#253154 - 11/10/12 08:11 PM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: TeacherRO]
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Member
Registered: 12/10/11
Posts: 169
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That is NOT the case in NYC. Power is not needed for water since the pressure of the waterpipes themselves can raise a multi-story column.
Conway Yee
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#253162 - 11/11/12 01:05 AM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: yee]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
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That is NOT the case in NYC. Power is not needed for water since the pressure of the waterpipes themselves can raise a multi-story column. This is only true if you live up to about the sixth floor. That's why the wooden water tower on the roof is an iconic symbol of cities like NYC, and those tanks are filled by electric pumps.
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#253164 - 11/11/12 03:42 AM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: ireckon]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 04/01/10
Posts: 1629
Loc: Northern California
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Some people may not be totally familiar with urban living. NYC is the ultimate urban environment, where most people must live at a bare minimum simply because it's not possible to live anyway else. There's not enough room or money to live with with a generator or solar battery charger in the closet. You might want to be prepared for every different disaster scenario, but you just can't. Seriously, people decide to get a 13" laptop instead of a 17" laptop because the latter takes up too much room in their apartment. They don't count square feet. They count square inches. I thought this article posted above was quite inspiring: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424..._MoreIn_NewYorkI was asking myself if I could make a generator for my cell phone from stuff I have in my relatively large house. I am embarrassed to say I can't, or at least I don't have the know-how. I'm not even sure if I could rig it with stuff in the 10 closest houses around me. Meanwhile, these people with limited resources in NYC found a way to do it. Now, I may have misread some posts above that seem to be unduly negative. If I didn't misread, then come on. I'm sure plenty of people in Hurricane Sandy are worthy of harsh criticism. The folks in that article are not.
_________________________
If you're reading this, it's too late.
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#253198 - 11/12/12 03:58 AM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: ireckon]
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Member
Registered: 09/11/02
Posts: 181
Loc: Denver, CO, USA
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There are a lot of comments on this thread about how "a big city is not a good place to be in the event of a disaster" or how everyone should have car chargers and solar panels.
Here is my perspective as a resident of NYC who has also lived in very remote areas (e.g. a single, level B road leading to home).
1. The city has as many pros as cons in time of disaster. When the home in BFE doesn't have power for a week almost no one cares. When the road is flooded and trees are down very few people know. When there is a disaster of any kind in NYC we have the attention and aid of most of the world.
We also have doctors and specialist of every kind on hand. I have 300 families in my building. This includes everything from doctors to stone workers. Post disaster everyone helped each other.
The news loves to report the disruption in peoples lives but they rarely show the armies of locals who were up the next day, self-organizing into groups to clean up, gather food, money, coats, blankets, cook, haul trash/water, etc. I've seen this on many occasions. The news loves to report the looters but didn't cover countless people who shoved money into my 12 year-old's hand as he was collecting coats & blankets outside the local fire station.
2. An inverter does nothing but take up space when one doesn't own a car. A solar panel does little without a yard and even less without a window that regularly gets sun. The space under the bed? Yeah, that's where the couch is. lolz (loft beds). The good news? We can walk to 100's of local diners.
I'm not trying to start an argument. I'm simply providing another perspective to point out that while there are cons and people could be (should be!) more prepared there are many positive aspects to city living as well and many people have different priorities.
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#253204 - 11/12/12 06:20 AM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: ireckon]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 04/28/10
Posts: 3165
Loc: Big Sky Country
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I suppose a big city would have many advantages in the kind of disaster that you can recover from within a week or two. In a SHTF, TEOTWAWKI-scenario probably not so much. Me, I don't spend much time worrying about apocalyptic situations since 1) the world is basically hosed and 2) I'm not at all sure that I care to outlast civilization. Simple animal existence doesn't sound all that appealing to me.
_________________________
“I'd rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” —Richard Feynman
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#253217 - 11/12/12 04:12 PM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: gulliamo]
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Veteran
Registered: 12/14/09
Posts: 1419
Loc: Nothern Ontario
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There are a lot of comments on this thread about how "a big city is not a good place to be in the event of a disaster" or how everyone should have car chargers and solar panels. Keep in mind that many of negative comments do not reflect the majority of other forum members here. Living in a big city such as NY requires a whole different way of thinking and preparation of those who live in smaller cities, towns and rural areas. You provided 2 good examples that show this difference, namely the car chargers and solar panels. Not everyone in NY city needs these due to living environments, space concerns etc, however they are good option for others. I for example have both and are part of our plans for an extended power outage. Although I live in a large metro area, had something like Sandy rolled through here, our local, provincial and federal .gov does not have the vast resources available that NY city has seen. Had that same storm and power outage had occurred here, it would be some very long months, if not a more then a year before any sense of normalcy even started to show.
_________________________
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
John Lubbock
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#253223 - 11/12/12 05:24 PM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: gulliamo]
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Journeyman
Registered: 11/15/10
Posts: 90
Loc: Maine
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There are a lot of comments on this thread about how "a big city is not a good place to be in the event of a disaster" or how everyone should have car chargers and solar panels.
Here is my perspective as a resident of NYC who has also lived in very remote areas (e.g. a single, level B road leading to home).
1. The city has as many pros as cons in time of disaster. When the home in BFE doesn't have power for a week almost no one cares. When the road is flooded and trees are down very few people know. When there is a disaster of any kind in NYC we have the attention and aid of most of the world.
We also have doctors and specialist of every kind on hand. I have 300 families in my building. This includes everything from doctors to stone workers. Post disaster everyone helped each other.
The news loves to report the disruption in peoples lives but they rarely show the armies of locals who were up the next day, self-organizing into groups to clean up, gather food, money, coats, blankets, cook, haul trash/water, etc. I've seen this on many occasions. The news loves to report the looters but didn't cover countless people who shoved money into my 12 year-old's hand as he was collecting coats & blankets outside the local fire station.
2. An inverter does nothing but take up space when one doesn't own a car. A solar panel does little without a yard and even less without a window that regularly gets sun. The space under the bed? Yeah, that's where the couch is. lolz (loft beds). The good news? We can walk to 100's of local diners.
I'm not trying to start an argument. I'm simply providing another perspective to point out that while there are cons and people could be (should be!) more prepared there are many positive aspects to city living as well and many people have different priorities. As one of the people who made the comment about a big city being a bad place to be, thanks for your firsthand perspective. I am glad to hear that your experience has been of people generally helping each other rather than causing problems. Maybe the city isn't as bad of a place in a disaster as we often think, at least if you have a good bunch of neighbors which it sounds like you do. And your point about "BFE" not being so great is also a good one (I never said that was ideal either!). Hope you're doing well.
_________________________
The rhythm is gonna get you...and if it's v-tach or v-fib, the results will be shocking!
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#253226 - 11/12/12 06:59 PM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: ireckon]
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Old Hand
Registered: 06/24/12
Posts: 822
Loc: SoCal Mtns
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Do you have car insurance? I do,when my jeep paid a 20,000 dollar visit to the neighbors livingroom,I was prepared.
Do you have health insurance? I do,when I needed 40,000 dollars of surgery,I got it.Glad I was prepared.
Do you have Disaster insurance? Its called commodities.I have it. When the power goes out I have lights,and food,my family isnt huddled in the dark,scared and awaiting rescue.Glad I am prepared.
Its simply insurance,why do you find it so reprehensible?
Lay on the moral superiority trip of how negative it is to point out insurance works.
I wont apologize for being insured and being accountable to provide for my families safety and well being.Or to provide charity to my neighbors in need.
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#253243 - 11/12/12 11:21 PM
Re: Hurricane Sandy & Urban Survival
[Re: ireckon]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/26/02
Posts: 2997
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There are advantages and disadvantages to being in the city and country. For example I live in the suburb of a city. I'm right off the electrical and gas grid that feeds an office building holding 10k workers and a huge mall, my utilities rarely go out and are repaired quickly when they do.
Parents are in the country and have counted up 30 days without electricity since July. Day 14 now since Sandy came through. Their propane company predicts usage based on previous data and refills their tank when it gets down to 25% and they just ran out a couple days ago and are on the wait list now since the storm messed up the supply lines and the elderly and such get priority.
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