Post-Sandy Situation in Brooklyn, NY

After every major storm or natural disaster, major media outlets focus on the devastation and desperation, in some cases embellishing in order to boost ratings and viewership.

I read one recent report via Core77, where a reporter was standing atop a recessed storm drain to make it look like the area flooding was far worse than it is.

Gasoline

Last night there were reports of 4-hour waits at the gas station with lines 10-blocks lone. Surely this was an exaggeration, right?

I drove around Brooklyn this afternoon, not needlessly of course, and was surprised by what I saw. People are definitely making a run for the gas stations. There are two types of gas stations in the area at the moment – those that will be out of fuel until at least next week, and those with lines spanning several city blocks.

One gas station, a Getty on Ave. U in Marine Park, has a line dozens of cars and several blocks long. I don’t know what all those people are waiting for, the pumps are wrapped with yellow tape and appear to be closed.

I have a little more than half a tank of gas left, with a highway range of about 200 miles. That’ll give me two round trips to NJ with normal traffic. Once we head back to NJ in a few days, my wife’s car will handle all of our local ferrying to and from shopping areas and restaurants. If need be her car will shuttle us to Brooklyn and back until our gas situation gets desperate.

Power

Back in NJ our local substation “isn’t looking too good due to flooding,” and there’s no ETA as to when power will be restored.

Surprisingly, there are still a LOT of areas in Brooklyn and throughout the entire region still dark and without power. Huge trees are blocking some side streets, electric poles are down, and street lights are down at major intersections.

At about 10pm last night ConEd arrived to restore power to one of my parents’ neighbors. Or at least I assume it was ConEd. There was buzzing, humming, three bangs and a flicker of the lights in the next half hour, and then I heard the truck leave.

So while there are major outages, and vague or non-existent restoration ETAs by the power utilities, they are working throughout the night.

Crazy Drivers

Some streets are inexplicable closed off with police barricades, others blocked by downed trees. There are pockets of outages where street lights are complete dark or blinking yellow.

Brooklyn has some of the worst drivers I have ever seen before in my life. Despite this, intersections without street lights aren’t as difficult to navigate as you might imagine. But, possibly due to the full moon, many drivers seem to be driving more aggressively than usual.

You cannot turn right on red here, but some people are doing so, quite speedily as well. Some drivers are blocking intersections, others are flat out running red lights.

Media Hype?

Yes, and no. The situation is dire for some, but not most. Temperatures haven’t dropped below freezing, and there seems to be plenty of food and drinking water in most areas. The city isn’t an “apocalyptic scene” as one newscaster described.

There have been fatalities and injuries, but thankfully there aren’t bodies lined up in the streets.

Some hospitals are completely closed due to lack of power.

In the end, damages will be repaired, destroyed homes and business will be rebuilt, lost income will be forgotten in time. But in the meantime, a lot of people are going to get through another challenging week, maybe even two.

Our thoughts go out to all those that suffered greatly because of the storm.