SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
make sure that we do everything
we can, the next time we have a
big storm, to do an even better job
of protecting people, giving them
more warning,” he said. “Maybe
people will find different ways to
communicate with them.”
A more clear-eyed view of the
interplay of haphazard development and natural forces would
also help, analysts say.
Research by Princeton University in 2005 — seven years before
Sandy arrived — found that New
Jersey’s rapid population growth
in coastal counties was setting
the scene for monumental environmental damage and property
loss. The report argued that much
of the hazards were man-made,
and predictable.
“In New Jersey, and the U.S. at
large, there remains a significant
lack of public understanding of the
predictability of coastal hazards,”
the report read. “Episodic flooding
events due to storm surges are often perceived as ‘natural disasters,’
not failures in land use planning
and building code requirements.”
IN THE BULL’S EYE
At the height of the roaring storm
that accompanied Sandy’s arrival,
some of the night nurses at Park
HUFFINGTON
12.02.12
Nursing Home in the Rockaways
got down on their knees in the
darkened hallways to pray.
Waves broke against an exterior
wall facing the beach, causing the
whole building to shudder. Water surged into the evacuated first
floor, throwing sand onto beds
and flooding the lobby. One block
“I THINK THE FACT
IS THAT YOU PUT A
LOT OF PEOPLE IN
HARM’S WAY WITH
THE ZONING.”
away, a fire sparked by an exploded power transformer raged,
engulfing an entire row of small
businesses in towers of flames
Patrick Russell, the administrator of the care facility, rushed
from window to window, watching the ocean on one side and the
roaring flames on the other. The
fire “burned like a blowtorch,” he
said. “I’ve never been so scared.”
The Rockaways, a narrow,
low-lying peninsula in southern Queens with a largely working class population of about
130,000, were badly flooded by
the storm, its streets covered in
sand and the mangled remains
of trees, boardwalks and cars.