Storm-crippled NYC stirs back to life but gridlock persists
Commuters wait in a line to board buses into Manhattan in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The line stretched twice around the arena and commuters reported wait times of one to three hours to get on a bus. / AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Updated 1:55 p.m. ET
NEW YORK Subways started rolling in much of New York City on Thursday for the first time since Superstorm Sandy crippled the nation's largest transit system. Traffic crawled over bridges, where police enforced mandatory carpooling.
Before-and-after views of Sandy destruction
Ridership was light in the morning, and the trains couldn't take some New Yorkers where they needed to go. There were no trains in downtown Manhattan and other hard-hit parts of the city, and people had to switch to buses.
Drivers are dealing with a traffic nightmare after a minimum passenger mandate took effect Thursday morning in an attempt to ease gridlock in Manhattan, CBS New York reports.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the New York City death toll from Sandy is now 38. The number is called "fluid" as reports come in from first responders.
Mass transit woes hinder NYC Sandy recovery
The mayor, who announced that the city's public schools will reopen on Monday, also said that distribution of meals and bottles of water would start Thursday in some of the city's hardest-hit areas, including Coney Island, Staten Island's South Shore, Chinatown and the Rockaways.
People were grateful even for the limited train service. Ronnie Abraham was waiting at Penn Station for a train to Harlem, a trip that takes 20 minutes by subway and 2 and a half hours on city buses that have been overwhelmed since resuming service Tuesday.
"It's the lifeline of the city," Abraham said. "It can't get much better than this."
But many residents without subway service were not so lucky. In front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, a line to wait for buses into Manhattan stretched twice around the arena and commuters reported wait times of one to three hours to get on a bus.
Commuters wait for buses outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY on Nov. 1, 2012.
/ CBSOther New Yorkers, without power for a third full day and growing dispirited, decided to flee the city. They worried about food and water and, in some cases, their own safety.
Superstorm's most dramatic images
"It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big time."
Rima Finzi-Strauss was taking a bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.
"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."
NYC transit system coming back - slowly
111 homes burned in Breezy Point disaster
She said people were on the street buying "old, tiny little vegetables" and climbing 20 floors into apartments where they wouldn't flush the toilet, and without heat. New York dipped to about 40 degrees Wednesday night.
After reopening airports, theaters and the stock exchange, city officials hoped the subway would ease the gridlock that had paralyzed the city, forcing cars and pedestrians to inch through crowded streets without working stoplights.
Television footage Thursday showed heavy traffic coming into Manhattan as police turned away cars that carried fewer than three people, a rule meant to ease congestion.
The backup was up to 10 miles in places, CBS New York reported.
Traffic was backed up in every direction at the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge where police set up a checkpoint at the mouth of the span leading into Manhattan, CBS 2's Kathryn Brown reported. One commuter said they waited three hours to get onto the bridge
Flights took off and landed Thursday at LaGuardia Airport, the last of the three major New York-area airports to reopen since the storm, which killed more than 70 people across the Northeast and left millions without power.
Across the region, people stricken by the storm pulled together, providing comfort to those left homeless and offering hot showers and electrical outlets for charging cellphones to those without power.
The spirit of can-do partnership extended to politicians, who at least made the appearance of putting their differences aside to focus together on Sandy.
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"We are here for you," President Barack Obama said Wednesday in Brigantine, N.J., touring a ravaged shore. "We are not going to tolerate red tape. We are not going to tolerate bureaucracy."
President Obama joined Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who had been one of the most vocal supporters of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, to tour the ravaged coast. But the two men spoke only of helping those harmed by the storm.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer announced Thursday that New York State and New York City would be reimbursed 100 percent by FEMA for Sandy recovery costs. "This is a national disaster," he said.
On Wednesday, masses of people walked shoulder-to-shoulder across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan for work, reversing the escape scenes from the Sept. 11 terror attack and the blackout of 2003.
Downtown Manhattan, which includes the financial district, Sept. 11 memorial and other tourist sites, was still mostly an urban landscape of shuttered bodegas and boarded-up restaurants. People roamed in search of food, power and a hot shower.
Suburban commuter trains started running for the first time on Wednesday, and Amtrak's Northeast Corridor was to take commuters from city to city on Friday for the first time since the storm.
From West Virginia to the Jersey Shore, the storm's damage was still being felt, and seen.
In New Jersey, signs of the good life that had defined wealthy shorefront enclaves like Bayhead and Mantoloking lay scattered and broken: $3,000 barbecue grills buried beneath the sand and hot tubs cracked and filled with seawater.
111 homes burned in Breezy Point disaster
NYC transit system coming back - slowly
Nearly all the homes were seriously damaged, and many had disappeared.
"This," said Harry Typaldos, who owns the Grenville Inn in Mantoloking, "I just can't comprehend."
Most of the state's mass transit systems remained shut down, leaving hundreds of thousands of commuters braving clogged highways and quarter-mile lines at gas stations.
Atlantic City's casinos remained closed. Christie postponed Halloween until Monday, saying trick-or-treating wasn't safe in towns with flooded and darkened streets, fallen trees and downed power lines.
Farther north in Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, nearly 20,000 people remained stranded in their homes, amid accusations that officials have been slow to deliver food and water.
One man blew up an air mattress and floated to City Hall, demanding to know why supplies hadn't gotten out. At least one-fourth of the city's residents were flooded, and 90 percent were without power.
The outages forced many gas stations across the state to close, resulting in long lines of people looking to fuel cars and backup generators. Darryl Jameson of Toms River waited more than hour to get fuel.
"The messed-up part is these people who are blocking the roadway as they try to cut in line," he said. "No one likes waiting, man, but it's something you have to do."
Surveying the damage along New Jersey's coast
On New York's Long Island, bulldozers scooped sand off streets and tow trucks hauled away destroyed cars while people tried to find a way to their homes to restart their lives.
Richard and Joanne Kalb used a rowboat to reach their home in Mastic Beach, filled with 3 feet of water. Richard Kalb posted a sign on a telephone pole, asking drivers to slow down: "Slow please no wake."
Five-foot snow drifts piled up in West Virginia, where the former Hurricane Sandy merged with two winter weather systems as it went inland. Snow collapsed parts of an apartment complex, a grocery store, a hardwood plant and three homes.
The sixth person killed in the state was a candidate for the state House, John Rose Sr., who was struck by a falling tree limb. His name will remain on the ballot on Election Day.
A few more inches might fall in West Virginia, but meteorologists said the remnants of the storm are in the Appalachian Mountains and will be gone by the end of the week.
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KSUGIRL58 said (of New York City residents), "... And that's fine, that's thier choice...but if you stay, then you better be prepared to fend for yourself for a few weeks. Dont expect to be taken care of when you were asked to leave and get out of danger... There was plenty of time to find a safer place to ride out the storm..."
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Despite "thoughts and prayers", there is a clear lack of sympathy from some self-styled independent, self-reliant Americans in the hinterlands who believe New Yorkers should "suck it up" and stop whining. Secure in their own inland locations, the image of cataclysmic disaster is set against Joplin, Missouri, or perhaps New Orleans.
Such people are not cruel nor particularly stupid, but they are resolutely ignorant of what New York, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Washington, Los Angeles and other metro areas represent.
These megapolises are laboratories for our future, in the continuing urbanization of America. Whatever problems the people of the Northeast corridor experience should get our sympathy and support, if only because our own cities are meandering toward the same vast and complex urban model.
Kansas City many not be anything near the complexity and size of New York City, but the trials of the people of New York City as they struggle to recover the basics of shelter, food, water, gas, electrical and data utilities-- not to mention urban security-- could be ourselves after a similar, short-notice disaster.
Yes, a huge and obvious gulf of incomprehension hinders many readers from registering Superstorm Sandy as the worst disaster to befall New York City in the past century, including 911 and the 2003 blackout. The storm ripped apart a massive urban structure, and the scale of human suffering and dislocation in the New York City region dwarfs anything experienced before.
To expect New York City to empty its millions into the countryside in a display of prudence is a bit much to expect of any city, especially the megapolis the New York City region has become. Urban residents must travel great distances simply to leave behind the zone of destruction, let alone set up new, self-sufficient communities. To propose that somehow the people of New York City should have had a "master plan" for dealing with Sandy imposes an unrealistically demanding standard that no other American city has met.
In any case, from such disasters as Sandy are American cities rebuilt. New York City, under an appropriately visionary mayor (surely not Bloomberg), now must deal with the prospect of future Superstorm Sandys, and the realization global warming increases the threat of flooding at the city's heart. The next century will bring interesting developments for New Yorkers.
Now...my rant.... tonight while watching CBS and seeing how frustrated the people are, how they are complaing about the no power, lack of water, and other resources make me frustrated! I've lived in Kansas my whole life, so I haven't experienced any hurricanes, but I have had my share of tornados. There are times where we have only minuets warning of a tornado... and the east coast had days... shoot, I live in the middle of the country and I knew there was going to be major weather along the east coast days before Sandy hit. The people were asked to leave, the warnings were provided, yet people decided to stay. To "ride out the storm." And that's fine, that's thier choice...but if you stay, then you better be prepared to fend for yourself for a few weeks. Dont expect to be taken care of when you were asked to leave and get out of danger. Resources needs to be focused on getting the city back in order and cleaned up. I think it would happen a lot faster if resources didn't have to be used to go door to door and check on people, or search for the missing, or hand out food and water. There was plenty of time to find a safer place to ride out the storm. Instead of the community "coming together after the storm, the community should help each other out and get to a safer place. Hopefully next time (and there's always a next time) people will remember how long it took to get back to "normal" and will leave in order for recovery to go smoother and faster.
Be safe out there people!
Its in the countries best interest to delay the election or extend the voting period to a week or so to ensure all the people on the east coast can get the vote in.
Yes HAARp was active on the east coast like crazy, but keep in mind Obama won the first time and voting fraud/hacking occurred in the Bush elections for certain, so perhaps he has something up his sleeve, like exposing to us what HAARP is?
A storm surge on steroids invading Lower Manhattan that was more than three feet higher than the next highest - Which was set in 1821.
An only slightly smaller surge accompanied by 25 foot waves blasted the New Jersey Coast and turned much of the homes and businesses there to matchwood.
Every road and rail access out of Manhattan shut down. The only way off the island was to walk - or swim.
Wind whipped flames burning out over 100 homes in Breezy Point. I suspect it is called that for a reason.
Flooded vehicular and subway tunnels all over the Big Apple.
Boats of all descriptions, one of which was a near-200 ton freighter - from the Carolinas to the tip of Long Island tossed ashore. The occassional one through homeowners' living room windows.
Up to 7 feet of Hudson River overtopping the riverfront in Poughkeepsie - 70 miles north of NYC. Not generally known, the Lower Hudson from about Kingston southwards is really an estuary.
Enough downed timber to rebuild Joplin several times over.
Snow dumps of between 18 inches and four feet in the mountains of West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennesee and Virginia. Yeah, it's mountains and it snows there - but this was October and the amounts were unprecedented since 1993.
Beach erosion from Georgia clear to New Brunswick and again throughout the eastern Great Lakes.
And Cleveland was hit with its own storm surge.
Damaged homes, schools, businesses, hospitals, parks and playgrounds, impassible roads, isolated villages (still), unresolved medical emergencies, downed power lines spaghettied all over creation and high standing water are only some of the issues residents over a half-million square mile area are having to face now and for some considerable time in the future.
76 dead and so many missing we don't have a count yet. That's JUST in the U.S. Another 69 dead everywhere else.
25 Billion dollars in losses and climbing. You want a "hockey stick" graph? Wait 'till the final damage assessment is done!
And we spend out energy engaging in political pyss'ing matches?!?
http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2012/oct/31/want-to-help-victims-of-hurricane-sandy-heres-how-ar-550076/
http://donate.worldvision.org/OA_HTML/xxwv2ibeCCtpItmDspRte.jsp?item=1753180&go=item§ion=10369&gclid=CJXB_qynrrMCFQu0nQodDH8AKg&xxwvCampaign=113655299
http://www.redcross.org/hurricane-sandy?scode=RSG00000E017&subcode=grantdonations&gclid=CLKRic2nrrMCFQUFnQodhToAOw. On this one be sure to specify county if you want to filter your donations.
http://theweek.com/article/index/235620/how-to-help-victims-of-hurricane-sandy
For those of you who wish to help, this will provide a good start and some of you who are more "net" savvy than I can come up with many other sites.
Just so you know, I put a bit-o-money over to the Red Cross and let them know how and where I wanted it spent.
Re-construction of homes and businesses on barrier islands along the whole coast from NC to NY, and on other low lying coastal areas, ought to move very slowly after being planned super-carefully. Otherwise, taxpayers get handed the bill over and over again for destruction of property where little or no building is warranted.
Will Gov. Christie and President Obama, the new-found friends, or Romney, should he be elected, take such a position? Don't hold your breath.
And if your choice is NYC or metro NJ, don't forget your enormous contribution to pollution from automobiles, factories and airports.
The good news is: NO seems to have learned some lessons from Katrina and hopefully the NYC metro area will also.
IN A WATER SURGE, WENT TO A NEARBY HOUSE AND ASKED FOR HELP, AND WAS DENIED BY THE HOMEOWNER!NOW, I REALIZE PEOPLES TRUST IN THIS DAY & AGE QUESTIONED TWICE, BUT.... THIS PIECE OF "GARBAGE" SHOULD BE BROUGHT UP ON CHARGES AND QUITE HONESTLY RUN OUT OF TOWN. THIS NEWS REPORT HIT ME TO THE QUICK AND I HOPE THIS INDIVIDUAL LIVES WITH THE FACT THAT HE HAS 2 DEATHS ON HIS HANDS. THAN YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND WE ALL WILL GET THROUGH THIS, N.Y., N.J. & CONN.
A literal raft of kudos to CBS professionals who rode out the storm, and kept the operation running.
While we understand digital communications need not always arise from the same location, but can be "virtually" anywhere, it is a tribute to advanced planning by CBS and its technical professionals that CBSNews.com and CBSNews stayed active throughout the storm.