Posted on 11/01/2012 6:24:55 AM PDT by blam
Tempers Flare: Residents Complain Government Is Too Slow Distributing Food And Supplies
Mac Slavo
October 31st, 2012
Hurricane Sandy made landfall just 36 hours ago and already we’ve received reports of looting in hard-hit areas with some people brazenly taking to Twitter to post pictures of their new found wealth.
Ahead of the storm panic buying left grocery and hardware store shelves empty as concerned residents stocked up on food, water, batteries, flashlights, and generators.
With the run on supplies over the weekend, tens of thousands of people were inevitably left without essential survival items due to shortages across the region, and now they are demanding action from government officials.
Officials in the city of Hoboken, N.J., are defending their response to severe flooding from superstorm Sandy.
Public Safety director Jon Tooke says at least 25 percent of the city on the Hudson River across from Manhattan remains under water. He estimates at least 20,000 people are stranded and says most are being encouraged to shelter in place until floodwaters recede.
Tempers flared Wednesday morning outside City Hall as some residents complained the city was slow to get food and other supplies out to the stranded.
Tooke says emergency personnel have been working 24/7. He says the “scope of this situation is enormous.”
Without any way to heat their homes due to power outages, no food in their pantries and water supplies potentially tainted with polluted flood waters, those who failed to prepare are now at the mercy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s crisis safety net.
But, as FEMA has advised in its emergency preparedness guidelines, despite millions of dollars in supplies having been purchased by the Federal government, if emergency responders and the transportation infrastructure is overwhelmed, help may not be coming for days or weeks.
While damage from Hurricane Sandy may not be as widespread or severe as earlier reports suggested it could be, what should be crystal clear is that any serious long-term emergency would be horrific for the non-prepper.
In New Jersey some 20,000 residents are affected and already there are not enough supplies to go around and sanity is rapidly destabilizing.
The government simply does not have the manpower to deal with an emergency requiring the delivery of food and water to hundreds of thousands of people. The saving grace for the east coast is that the damage was not as bad as it could have been, and residents were made aware of the coming storm days in advance, giving them ample time to stock up or evacuate.
Imagine the effects of an unforeseen, more widespread disaster such as coordinated dirty-bomb terror attacks, a natural disaster requiring permanent mass evacuations of entire cities, destruction of the national power grid, or the collapse of the currency systems necessary for the global exchange of key commodities.
Even those who set aside supplies for such disasters would be hard-pressed to survive; never mind those who have less than three days of food in their pantries.
Exactly right...Katrina exposed welfare for the pox it can be and various TV ratings show us 75% of Americans are glued to the latest "...Got Talent" or survival genre television show how dumbed down our public education system is. The problem IS...the Socialists in congress pushing Big Government instead of self-reliance...Obama couldn't agree more he...has others doing his work so he can campaign...that is Socialism...(and this is why our nation is falling apart today) You can't elect ignorance because of race or first in this or that....
are now reaping the harvest of failure.
While I agree with being prepared let me state that it’s a bit more involved than just getting in a car and driving 50m inland.
Firstly, most places are out of or almost out of gas. Friend of mine who DID prepare beforehand has been looking for gas because HIS work in western NJ is still open and his commute time and therefore gas consumption has doubled or tripled. It’s not really safe to store a whole lot of gas cans in an apartment.
They do, however, have food and know how to cook it and were NOT in an evac zone. They aren’t even in zone C, the ‘build an ark’ evac zone.
Most municipalities do NOT let you cook out or have gas grills or kerosene heaters in your apartment. Understandable from a fire hazard standpoint. Nobody wants to be a modern day Mrs. O’Leary. Ask Breezy Point how this works.
My friends family is eating a whole lotta PB&J sammiches, poptarts, dry cereal and crackers with canned cheese.
Secondly, most streets are either flooded (Hoboken, Jersey City, others) and impassable or impassable due to massive trees that fell. Combined with still live downed power lines it’s better to just stay put. My friend had to travel 15m out of his normal commute each way just to get to his job due to massive trees laying in the road and still live power lines in a few places. And got a flat tire for his efforts. Lots of nails and other what not still in the roads.
Interestingly enough a lot of the whining is NOT coming from the typical government dependent crowd. The Hoboken water front is full of million dollar plus condos. The median income is over 100K/yr. It’s yuppieville.
Now, having said all this, most of these yuppies probably eat out most meals. I lived there for a while. I was considered ‘frugal’ because I DID cook most of my meals. It’s not an exaggeration that many of them literally can’t boil water. and they REALLY can’t boil it now! So they don’t have 3 days of food in their apartments. The wealthier the inhabitants, the LESS likely they are to eat in in the NYC area. Thus, less likely to have food at home in case of emergency. I had roughly a month’s worth. However, in the case of no potable water that might have been tricky. If the pumps don’t work most everyone higher than the first or second floor won’t have water regardless of whether it’s drinkable or not. Storing gallons and gallons of bottled water in a 4th floor 600sqft apartment becomes problematic. And you still have to flush the potties. If you have no water pressure even a Berkey filter is useless. Unless you think they could filter the sewage and chemical contaminated ‘flood water’ on the streets in hoboken? Gross.
I bet they’ll have more food in their apartments AFTER this however. And they’ll evac. In fact, the next powerful NE storm that hits there’ll be a sea of tail lights headed west on every major thoroughfare LOL. But that brings up another problem. There aren’t enough hotel rooms in the PA/upstate NY area to put them all. And shelters can be dodgy affairs with theft and assault on the menu if you end up in a bad crowd. I can see why people don’t evac to a shelter.
I have a unique perspective in that I lived up there for nearly 10 years AND lived through Katrina. It’s a logistical nightmare up there that really can’t be 100% prepped for even IF you don’t live in an evac zone. The inability to completely prep, securely, up there is one reason I moved. Fortunately for me *I* had family that was rural and southern. And a source of support I could lean on that did NOT involve employment in that area. I don’t expect most of the people involved do, however. They have to stay where the jobs are. And it’s difficult enough to find a job up there now days. Much less in the rural south.
Their problem wasn’t stupidity. It was normalcy bias. And it’s eaten their lunch. I suspect after this, the ones that can afford it will have ‘bug out’ camps or shacks in the adirondacks and poconos that WILL be stocked with preps!
just drove 70 miles here in northern WV mountains to get fuel and supplies. no power, phone, nothing.
there are people under four feet of snow here and no national guard relief of any attempts to send relief.
no help from government or any authority. out.
You would be a good neighbor to have.
For anyone in the storm area that intends to drive anywhere in the next month, they need to put Green Slime in their tires today. Nails will be everywhere, and every time it rains, more will be washed into the streets. The Slime works, and will prevent flat tires.
UH? did they also think of many moving the Dry stock to Higher Ground in the house? The top of any closet is higher than 3 feet. Unbelieveable prepping. Maybe they did not know the storm was coming, reckon? lol
36 hours and they are bitching about food? Even in the worst days before getting act together, I had 36 hours worth of food. It is sad, but it should be a message to everyone in big cities.
But alas, it is lost on the continous HELPLESS thinkers/victims.
Yup Yup Yup, I heard him say it too. Of course that was because HIS food supply wasn’t cut off.
I know, personally, at least 2 people who can’t drive their cars because 100+yr trees pancaked them. Can’t really prep for the latter one. One guy’s garage fell on his. Can’t drive anywhere, much less 50m away, when your car isn’t driveable.
Fortunately the only friend i’m really concerned about is the one that lives in the apartment. Everyone else still pretty much has a liveable home. And water pressure and potties that will flush.
It’s pretty tricky to imagine the suburban density up there unless you’ve been there. And tree upon giant tree down in multiples. On every street. For street after street after town after town for miles and miles and miles.
Friend of mine in the burbs sent a picture. His neighborhood was one with 1 or 2 story fairly ‘middle class’ homes for that area. All built in the 30’s or 50’s. With trees that were either planted then or soon after. The pic was heart breaking. Every single tree on one side of the street had fallen. On all the houses on that side of the street. The trees on the other side of the street had all fallen in the street. From just the picture I could count 25 or 30 LARGE trees down.
Just on that one particular street.
I’m not sure how anyone on that street (or the next one or the next one or the next one...) could drive anywhere. Or even for the most part get out of their driveways.
This, btw, was in CENTRAL NJ. nowhere near an evac zone. 25m or so from an evac zone as the crow flies.
There’s probably 100K people in that situation. More likely. They’re not going to be driving anywhere. Even IF they all have chain saws.
The media is largely showing pics of the jersey shore. Because that’s where THEY vacation. The middle class taxpayers in central NJ? Don’t exist. They’re like the middle class taxpayers on the MS Gulf Coast after katrina.
Now, assuming they have sufficient food. And a lot of them do in fact have food in the pantry. And the ability to cook it on a grill or fireplace, ditto boil their water, they will be fine if a bit cold.
But they will, justifiably, be whiny. I think we can let them whine?
No place in a house is a sure place. One can never foresee how or where a house will be damaged. Maybe it's best to split the prep stuff, store some in cellar and store some upstairs.
The year that we moved to WA State, the town we moved to flooded the first month and about a month later, we had what was described as a 100 year storm. It was 90 mile per hour winds, with snow and 15 degree temperatures. From our house, we could see electrical transformers and sub stations blowing all over the county. We were without power for five days, much of that time at 15 degrees. As the storm passed, though the temps warmed and the snow turned to rain and we had two inches of ice on top of the 15 inches of snow, then the frozen water pipes burst and we had water pouring down the wall between the house and the garage.
We managed, as we always do, but it was cold and the kids wore their parkas indoors and stayed inside their sleeping bags.
It’s a big deal if you’ve had a flood or fire, or if you’ve been killed or injured by a falling tree. Those are the people for whom I can have sympathy.
I am truly sorry your son lost his car — but with the abundant warnings of storm surge, why did he leave it in a vulnerable spot? Why did he not gas up and park on high ground, away from trees?
When I returned from my Katrina evacuation in Florida, I did not expect to find running water or natural gas awaiting me. I had stockpiled most of what I needed ahead of time, and brought the rest with me. And remember, we had very little advance warning of Katrina. 60 hours before final landfall, it was projected to go to FL. Nor did it inflate to a cat 5 till 30 hours before it hit. I know you Yankees are not old hands at hurricanes, but it isn’t exactly the first in living memory for y’all.
Phones? I had no phone after Katrina, for weeks. Not even cell service. In fact, even in other states 600 miles away, I could not receive calls to my 504 area code cell phone. Fun, huh? I had no power for a month — but I had taken the precaution of packing my freezer with frozen water jugs, so my contents were still frozen over a week after the storm, on 90F+ heat. Given the cool weather, your son’s fridge should be just fine for days, and much longer if he had the foresight to make some ice blocks. I don’t mean to be callous, but I hope the people on LI did something constructive with their week’s warning, other than wring their hands.
Speaking of cool weather, why the panic? If you’re young and healthy, put some clothes on. Build a fire at night. Cuddle with your loved ones, and put some blankets on the bed. For pete’s sake, during the winter I routinely let my house go down to 55 before I think of putting the heat on. Try living post-storm in a sealed-up unpowered house at 95F, with a dewpoint of 75, and then we can talk about oppressive discomfort. That’s what I did after Katrina. That’s what I did two months ago after Isaac, which probably totally escaped the attention of most New Yorkers.
I’ve often wondered what a solution is.
I think a partial one might be for we conservatives to try and advocate the virtue of self reliance. Not in a bunker-building paranoid way (although I don’t intend that to be derogatory), but perhaps we could spin it in a positive way.
Plenty of people seem to be willing to do things like home improvments or Home Depot and Lowes wouldn’t be so popular.
Maybe we could come up with some sort of “fun” way to promote self reliance or self improvement. Like a learning club where people could come and learn how to do things for themselves, whether it be working on their own car, remodelling a bedroom, setting up a pantry or preparing for disaster.
If we came up with a catchy name, maybe had something like badges or certifications or something one could earn. It might even catch on - something like an adult boy scout troop. It may not be attractive to everybody, but I bet a lot of people would be interested in learning how to be self sufficient if it was done in a fun and social way.
What Christie did was trade short term gain for long term risk.
He’s betting that if things go bad ( and it looks like they will) he’s tied himself to Obama and put the emphasis on the FEMA response, which will allow him to deflect any blame that might come his way. He’s turned this into Obamas success, so if it falls apart it’ll be Obamas failure.
That’ll help him get reelected. But could damage him in the long term for his national ambitions. He’s betting that by 2016 or 2020 GOP primary voters won’t remember, or at least won’t care, about his behavior this week.
I’ll tell you this tho - he’s potentially selling out his country for personal gain. This isn’t the time to do that. He could have just politely thanked Obama for the relief effort, but asked the President to stay away due to the potential distraction and interference with first responders. Just like Bloomberg did.
I’m sure they’d appreciate those canned goods the Romney campaign has been collecting.
Just don't let them read their poetry to you.
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