]

Suggesting that a natural disaster that would kill innocents is a good thing because of where those innocents live doesn't qualify as sarcasm. But I understand your intention and harbor no ill will.

[COUNTrecount]

You're welcome.

[oceanview]

yes, still some of those, John Stossel of ABC 20/20 has one.

[oceanview]

I would either ride it out at home, or at the Source Mall parking lot. If things get bad, you'll see me on TV looting food from the Cheesecake Factory!

[Coleus]

a cat 1 did plenty of damage in the 70's or early 80's hurricane David. Uprooted thousands of trees in northern NJ near NYC.

[qam1]

Way overblown

There's one other factor this guy left out, in the northern states unlike the south the houses & buildings are build much tougher because they have to withstand the tons of snow that gather on their roofs ever year. We don't have those popsicle stick houses here like they do in Florida

If a cat 4 or 5 hit New York/New Jersey; yes, there would be tons of damage especially along the shores, but it would be no where near the level of Katrina or even Andrew

[qam1]

Upstate in the Adirondacks got nailed by Floyd in 1999

Caused about a dozen rock & mud slides on the mountains

They didn't kill anybody until 4 months later in winter when 5 numbskulls decided to ski down one of them on Wright Peak which triggered an avalanche killing one of them

Here's a picture of the slide I took from a safe distance of ~2 miles away the day before the skiers triggered it,

[mewzilla]

Those four that hit FL last year? Well, after they did their worst down there, they came up north and NYS and PA got some damage down by them, too. Especially PA, in and around the Delaware River area :(

You don't have to be near the coast to get nailed by a hurricane.

[Labyrinthos]

Not to mention NYC's 35,000 cops, none of whom will cut and run...

While we have our share of bad cops, the NYPD is second to none -- and I mean NONE. If 09.11 had occurred in NOLA, I suspect very few cops would have died because they would have fled from harms way.

[Wallace T.]

Do the higher elevation areas of Long Island have enough shelter capacity to house those who would flee the lower lying areas on the south shore? Furthermore, are there resources readily available to care for them if power and water are knocked out for several weeks? (The same question could be asked about New York City.) One event that held the death toll down in Mississippi and Louisiana was the fact that most of the residents fled out of harm's way, 4/5ths of New Orleans' population for example. Were Interstate 91 and Interstate 287 extended into Long Island via causeways over Long Island Sound, several hundred thousand people could evacuate the low lying areas given a 48 hour warning. They could sit out the storm in motels in places like Springfield, MA, or Albany, NY, as many Gulf Coast residents went inland to places like Dallas, TX and Shreveport, LA to avoid Katrina.

[wtc911]

The answer is yes, there are multiple Universities (including two SUNY schools) high schools, hotels, motels, hospitals, etc outside the anticipated impact area, in fact most of these facilities are north of the expected line. Long Island is @ 19-22 miles wide. Sunrise Highway is considered the northern limit of the impact zone. It is no more than four miles away from the water at any point so most of the island would be untouched by coastal surge flooding. I'm in Great Neck, and still five miles from the LI Sound. I am fifteen miles north of the waters to the south. I'm not going anywhere.

[Amelia]

Y'all seen this?

And does reading it give you a feeling of "deja vu all over again"?

[Gabz]

New York's first vulnerability is psychological. This is a city where children playing in the dirt are told by their mothers to "get up off the floor." We tend to forget that we have any connection whatsoever to the natural world. The vast majority of the city's eight million inhabitants simply have no idea that a hurricane can happen here.

This paragraph really struck me....it's so true. I grew up in NYC and knew absolutely nothing about hurricanes, I mean absolutely NOTHING. It wasn't until I was in my 20s and living in Delaware that I really every realized anything about them - and that wasn't until Gloria in 85.