This post has been read 2125 times!
Calm seas over NY Harbor as the storm passed
As BatteryPark.TV first predicted on Thursday the 25th, Hurricane Irene hit shore far more west than the models predicted, hitting the Carolinas and then dissipating into an eye-less tropical storm. Even after that occurred, however, New York Mayor Bloomberg and the TV stations reaping the rewards from hyped coverage, continued to scare tens of millions on the Eastern Seaboard. Bloomberg made the controversial move on Thursday to shut down the MTA subways and order the first-ever mandatory evacuation of the city.
The result of Bloomberg’s actions, copied by other leaders in the Northeast in a domino effect, has been the biggest man-made disaster in memory (aside from terrorism). As air travel, Amtrak, and the NYC subways have come to a halt during peak tourism season, and with hundreds of thousands forced from their homes due to evacuation, the cost of lost revenues will certainly be in the billions.
To protect their reputations, the TV stations, the MTA, and the city officials are hyping the alleged damage from the storm. As of 12:00 PM Sunday, the storm is far away from NYC, downgraded to a storm rather than a “hurricane”, yet officials still warn of deadly flooding from a “storm surge”, despite there never having been the wind to create such an epic flooding. The city is still a ghost town with no mass transit.
Manhattan can process massive amounts of rain water and high winds without significant flooding. What NYC received from “Hurricane” Irene would have been otherwise completely insignificant if it were not for the hyped status as “Deadly hurricane”.
As the weeks go by, the details of this scandal will unfold. Questions to ask will be:
- Did Mayor Bloomberg simply overreact?
- Was his absence during the winter blizzard a factor in this overreaction? Was he afraid of doing a George-Bush-Katrina misstep?
- To boost ratings, did the TV stations report misleading images or stage any shots, such as making themselves wet when there was no rain, etc?
- Did the TV weather producers use out-of-date older radar images of the hurricane to look more menacing than the reliable NOAA satellite images BatteryPark.TV relied on which clearly showed the storm breaking apart and losing the eye?
- Did Con-Ed fabricate an excuse for warning that electricity might be cut in parts of NYC in order to scare people from their homes and comply with evacuations?
- What role did President Obama and FEMA play. They were conspicuously absent from this process.
Cmon. Better safe than sorry. Hurricanes are unpredictable and we should thank North Carolina’s Outer Banks for taking the bite outta the storm before it turned onto NYC. The gov’t did exactly what it was supposed to, and so did citizens who prepared and evacuated. There were 11 deaths and millions without power after Irene. There was significant flooding (I’ve never seen North Cove or the Battery like that before, and I’ve lived down in BPC for 10 years). Here, lemme answer your questions: 1. No. 2. Maybe. 3. Absolutely. 4. No idea. 5. You have no idea yourself on this one. And 6. You can’t blame Obama for everything. Your prediction could have easily been wrong. You got lucky.