Government rulers have a tendency to greatly exaggerate dangers and threats As H. L. Mencken said: The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. nytimes/2015/01/28/nyregion/new-york-blizzard.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 New York City Is Spared Worst Effects of Snowstorm By MARC SANTORA and EMMA G. FITZSIMMONSJAN. 27, 2015 After New York City was shut down overnight, with subway service suspended for snow for the first time in its history, it was spared the worst of a snowstorm that swept across the Northeast early Tuesday. As travel bans were lifted and transit services gradually restored, the city slowly returned to its normal rhythms. But even as buses and trains began to move again, the widespread closings left the streets and sidewalks virtually deserted in the early morning hours. Grand Central Terminal was deserted, Times Square was quiet and the streets of Lower Manhattan were largely empty of financial workers. The situation on the eastern end of Long Island, parts of Connecticut and the New England coast was more difficult, with winds as high as 48 miles per hour measured at Montauk Point and snow continuing to fall. “Suffolk County is still getting hit very hard,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said, noting that snowfalls had exceeded two feet in some places. Much of the snow-removal equipment in the city, he said, would be redeployed to the hardest hit areas. Mr. Cuomo announced at 7:30 a.m. that the travel bans on most roads across the state and in the city had been lifted. He also said that Metropolitan Transportation Authority and PATH service was expected to resume this morning, but that longer suspensions could be expected on parts of the Long Island Railroad in eastern Long Island. Subway service was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. and slowly resume operating on a Sunday schedule. Mr. Cuomo, speaking at a press conference in Manhattan, said that the lessons of past storms is to “lean towards safety.” He defended the decision to close streets and stop subway service, saying that they will now be able to get roads cleared and restore service faster than if they had not shut things down. “I would much rather be in a situation where we say we got lucky than one where we didn’t get lucky and somebody died,” he said. “We respond to the best information that we have,” Mr. Cuomo said. Mayor Bill de Blasio, appearing on CNN, said that the decision to completely shut down the city was the right one, even if the forecasts did not turn out to be accurate. “This is a better safe than sorry scenario,” he said, noting that meteorologists were calling for more than two feet of snow in the city late into the evening. “Two feet of snow would have paralyzed this city.” “We dodged a bullet,” he said. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie also lifted travel bans and said that New Jersey Transit would resume normal service by Tuesday afternoon. The Port Authority Bus Terminal opened at 9 a.m. Early Tuesday, the National Weather Service acknowledged that the predictions had been off-target. “Rapidly deepening winter storms are very challenging to predict, specifically their track and how far west the heaviest bands will move,” the weather service said as it updated its forecast. “These bands are nearly impossible to predict until they develop. Our science has come a long way, but there are still many moving parts in the atmosphere, which creates quite the forecast challenge.” The weather service said that the storm had moved further east and that “much less snow” would fall near the city than previously predicted. Gary Szatkowski, the meteorologist in charge at the weather service station in Mount Holly, N.J., told weather watchers, “You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t.” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said that while many parts of the state were spared the worst of the storm, there were many people who woke up to find more than two feet of snow and there was work to be done to get the necessary resources where they were needed. “There is no bad news in not everyone getting three feet of snow,” he said. Late Monday, driving bans had taken effect across New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut. Subway and bus service were suspended, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey closed Hudson River crossings. Thousands of flights were grounded, public transportation was suspended or curtailed, and travel bans were put in place in the half-dozen states in the path of the storm. On Tuesday morning, New York City area airports were open, but officials cautioned that hundreds of flights had been cancelled and travelers should check with their airlines about schedules. In New York City, after calls by the authorities to head home early, workers poured out of office buildings on Monday and crowded onto subway platforms, packed train stations and squeezed onto buses. As Sandeep Dutta, 42, waited for his train home at Jamaica station in Queens, he held tight to a backpack with emergency provisions, including waterproof boots and chemical warming packs. “There’s just more anxiety,” Mr. Dutta said. “You’re anxious to get home, but so far, things are working out.” The level of infantile snark in many of the comments is sad, yet expected. At the end of the day, the only issue the whiners have about the... PB As the storm gathered moisture over the Atlantic and picked up energy, commuters also took to the roads — hoping to beat both the deteriorating weather and the widespread bans on driving that were set to go into effect late on Monday. From Fort Lee, N.J., to Andover, Mass., nearly every road was declared off limits by government officials to everyone except emergency workers. The orders were both to keep people safe and to allow workers better access to start clearing roads. “This will most likely be one of the largest blizzards in the history of New York City,” Mr.de Blasio had warned. Mr. de Blasio took the unusual step of ordering all drivers off the streets by 11 p.m. on Monday, a ban that he said covered “anything that has to do with leisure or convenience,” including, to the chagrin of many housebound New Yorkers, food delivery. The call to completely clear the streets was a reflection of how seriously public officials were taking the threat of the storm, which was expected to affect a 250-mile stretch of the Northeast. Across the region, governors declared states of emergency, deployed National Guard units and prepared fleets of snowplows and salt trucks. Coastal areas including eastern Long Island, Cape Cod and other parts of New England were expected to be battered by winds that could blow nearly as high as a hurricane — the threshold is 74 m.p.h. — leading to possible flooding and widespread power failures that might last for days. But there were no reports of widespread power outages The public seemed to heed the warnings, crowding the aisles of grocery and home-goods stores to stock up on supplies. Given that cars stranded on roads and highways have proved to be a problem during recent storms, state leaders all had a common message — get off the roads as soon as possible. “Mother Nature has decided once again to come visit us in an extreme way,” said Mr. Cuomo. Mr. de Blasio said the decision to order all drivers off the roads in New York City was necessary to ensure that sanitation workers could clear streets and emergency workers could get where they needed to go. He said the order extended to those making food deliveries on bicycles. “People have to make smart decisions from this point on,” he said. “It is not business as usual.” Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 14:25:20 +0000
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