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NYC, Long Island to start rationing gasoline as state's Sandy damage could hit $33B
Nassau County Police control access to an Exxon station in Elmont, N.Y., Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012. Gasoline supplies have been limited in the region since Superstorm Sandy hit ten days ago. The police are limiting sales of gasoline at this Long Island station to first responders. / AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
NEW YORK Damage in New York state from Superstorm Sandy could total $33 billion when all is said and done, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday as the state began cleaning up from a nor'easter that dumped snow, brought down power lines and left hundreds of thousands of new customers in darkness.
Meanwhile, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and officials on Long Island have decided to start rationing gasoline.
"Last week's storm hit the fuel network hard - and knocked out critical infrastructure needed to distribute gasoline," Bloomberg said when announcing the rationing.
Sandy recovery: Two steps forward, one step back
Nor'easter hits one week after Sandy
After tight gasoline supplies led to long lines and frustration at filling stations, officials in the city and on Long Island said Thursday that rationing will be implemented starting Friday. Drivers will alternate days they can fill up, based on whether their license plates end in an odd or even number.
Bloomberg said Thursday that only 25 percent of the city's gas stations are open. He estimated the tight gas supplies could last another couple of weeks.
A damage forecasting firm had previously estimated that Sandy might have caused $30 billion to $50 billion in economic losses from the Carolinas to Maine, including property damage, lost business and extra living expenses. Cuomo's estimate will likely push the bill even higher.
A damage estimate of even $50 billion total would make Sandy the second most expensive storm in U.S. history, right behind Hurricane Katrina. Sandy inundated parts of New York City and New Jersey with a storm surge as high as 14 feet, killed more than 100 people and left more than 8.5 million people without power at its peak.
Sandy left more people in the dark than any previous storm, the Department of Energy has said, and it left drivers desperate for gas when it complicated fuel deliveries.
"We are going to have to look at a ground-up redesign," Cuomo said of the power and fuel supply systems. "With power outages, you paralyze the nation, and chaos ensues."
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In particular, Cuomo noted New York City's problems, largely due to the surge of seawater that inundated utilities lying 15 to 20 stories below ground.
"That's a brilliant engineering masterpiece, yes, but if Manhattan floods, you flood all that infrastructure," he said. "We don't even have a way to pump it out."
When recovering from Sandy, many focus on the little things
Nor'easter 2012
On Thursday, a nor'easter that stymied recovery efforts from Sandy pulled away from New York and New Jersey, leaving hundreds of thousands of new people in darkness but failing to swamp shorelines anew, as feared.
To help victims of Sandy, donations to the American Red Cross can be made by visiting Red Cross disaster relief, or you can text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
Residents from Connecticut to Rhode Island saw 3 to 6 inches of snow on Wednesday. Worcester, Mass., had 8 inches of snow, and Freehold, N.J., had just over a foot overnight. Some parts of Connecticut got a foot or more.
From Brooklyn to storm-battered sections of the Jersey shore and Connecticut, about 750,000 customers — more than 200,000 from the new storm — in the region were without power in temperatures near freezing, some after already living for days in the dark.
"We lost power last week, just got it back for a day or two, and now we lost it again," said John Monticello, of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. "Every day it's the same now: turn on the gas burner for heat. Instant coffee. Use the iPad to find out what's going on in the rest of the world."
Vladimir Repnin, of New York City's Staten Island, emerged from his powerless home with a snow shovel in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and a question from someone cut off from the outside world.
Voting in Sandy-affected communities
"Who won? Obama?" he asked.
He didn't like the answer.
"The Democrats ruined my business," he said, referring to his shuttered clothing manufacturing firm.
Unlike other holdouts who got by with generators or gas stoves, the 63-year-old from Ukraine has been without power since Sandy brought 8 feet of water through his door and his neighbor's deck into his yard. He tried to beat the cold Wednesday night by sleeping with his Yorkie, Kuzya, and cat, Channel.
"I had the dog right here," he said, pointing to his left side, "and the cat on my chest. It was still too cold, but I cannot leave my house."
The nor'easter was almost too much for Staten Island resident Lauren Destephano to bear, CBS New York station WCBS-TV reports.
"I cried all day and didn't do much, and now I picked up, put my boots back on and started all over again," Destephano told WCBS-TV.
In her Midland Beach neighborhood, there are still mounds of garbage, WCBS-TV reports. The city and private carters have picked up 130,000 tons of garbage and household debris. Some of it is piled in 20-foot mounds in a parking lot along the storm-ravaged beach.
Throughout Staten Island's beach area, the storm had blanketed growing piles of debris with several inches of snow. By mid-morning, it was starting to melt, filling the streets with filthy sludge.
Nor'easter turns U.S. travel upside-down
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights before and during the new storm. On Thursday, there were about 600 canceled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware, mostly in the New York area.
But roads in New Jersey and New York City were clear for the morning commute, and rail lines into New York were running smoothly so far, despite snow still coming down heavily in some areas.
The Queens-Midtown Tunnel, a vital vehicular route linking Manhattan to the city borough of Queens and the rest of Long Island, is reopening Friday after being swamped by Sandy, Cuomo said.
Under ordinary circumstances, a storm of this sort wouldn't be a big deal. But large swaths of the landscape were still an open wound, with the electrical system highly fragile and many of Sandy's victims still mucking out their homes and cars and shivering in the deepening cold. As the storm picked up Wednesday evening, lights started flickering off again.
The additional power outages could stall recovery efforts, even though utility companies had prepared, adding extra crews ahead of the nor'easter.
In New Jersey, there were about 400,000 power outages early Thursday; 150,000 of those were new. In New York City and Westchester, more than 70,000 customers were without power after the storm knocked out an additional 55,000 customers.
For Consolidated Edison, the extra outages were dealt with swiftly, so there were only about 3,000 additional customers without power from the total Wednesday of 67,000.
"I think we're going to be able to power through. Our objective was to get power restored to everyone by the weekend and we're still working with that goal," said Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesman for the utility.
Temperatures over the next few days will be in the 50s in southern New England, said meteorologist Frank Nocera, and on Sunday it could edge into the 60s.
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I know several insurance adjusters working the NYC metropolitan area. To the last man and woman, all of 'em believe the damage from this thing plus the nor'easter will easily top $100 billion and could even come close to the Big Quake in Japan. $130B? $140B even $150 Billion is not out of the question. A lot of these guys (and gals) worked Katrina and Ike and they tell me this one's worse. The only silver lining in this is the RELATIVELY fewer number of deaths so far. Note the "so far".....
The conventional wisdom is about 110 dead but even after 8 days, no one really has a handle on how many are unaccounted for. There are still stretches of Staten Island that first responders can't get to because of blocked roads.
Please excuse a little digression, it's important to put in the picture. Staten Island or Richmond Borough has historically been New York's forgotten stepchild. A lot of it is STILL semi-rural. I can remember buying produce from small farms that were still on the island as recently as 1965. ANYthing of import that happens in New York gets to Staten Island after everyone else sees it. It's harder to get aid and virtually anything else to the borough, given there is only one bridge and the ferry for access to the rest of the city proper. Most resident who go off island to do business do it in New Jersey. Most of the time it simply ain't on Manhattan's radar and in my opinion that stinks.
I fear responders will find quite a few more dead ones on Staten and drive the death toll beyond 200. I don't think it will go much higher but there is a Christless amount of work yet to be done and damage asssesments on the island have only just started.
It's possible my insurance adjuster buddies are overblowing things a bit. In fact I hope they are; but even given some poetic license, from what I have seen up to now...With the exception of people still undergoing hardship on the Gulf from 2005, Sandy stands an excellent chance of making people everywhere else forget there ever was a Katrina.
Looks like a SNAFU to me!
Bush was criticised for weeks when Katrina happened.
Do Democrat officials always get a pass when they are responsible for setting things right?
For we have another four years to live through.Thank God there are Republicans on the Hill!
Oh, that's right. You're a knee-jerking reactionary rightist who can't read more than headlines. Otherwise you would have realized that it's not a lack of availability of gas that's the problem. It's a lack of availability of GAS STATIONS that were damaged or are without power.
What a tool...