Four Ideas to Be Better Prepared for the Next Sandy

Superstorm Sandy's really turned a lot of people's lives upside down here on Long Island. The watchword for myself and my family is "thankful." We're thankful that we're safe. We're thankful that our home is largely undamaged. We're thankful that God protected our family and that we've had the resources to more or less rough out the conditions for the past week and a half without any ridiculous hardship.

It's been 11 days since my car got swamped by a storm surge. I haven't been able to get gas with any degree of regularity, and when I have there have been lines. Oh man, have there been lines. 2-3 hour waits are considered reasonable. They started rationing gasoline today, with odd/even tags being able to fill up on odd/even days. A couple of lines I noticed seemed like they may be a little shorter, but most of them, and for sure the ones in my neighborhood seemed just as long as ever. My car has an even tag, so I won't be able to get gas until tomorrow. I guess we'll see how that goes.

At any rate, we're the lucky ones. Long Beach is pretty much destroyed. We have friends in Wantagh we haven't heard from. Lindenhurst is beaten up. And of course our neighbors to the west in Queens and Staten Island literally can't buy food, get in or out of their neighborhoods, or protect their property from looters.

This whole mess has driven home the importance of being prepared. Prepared for what? The next storm for sure... Long Island gets hammered pretty regularly by Nor'easters and the occasional hurricane, but we're also an island, and not just any island. We're an island that requires you go through New York City in order to get off it. My guess is that a nuke in Midtown Manhattan could strand us for weeks before we could reasonably expect to get boated or flown off the island. So this has me thinking of how to be better prepared for the next Sandy... or whatever. Here's three things I thought of:

1. Get a generator. I had one delivered this week. It's only 4500 watts, but that should be enough to run our two refrigerators, a window unit A/C, a TV, and a computer.. and maybe a light or two. Whatever size you get, make sure you get a transfer box installed - that's the easiest and safest way to get your essentials online and running in a blackout. I'm not sure how much that cost, since I haven't gotten the bill yet from the electrician.

2. Store some gas. That's absolutely necessary. The generator is no good without fuel, and there's no guarantee that fuel will be available in an emergency. It sure as heck wasn't in this one. I'm open to ideas on the best way to do this. My plan as of now is to fill 5 or 6 five-gallon gas cans and, at the beginning of each month, use the gas in the cars and refill the cans. If someone has a better idea about gas storage, I'm pretty open to it.

3. Store some food. I was looking at MRE's, but they only have a shelf life of five years. I don't want to rely on expired MRE's in an emergency situation, or risk getting sick from one, and I sure don't want to spend a month or two every five years eating MRE's before they expire, so I found freeze-dried food. It looks like I can get 360 meals, or about two months food for my entire family, for around $550.00. The best part is that it lasts for 25 years, so that's the direction I'm going. Store 'em and forget about 'em. Till we need them.

4. Batteries, extension cords and lanterns. Make sure you always have several lanterns and enough batteries to run them. You still can't find D batteries on Long Island, and extension cords and lanterns have also been really hard to come by.

Anyway, I'm sure there's a lot of other excellent things that can be done to prepare for emergency situations, but these are all things I had overlooked. Above all, don't rely on the government or the Red Cross to take care of you. They might, or they might not. There's a lot of people in Staten Island and the Rockaways right now who are paying a huge price for their misplaced confidence that government would be there for them.

I've always been able to just go to the corner and get gas. Our electric went out a few times a year in storms, but it was always up in 3-12 hours. I've never had trouble buying things like gas cans and extension cords, but Sandy woke me up. And I'm thankful for that.

Keep in mind that I’m not advising anyone to pack up all their valuables when they leave. I’m really talking about a scenario is not the destruction of a home, but the loss of power for an indeterminate period of time that may be as long as a month. The main objective is to get someplace where you can be away from the weather and the shortages of food and fuel. Bring clothing and non-perishable food, and perhaps with your valuable papers in the extremely unlikely scenario that you can never go home. Lock the door and hope for the best, as far as everything else is concerned.

That's a good point. The problem is that the strength of a hurricane is based on the sustained wind speed, and nothing else. In 2011, Hurricane Irene had already weakened to a tropical storm by the time it made landfall but it dumped more than 10 inches of rain in parts of the Northeast ... hence the severe inland flooding from overflowing rivers and streams. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy was only a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall, but the high storm surge coupled with the unusually high tide during the full moon flooded every coastal area within 150 miles of its center. It didn't bring much rainfall to the NYC area, so people who evacuated their homes in inland flood plains went home the next day without a problem.

The storm surge was devastating for the coastal areas, and caused damage to electrical infrastructure in these low-lying areas. The problem inland was that even a Category 1 hurricane in this region is strong enough to topple a lot of trees and snap heavy branches off many that are still standing -- which is what caused such widespread power outages in areas that didn't get any flood or storm surge damage at all.

” - - - I’m genuinely curious.”

The Netherlands consists mainly of former sea bottom that has been re-claimed, for centuries, by Earthen Dikes. During WW2, the Germans breached many of the Earthen Dikes, and thus flooded many of the routes that The Allies were probably going to take to drive out the Germans.

After WW2, many of the Earthen Dikes were replaced with concrete and steel dikes with sophisticated flood and ebb gates to help drain the land by twice daily tidal action. Pumping stations were also improved at strategic locations.

In the 1950’s there was a huge storm that blew in from The North Sea breaching many of the Dikes and flooding much of The Netherlands. This was the final wake-up call for The Netherlands, and they then built the premier flood control system in the World at that time.

Other countries have done similar projects, but NYC and the Netherlands share a history of being damaged by “unusual” storms coming in from the Sea. Hopefully, NYC will learn from the past and follow the example of The Netherlands.

Since NYC ALONE generates 1/4 Million dollars of income a day, that coastal city needs to take lessons learned from Storms Irene and Sandy, swallow that local false pride, and build a seawall commensurate with the values they put on protection of lives, property, infrastructure, and their economy.

For example, consider: 1.) construction of upstream and downstream flood gates on the Hudson and East Rivers, and 2.) adopting the slogan “Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.”

A much less expensive option is to build flood control structures ONLY to protect the most valuable of the areas flooded by Sandy. Similar to what was done for New Orleans after Katrina by the US Corps of Engineers.

Use man-made power poles as many cities in coastal Florida does. In high-frequency hurricane areas the slogan is “If you live ON the water, some of the time you will live IN the water.” [DUH!]

With regards to re-building, allow me to paraphrase from a TV ad by Larry The Cable-Guy, “Put your building on ground ABOVE the maximum flood level, and don’t get flooded in the first place!”

There may be better flood engineers today that are not in The Netherlands, but it will be hard to find a better constructed seawall system than the one that exists today in The Netherlands.

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