Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Hurricane Sandy - Bellevue, NYU, and Coler Hospital Evacuations - Political Accountability

Who is politically accountable for the failure of the emergency management plan in response to Hurricane Sandy that lead to infrastructure failure at New York City hospitals ?

Following the infrastructure failure of critical hospitals in New York City because of flooding and storm surge associated with Hurricane Sandy and related power failures, some healthcare activists began to demand answers for the failure of New York City's emergency management planning. The fault does not lie with the doctors and medical staff at the impacted hospitals ; rather, the politicians in charge of the city's emergency management plan must account for this irresponsible and dangerous situation. How could it be that New York City's resources would prioritise reopening business when critical hospitals could be left in the dark ? One activist has posted a new YouTube video requesting political accountability for the dangerous risks posed to public health by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's lack of real emergency planning.

Video Link : http://youtu.be/ggjOOjbTKZs

Background

In the community effort to demand a replacement hospital for St. Vincent's, politicians imposed on the community the burden of participating in a needs assessment to determine if a full-service hospital was required in the Lower West Side of Manhattan.

"The hospital evacuations following the destruction by Hurricane Sandy expose the risks of the Rudin Condo Conversion Plan approved for St. Vincent's Hospital," said Louis Flores, an activist who produced this YouTube video. "New York City needs a Level I Trauma Center and full-service hospital in the Lower West Side for disaster recovery efforts. And New York City needs real resources to improve the infrastructure of all of our hospitals, including Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island and SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn."

Hurricane Irene

In 2011, St. Vincent's activists organized a mass civilian trauma event exercise to demonstrate what grassroots community activists described was a major risk to public health : where would sick and injured patients receive emergency and trauma care in the event of a major national disaster under conditions that had created an irresponsible geographic distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan.

See related link : http://thevillager.com/villager_443/traumadrama.html

Hurricane Sandy

In the time leading up to and following the landfall of the effects of Hurricane Sandy, the infrastructure of full-service hospitals on the East Side of Manhattan has failed. Hospital patients were forced to be evacuated from NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals.

To Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Speaker Christine Quinn, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, to City Planner Amanda Burden, Brad Hoylman, Bill Rudin, and to the Partnership for New York, where are New Yorkers supposed to go now, in case of a medical emergency ?

Hurricane Sandy Exposes Risks of Closing of St. Vincent's Hospital

Hurricane Sandy Exposes Risks Of Closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.

The New York City Fire Department is helping Bellevue Hospital evacuate some of it patients, the Associated Press has reported.

Bellevue Hospital lost power during the blackout created by the storm surge, flooding, and damage from Hurricane Sandy.

Even with backup power operating, the Associated Press reported that the power outage had left many sections of Bellevue Hospital in the dark and rendered major medical equipment unusable without access to electricity.

After St. Vincent's Hospital was closed, activists had demanded that politicians explain how mass trauma events would be handled with the irresponsible geographical distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan created by the Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion plan approved by New York City Council Christine Quinn.

After St. Vincent's Hospital closed, a Gross Imbalance in the Distribution of Hospital Beds in Manhattan

Verizon Headquarters Flooded Hurricane Sandy

Related : NYC Hurricane Sandy - Hospital Evacuations and Berger Commission #EPICFAIL

Verizon-Headquarters-NYC-Hurricane-Sandy-Flood, Verizon corporate headquarters  lobby at 140 West Street in Manhattan, filled with three feet of water at about 9:30 PM ET on October 29, 2012.

Superstorm Sandy may have done damage to all the major phone services, more or less. But for Verizon, there was another price to pay: damage to its New York corporate headquarters.

The picture above, tweeted by the company itself, shows the Verizon lobby at 140 West Street in Manhattan, filled with three feet of water at about 9:30 PM ET last night. It isn’t just an administrative building — it also serves hundreds of thousands of voice and data circuits in New York.

Says Verizon director of media relations Bill Kula: “We’ll continue to work safely and quickly to pump out the storm water, re-route traffic from non working central office to others, get backup generator power operating, and hope that the local power company can restore commercial power as quickly as possible.”

Read more : Hurricane Sandy floods Verizon's corporate headquarters in New York City

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Salt Water Corrosive Damage NYC Hurricane Sandy

Salt water damage is expected to damage the fragile, ancient electrical and switching systems of the New York City subway system. The Wall Street Journal published examples of some ways that salt water can damage the subway system :

Salt can eat at motors, metal fasteners and the electronic parts, some many decades old, that keep the system running. Salt water, and the deposits it leaves behind, degrades the relays that run the signal system, preventing train collisions.

Salt water also conducts electricity, which can exacerbate damage to signals if the system isn't powered down before a flood.

But the engineering risks don't just exist for the New York City subway system, but also to the construction materials of buildings, which were exposed to storm surge flooding.

Construction materials made of iron or steel that are exposed to water will rust and alter its shape and size. Building interiors, especially basements, when exposed to water, must be dried, otherwise constructions materials, such as metal fasteners or iron or steel beams, may continue to corrode long after the storm surge flooding subsides. If long-term moisture continues untreated, or if the ground becomes over-saturated by salt water, creating , the oxidation and rusting may cause construction materials made of iron and steel to fail.

Just like consumer affairs agencies advise drivers to avoid buying flood-damaged cars, what is the New York City Department of Buildings doing to secure the integrity of buildings and construction sites, which were exposed to the corrosive salt water storm surge flooding from Hurricane Sandy ?

JetBlue La Guardia Hurricane Sandy Update

Photographs showing the state of flooding on the runways and taxi areas at La Guardia Airport were posted by JetBlue on its blog today. One alarming photograph shows that the taxi areas around La Guardia Airport are underwater.

Jackson Heights Hurricane Sandy Initial Damage Photographs

Related : Related : Hurricane Sandy - Political Accountability For Hospital Evacuations

Related : NYC Hurricane Sandy - Hospital Evacuations and Berger Commission #EPICFAIL

Initial Jackson Heights - Hurricane Sandy Damage Photographs

Jackson-Heights-Hurricane-Sandy-Closed-Starbucks-37th-Avenue

On Tuesday morning, residents of Jackson Heights, Queens, tried to assess the damage to their neighborhood from the rain and wind gusts from Hurricane Sandy. The local Starbucks was closed, and local people looked disoriented and desperate for over-priced coffee.

Jackson-Heights-Hurricane-Sandy-Downed-Tree-37th-Avenue

There were some downed trees.

Jackson-Heights-Hurricane-Sandy-Closed-Subway-Station

Nobody knows when the New York City subway system will re-open. Many subway tunnels are flooded from the storm surge.

Jackson-Heights-Hurricane-Sandy-Down-Tree-37th-Avenue

The seemingly minor damage in some parts of Jackson Heights was met with gratitude by residents. People in other parts of Queens and the rest of New York City were not so fortunate.

Jackson-Heights-Hurricane-Sandy-Downed-Tree-on-SUV-77th-Street

Now that Hurricane Sandy has moved on, the recovery efforts will get underway.

Hurricane Sandy TIMELAPSE - 1 DAY - NEW YORK CITY

NYC MTA Subway Flooding Disaster Update : Worst Disaster in Subway History

Joseph J. Lhota, Chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, issued a statement, describing the flooding from Hurricane Sandy as the worst "disaster" in the New York City subway system's history, The New York Times reported.

Mr. Lhota's statement included details of some of the worst damage to the mass transit system :

  • As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line.
  • The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel.
  • The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens Midtown Tunnel also took on water and was closed. Six bus garages were disabled by high water.

NYC East River Subway Tunnels Flooded

Updated ! NYC MTA Subway Flooding Disaster Update : Worst Disaster in Subway History

Hoboken PATH Subway Station Flooded

Emergency Situation At Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant in Toms River, NJ

From The New York Times :

Dangerous Water Levels at Nuclear Plant

Rising water threatened the cooling system at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, in Toms River, N.J., on Monday night. The plant declared an alert at 8:45 p.m., which is the second-lowest level of the four-tier emergency scale established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The water level was more than six feet above normal. At seven feet, the plant would lose the ability to cool its spent fuel pool in the normal fashion, according to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The plant would probably have to switch to using fire hoses to pump in extra water to make up for evaporation, Mr. Sheehan said, because it could no longer pull water out of Barnegat Bay and circulate it through a heat exchanger, to cool the water in the pool.

If ordinary cooling ceased, the pool would take 25 hours to reach the boiling point, he said, giving the operators ample time to take corrective steps. The reactor itself has been shut since Oct. 22 for refueling, so it is relatively cool.

Alerts are declared a handful of times every year among the 104 power reactors around the country.

So far, no reactors in Sandy’s path have been forced by the hurricane to shut down, although one in Waterford, Conn., Millstone 3, has lowered its power output to 75 percent. The operator said this was done to assist the New England grid, which would be destabilized if the reactor shut down suddenly from full power, and also to reduce the chance that it would automatically shut down; at 75 percent, Millstone 3 could withstand the loss of a pump without having to close.

Several other reactors in the region are now closed for refueling, which is ordinarily carried out in the spring or fall, when electricity demand is low.

Separately, FOX News reported about safety concerns with the nuclear power plant at Indian Point.

Monday, October 29, 2012

NYU Langone Hospital Evacuated

Hurricane Sandy Exposes Risks Of Closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.

From 1010 WINS : NYU Langone Hospital being evacuated after backup generator dies.

Patients are being taken down manually down flights of stairs and are expected to be transferred to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.

Because NYU Langone Hospital has no electricity or phone service, they cannot notify the relatives or emergency contact persons of the NYU Langone Hospital's patients until the patients are received by a new hospital, WNBC has reported.

Bellevue Hospital Taking On Water

Hurricane Sandy Exposes Risks Of Closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.

Murray Hill Flooded Near Bellevue Hospital Hurricane Sandy

Related : NYC Hurricane Sandy - Hospital Evacuations and Berger Commission #EPICFAIL

Hurricane Sandy Exposes Risks Of Closing of St. Vincent's Hospital.

Bellevue Hospital Without Power ; Backup Generators Failing Due to Floods ; No Level I Trauma Center Below Midtown Since St. Vincent's Hospital Was Converted Into Luxury Condos By Rudin Family.

The area near Bellevue Hospital in Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan is flooded. According to this Twitter posting, 34th Street and First Avenue is under water.

Murray Hill Flood 34th Street First Avenue NYC Hurricane Sandy Credit : m166-owace

East Village Explosion Hurricane Sandy

A transformer possibly exploded in the East Village of Manhattan during the landfall of Hurricane Sandy.