[RightWhale]

Few if any cities are so prepared as to respond that quick. The Feds sure aren’t. The Fire Department is probably the best for response and that’s the way it will be for the foreseeable future.

[edcoil]

For such a small place, it is sure in the news a lot with whiners and people incapable of being responsible for themselves.

And the media thinks we should pick our next President from two of them while 300 million Americans live elsewhere.

[Petruchio]

Three-and-a-half inches of rain fell here yesterday, causing immense chaos . . .

Gotta be Bush's fault.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

That’s a terrible headline.

[finnman69]

in any spontaneous city wide emergency

YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN

period

[econjack]

But Mayor Bloomberg’s much vaunted 311 telephone-information system was also overloaded with callers who could not get through.

A classical Peak Load Problem. Utility companies, for example, must decide how much idle capacity to build into the system to handle those "unusual days" when demand skyrockets. Too much idle capacity and costs are higher than they should be and too little means some form of rationing (e.g., rolling blackouts) or delays (e.g., holidays when there aren't enough planes) when demand soars.

MTA and Bloomberg's office could build in dozens of more trunk lines for information purposes to handle situations like those described here. But my guess is that this bozo would be the first to bitch that there is too much idle capacity in this or that department.

It must have been a slow news day, or perhaps this jerk didn't want to comment on how the Surge seems to be working.

[Badeye]

Only a liberal could look at a rainstorm, and think ‘we’re not ready for a terrorist attack!’.

It displays a shallowness rarely witnessed in public, let alone used as a central theme to a column.

[jbstrick]

3/12 inches? Give me a break.

[OB1kNOb]

New York City Under Attack Again -- Three-and-a-half inches of rain fell here yesterday.....

Gabriel Schoenfeld is a complete idiot for writing such a title to the article that starts out thusly.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Is it under water yet?

[MarkL]

Three-and-a-half inches of rain fell here yesterday, causing immense chaos and raising once again the question of whether the city is prepared for the possibility of something worse, like six inches of rain, not to mention a major terrorist attack.

Gee, it rained about 3" last night in Lee's Summit, MO. I guess it's a good thing that New Yorkers (and I'm a former NY'er) don't live here... We would have needed to have a crisis!

Mark