Discussion on:

Hurricane Sandy: a bellwether for infrastructure investment

...since its very nature keeps most of it hidden from people, even mysterious to most. And for perceived security and political reasons, I think that many wish it be kept that way.

It's much easier to sell people on things like bridges & roads, since they are easily seen and actually and physically touched by people. And politicians can put their names on those for everyone to see each and every day.

In order to get better buy-in for infrastructure investment, the mystery needs to be stripped away; people need to be better educated as to what it is and how dependent they are upon it.

thanks

At least have the sense to put storm gates on all of the openings to prepare for the storms that have historically flooded the island.

Most of the NYC tunnels had no storm doors. The few subway stations that did have doors failed because they were built more for aesthetics than functionality.

People will understand if you tell them the truth.

The hurricane barrier at the entrance to New Bedford MA harbor is ugly to look at everyday, but it works the once every 30 years it has been needed.

On my couch through the weekend. Not even Greyhound is running, and 2/3 airports are closed. Getting around to the airports is complicated by the fact that no trains are running - subway or regional rail. I've suggested renting a car.

I bet Enterprise rental is not delivering cars this week.

Good luck to everyone stuck there.

This country struggles with accepting the obvious daily, because so few people bother to be informed. They don't even know what "informed" means. They don't see the problem in relying on biased self-serving media sources to spoon feed them what the biased source wants them to think. It'll take more than a few puny hurricanes to change this apparently.

For example, it's been known for over a hundred or more years that hurricanes produce avg. storm surges of 12-15 ft. above mean high tide. Really strong and or prolonged storms (Sandy wasn't) can have 20 ft.+ storm surges dependent on tides, wind direction and related local funneling features. Yet, we build our infrastructure and homes below these known risk elevations. This has nothing to do with climate change, sea level rise, or politics - just basic reality that people ignore.

It's really about priorities. With the weak infrastructure in New York that allow 100 year old pumps, the people have a Mayor who worries about the size of a soft drink. Please, New Yorkers are taxed so heavily that it is near impossible to get the needed work done. And, this is not just a New York problem but is visible nation wide.

Predicting a larger percentage of your income will be spent on insurance coverage every year in the future. The insurance companies are bleeding money at an ever faster rate and they will NOT be made insolvent by a reduction in income. Insurance cost is increasing at a rate similar to that of the rising cost of health care.

Cost of rebuilding materials plus the cost of labor and engineering will make rebuilding very expensive year after year. The cost of this rebuilding through insurance is being spread throughout the population, rather than to make risky building too expensive to pursue. If you don't think you are being directly affected by these ever increasing acts of destruction to our infrastructure and communities, you will be seeing it shortly in a dramatic increase in your annual insurance costs.

The Atlantic Ocean has moved its shoreline inland throughout a large area of the Northeast coastline. Yet a large number of people are insisting on rebuilding in the same locations that are now part of the Atlantic. This happens all the time along the Florida coastline, the Caribbean coastline, and the mid-Atlantic coastline every time the ocean encroaches on the local communities. We waste untold money every single year trying to fight acts of nature that just keep repeating year after year. Remember the definition of insanity?

Seeing the bottom of Manhattan underwater is a wake-up call for future thinking about building in areas prone to the action of nature. Collectively we make such determinations for a wide variety of reasons. But don't be surprised when the cost of such decisions find there way to your pocketbook.

As I speak, the President and and the governor of New Jersey are touring vacation and beach homes that have been washed away. No doubt there will be a speech afterwards promising aid to rebuild those homes right were they were, along with expesive yet questionably effective fortifications for the next storm. This will be paid for mostly by those of us without beach homes.

I hate to sound insensitive, but when will we say "enough"?

The national scope of over development in flood prone areas can be traced back to one thing.

The Federal Flood Insurance program.

It subsidizes building all of those casinos and vacation homes in places where they should not be built.

ALL homeowners/renters subsidize this, so that a FEW owners can make money renting out houses on the beach, or in fire-prone mountains. ALL businesses subsidize this, so that a FEW owners can make money from dangerous locations. Most of these disasters are entirely foreseeable, and ought to be built in to the cost of doing business. NYC is not some poverty-stricken third-world place. For decades they've gambled that preparation wasn't necessary. They took their money and spent it on other stuff. Now their foolishness is exposed, and everyone else is expected to pay. BZZZT!!!! Wrong! And the same for the Gulf, and the Atlantic barrier islands, and cities along the Mississippi, etc. etc. etc.

You just hit the root of the problem with the Federal Flood Insurance program.

While it is sad that people have died because of the storm, the repair and replacement of parts of the infrastructure will bring a lot of benefits. This is an opportunity to replace ancient equipment, hopefully the new will have the quality and endurance of those 100 year old pumps.

The allies bombed the German factories to stop the war machine, the actual effect was to force the German manufacturing to replace old equipment with newer and more efficient equipment and the factory output held up in spite of the damage. The Atlantic coast will have to replace old infrastructure and replace it with new. Hopefully, the replacement process will go swiftly and no short cuts taken to patch the old infrastructure.

It is a great chance to make it right for the future.

Too often the decision is to go cheap with a futile hope that it would be cheaper to do in the future. Done right, everyone will benefit, done wrong then just a few will benefit.

as hurricanes go. Hurricanes have been occurring on the planet since it became a planet with water and wind.

Climate change had nothing to do with the disaster. Mother nature just has a way of making the inevitable happen.

Sandy would have just been another hurricane which came and went, were it not for the convergence of multiple storm systems, which is not something that happens often, but is know to happen, and was predicted to happen.

Were it not for the inland storm with a high pressure system sucking Sandy back over the land mass of the U.S., Sandy would have disappeared into the north Atlantic, with no damage at all to the northeast U.S.

Climate change happens, but, climate change has happened forever, and the events of this week, were not because of any man-induced catastrophe. It was overdue to happen, and it did this week.

Now, the global warming doom-and-gloom charlatans want to take this catastrophe to advance their junk science, and to blame the "deniers", which include some very good scientists and most meteorologists. The junk science of global warming, is more of an agenda item than real science, and it's mostly proposed by journalists and liberal politicians and university professors looking for research funding from government.

As long as their is a planet, with water and wind and a moon and a sun to stir things up, there will be hurricanes and other major catastrophes, none of which will be preventable by anything that humans can do.

"New York is one of its (the United States) major economic engines and that engine has ground to a near halt."

Maybe we weren't so smart, putting so many eggs in one basket. But of course, we won't make that same mistake again, will we?

it's just a "natural occurrence" that, is dictated by how people behave. It's not about the U.S. or any government entity "deciding" where people will live or work. It just happens, with time and circumstances dictating to the people.

However, the smarter people in society should be telling people, over and over again, how living in dangerous areas, will eventually takes it's toll in lives and damage to homes and other infrastructure.