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Video Of The MTA In Action: How Whitehall Station Went From Flooded To Dry In 4 Days
On October 30, the day after the worst natural disaster in New York history struck and flooded virtually all of downtown, Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted the following dramatic picture of Whitehall station, which was then completely submerged underwater.
A few days later, Whitehall station is almost dry. Watch this MTA video to see how they did it in 3 short days.
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Photoshopped.
damn!
if they can do that to the water in a station in 3 days using a pump truck, just imagine what they can do to the money in a pension fund in a year using a piece of legislation!
You younger ZHers may have never heard this - it's a song about the consequences of taxes increases...and the MTA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP1bvY7IqZY
I hope they don't forget you can only "lift" water about 32 feet, and then it boils, doesn't matter how big your pump is. Once you draw a complete vacuum on it, it turns to vapor and pumping stops. Sooner or later you have to take the pumps down to the water.
Yeah, and 4 short months for them to gut and completely rebuild the station
Pumping liquid is not the issue. My 3000 gallon septic tanks get pumped in minutes, liquids and solids. Sorry if that ruined your lunch. Once the water level dropped they had a fighting chance. Now the inspectors have to establish that there is no structural damage. Escalators and ticket machines need to be repaired or exchanged. Not a big deal. Ceilings, walls, tracks etc is a whole different story.
What about high rise buildings that had their foundations flooded in the Financial District? Are they safe to be occupied without major upgrades?
They had Chris Christy and Rosey O'Donnell drink it all up.
For some reason, those workers operating the pump remind me of Joseph Heller's nurses changing the jars for the soldier in white.
pity they couldn't build a sea wall in 4 days
...'only' 60 years since New Yorks last drenching and these political arseholes haven't laid a brick
i'm guessing the amount of damage to NY States public property is 10x the cost of a sea wall, that's without estimating private sector damage ...tubes and trains dipped in salt will be entirely worthless and need complete replacing
while State focuses on micro-managing the amount of liquid and salt New Yorkers take aboard they left a fucking big hole around the city ...a salt and liquidity drenching that's off the scale for NY States marxist meddlers
New York regulators/meddlers need wholesale replacing, they're clearly total crap at spotting where a systemic crisis will come from, in banking, property, the enviroment and public transport. Sack the lot!!!
Govt, the dumbest institution on Earth
Building a sea wall will make it worse next time. Image the storm in NYC that breaks the levee ala Katrina in New Orleans but on steriods. It would also mean the false sense of security a sea wall provides would make preperations and evacuations even worse the time.
Bingo "..a false sense of security a sea wall provides.."
a sea defence does actually provide security, how can it be a "false" sense? Fantastic oxymoron of a sentance though, one of the best i've heard.
and this false sense of security, "would make preperations and evacuations even worse the time."
what worse than this time? ...is that possible???
New York has a pitiful sea wall, which in itself shows close to zero preperation, so where's the extra sense of insecurity and urgency that should provide in other preperations?
Far as I'm aware New York was left both wide open to this tragedy occuring and un-prepared. Was it in the 'preperations' that all mass transit be knocked-out in the 1st round?
Again far as I'm aware New York had next to zero plans in place and Joe Public had to make their own way, thank heavens they don't rely on NY State transport because that was unprepared too, both trains and tubes collapsed (in lack of preperation).
And 74 deaths don't show preperation either, they show people taken by surprise ....because you don't prepare for getting hurt you prepare to avoid it
But there was one beackon of hope. The shiney tower of Goldman Sucks who had their own generators. Were they prepared for NY States lack of preperation as the power systems also went down (as the power also wasn't prepared).
So Goldmans building was s hining light of self-reliance in a sea of State darkness (incompetence). Only problem was the lights were on but nobody was home. Nobody could get anywhere because the trains, tubes and roads were flooded ....because New York was totally unprepared. The State morons strike again
74 divided by 22,085,649 per US Census... sounds pretty good to me. Breezy Point burned all the way down but because of evacuations no one died from the fires.
This was a natural disaster. There is no way humanity will ever be 100% protected from hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc.
Relax.
Yes the death toll is very low Raymond, would have been even better, neglible, if they had anything but a piss poor sea wall
shall we credit people taking their own action with the low death toll or pure luck the storm wasn't worse given New York State was wide open to the risk with next to zero defence to the danger?
I agree it was a natural storm, I disagree with both you and Mayor Bloomberg the "danger" of natural storms cannot be prepared for professionally. New Yorks preperations weren't professional, they were pitiful, amateur and left New York and New Yorkers wide open to the risk (danger) of nature
the sea wall was close to no defence, namely it was no reduction of risk to New York while the State have had 60 years to do somethinbg pro-active since the last drenching. They haven't lifted a finger so it's frankly BS this is a "natural" disaster, it's a man-made zero attention to risk
who should be blamed for the massive damage and clean up costs mate? The storm or New York States next to complete lack of defence to prevent the damage
isn't that what NY States marxist meddlers are doing regulating the size of holes in salt shakers and the size of cups of soda.. preventing us from harming ourselvs? We're forced to pay for seatbelts and airbags and crumple zones to prevent risk and damage should it occur. If Mayor Bloomberg thinks these meddlers are right to reduce risk in our lives then presumably he feels he has done a very crap job of preventing environmental dangers to our property and person.
Like what's NY State been doing for 60 years since the last environmental accident?
what's the bigger risk to New Yorkers, an XXL soda cup or 4ft of water coming down Main Street?
they won't let you eat food or drink liquid on trains and tubes for risk you'll mess-up the upholstry. But they leave themselves wide open to the sea and trashing the entire public transport system. These meddlers sure get their priorities right!
so Bloomberg like his predessessors of the past 60 years has done next to nothing and invested nothing to reduce the danger of a storm, he can't blame a storm for being a storm, he can only blame his Statist self for not lifting a finger to reduce the danger.
We are talking about the same city that's been given 40-50 billion dollars to only build a light cannon and hasn't built another anything in the World trade. Watch how fucked up and corrupted this how shit show turns out.
BTW anyone that has gas to sell get it done this weekend. There is a big stink about people matching market demand for fuel, there are guys on 4chan that went to go pick up their free fuel and promptly sold it a block away. Money and oil is in big trouble once main street gets a taste of the blood money it can get. It's going to take a lot of effort to get the tooth paste back into the tube once someone passes laws forbidding it.
It is a false sense of security because you can never know the magnitude od the threat you are seeking security from! No one knows what the future holds! (Wear a Crucifix, it is cheaper and provides, `peace of mind`, to those who believe!
Here is one way MTA is clearing subways, by using "Pump Trains".
http://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-sandy-mta-subways-flood-2012-11
(sorry it's on BI)
If tht guy's dad saw him sticking a good carpenter's ruler in the water like that he'd get his butt kicked.
Well the Canadian crews showed up and now the Unions in NJ and NYC are calling the crews scabs for people coming down to make less work with more hands.
They are packing up and going home tomorrow.
Oh and if anyone has an online business in NJ in one of the 400 data centres about to run out of fuel on their generators, you might want to migrate in the next 14 hours. Well some DC's are already dark because the generators are empty. 5 tonnes eat a lot of fuel, they are efficient, but not infinite three days of fuel is done in most places because DC's simple expand without infrastructure reviews and scrape by on minimums by rejiggin processes to "cheat" ISO standards.
Remember if you didn't pay for DR, there is no back up plan for you until a steady source of fuel and electricity is built again. The refineries are fucked so closest working refinery with production to match is Montreal.
Which means we should all expect "new" prices soon. The cost of oil on a regional level has everything to do with local refineries, not a hole in a ground thousands of miles away. It's how fast to market it gets there...oh yeah, so everyone will also want to review their service agreement.
You are probably getting a communal charge by the hour for fuel usage right now that is not covered by any business insurance I've ever seen. When black market is 25 bucks and the military is used the other 99% of the fuel, 25 bucks is what you are going to get charged. Jesus Monday is going to be a mess. Cover your ass people, make sure your back ups are handy and not stuck in a foot ball length jukebox of tape backup. You'll never find the tape without the backup catalogue because of a lack of power. The term needle in a haystack is understating it and the people in charge of tape backup are usually the junior kick abouts or the guys on the way out. More likely the first than the second.
you can only "lift" water about 32 feet……..
Hey stop ruining things with the laws of physics and stuff. If you got 100 hours worth of work just put 100 guys / gals on it and it should only take about an hour. We need bigger pumps …. Give me a big enough cheater bar and I can move the earth. I wonder how many here know what a cheater bar is……..
Malarkey!
Bollocks!
The volume water in evacuated from the ticketing area is a pittance (or a drop in a bucket) compared to volume that would be remaining on the platforms (much less in the tunnels). They can't even see the platforms, much less the tracks yet. That fucker ain't coming back online anytime soon if that is really their rate of progress after 72 hrs of effort.
I'm sure the water was tested in stages for toxins prior to releasing it to the sanitary storm drain system. Otherwise this was yet another illegal NYC operation.
When I see stuff like this or 9/11 footage I am happy to not live in a metropolis. Interesting video.
I felt like 3 days had passed by the time I got to the end of the video.
watch it again with the Benny Hill music behind, time flies a little faster with the public sector set to its theme tune
recommend you use Benny Hill music whenever watching a political press conference, especially your beloved auto-cue Presidential addresses, our beloved EC, EU and ECB Q&A sessions over here in Europe, any Fed meet-the-hand-selected-press-core events and it was truly epic music when Jon Corzine gave testimony (pre-scripted contempt) to the Senate (notice the turkey/Chariman asking/reading scripted questions with zero follow-up interrogation) after the MFG scandal
Here try:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgyqaqTpgeY&feature=related
in all seriousness it is in fact our Era's theme tune, since 2000 and the Pump & Dump dot.con bubble bursting of Goldman and JP Morgan... it's been playing in the background for 12 years and has another 5 years to run until will blow up
Benny Hill was a deep thinking scholar compared to our lot
I hope they are all Union. Triple time bishes!
And I'm also wondering where all the rats went. You know that they were at least smart enough to GTFO.
@RacerX
I was part of the local utility's storm restoration after Hurricane Rita in 2005 (it followed shortly after Katrina and was a vastly more powerful storm that fortunately hit a less populated area). Anyway, the PEPCO guys that came down to help were all union and one of the guys was complaining about his back hurting because he slept in his truck cab. I told him that I could get his crew a hotel room to sleep (these can be hard to get when TSHTF), but he told me that, as a union guy, he gets paid triple time for being on the rig. He wasn't working and nobody requested that he be on call, but he was damn sure that he was going to be living on that rig as long as he thought he was earning triple time.
The rats go where the food is. If there are no riders, and thus no trash, there's not much for 'em there.
So it took them 3 days to pump some water out.
Big deal.
The Japanese completely demolished and rebuilt a freeway in only 6 days:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110324/local/damaged-japanese-motorway-rebuilt-in-six-days.356408
[and I'm guessing the workers weren't unionized...]
And China built a full 30 story hotel in 15 days...
It probably collapsed in another 15 days, but that was not caught on tape. Still, double the GDP impact so everyone is happy.
Empire State building 82 years ago.. 9 months.
Wow that is some seriously dramatic music for a construction project.
Bastiat is spinning in his grave.
"9 magnitude earthquake resistant"
pfft
ignite a thousand gallons of jet fuel in an upper floor and the whole thing will vaporize in a couple of hours
note that the structure was built by a crew of only a dozen (from an episode of Extreme Makeover People's Edition)
I think IKEA sells these now.. a bitch to load in the car
So you noticed they copied the WTC's basic structural design with the center structural support and the outer lattice to hold up the floors.
Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied. Copied.
Constructing a 30 story building in 15 days. Sounds like a Dongting task...
(groans, eye rolls, forced uncomfortable laughter)
Goodnight everybody - drive safe.
Good for China, but I noticed no other buildings anywhere near in the video. It appears to be a residential skyscraper all by itself in a country setting. China's central planning has built entire cities and freeways absent of people. Confusing.
Multiple generations live together in China in order to save money. They are very distrustful of their govt due to past failures resulting in devastating consequences, namely famine, so the Chinese people save their money rather than move into more expensive digs. Younger generation may change it somewhat but not enough to fill the vacancies. This is what I was told by a young woman from China when I questioned her about the ghost cities.
"and I'm guessing the workers weren't unionized..."
You clearly know nothing about how Japanese workers are compensated relative to their American counterparts. If you're interested. http://www.globalhrnews.com/story.asp?sid=958
Can't speak for the MTA, but you clearly know nothing about CalTrans:
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/03/18/new-caltrans-accused-of-waste-sloth/
What a shock -- you completely changed the subject, ignored the fact that your comment was factually misleading or simply ignorant, and then went for red meat anti-union talking points.
I'm still waiting for a five mile stretch of I77 to be completed after six years. I think they did finish at one point, but it took so long that there are now orange cones set up to fix the cracked pavement.
There's your union work for you.
It has also been six months to fix the concrete barrier on one half mile of raised interstate.
Don't get me started on the two mile exit ramp because some engineer goofed. They realized that the exit ramp they built came off in front of the toll plaza for the turnpike when they finished the booth. People would have needed to go through the toll plaza to get off the freeway. Perhaps that wasn't actually a mistake. So they merged the ramp into a local road which takes you on a two mile loop to get to the street you used to be able to get right off at.
The "narrative" must be maintained.
So true. Funny how so many here talk about escaping the Matrix while they eat their steak.
Japanese worker persons are more labor-intensive and highly organized.
I have observed this with most Oriental personages.
They are generally highly motivated, so USA persons could learn much from them.
So are bees.. Wouldn't want to bee one...
it's a surface level road with no lights, minimal strucutres, jeez, i could get that fixed in a week.
2 dozers, a big backhoe, one road grader, a n asphalt spreader, 2 dump trucks , a materials conveyor, and a paint truck.
have the dozers scrape up all the road bed back a hundred feet of the damage, carry off the debris, have the trucks bringing in pea gravel, fill the broken holes, have the backhoes break up the big chunks of road, regrade to your new site line.
resurface.
paint
add rails
and slaves built the great wall of china.. what's your point?
It was probably John Galt clearing the water working the pump, while the Jim Taggarts of GS were preparing to get back to work
Total Public Construction Spending ..under Obama?
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TLPBLCONS
Help get Charlie off the MTA !!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VMSGrY-IlU
Funny thing about that campaign song was the issue.. an imposition of an “exit fare” to get out of the system.
http://suite101.com/article/the-true-story-of-charlie-on-the-mta-a197156
So how long do pieces of electrical equipment take to dry out? I dropped my iPhone in a pool in 2006 and I'm still waiting for it to work.
iPhones first came out in 2007, so maybe that's the problem...
They are going to have to scrap it all. Broken windows baby!
Can't wait to watch the subway paint dry video release...
May I suggest the soundtrack... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWiyKgeGWx0
bit dramatic to watch paint dry ..keeps you awake though
A lil Windex and good as new
You have to be good at "sucking" to get a job like that done so fast...
Would you stop being so homophobic. Quit picking on Bawnee Fwank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQAvMUUJr4&feature=relmfu
Obama has increased NY Metro area EBT (or is it SNAP?) disbursements by 50% for the month of November. Gotta make sure those Obama voters last until the election! FORWARD, SOVIET!
A lovely capstone to this proud legacy:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/food-stamp-growth-75x-greater-job-cr...
And Krugman Junior:
http://www.thefastertimes.com/wallstreet/?p=1520
And why you shouldn't vote for Barry O (he's not pro-Israhole enough, stupid!):
http://www.cape-coral-daily-breeze.com/page/content.detail/id/532548/An-...
Rope+Bloomberg=a good combination, hahaha.
I see all the rubble/plaster on the ground and I wonder how many wall/ceiling collapses will occur in the next weeks and months. The subway system is already in shambles. The concrete and brick and everything else is all completely soaked through -- with temperatures expected to drop it won't help matters if the water freezes and expands.
And they STILL have to check all the rails for damage, do repairs, get the light signals working (read an article on line said many of the signal boxes were manufactured by a company no longer in business -- good luck getting parts for repairs) and the MTA vending machines (which barely worked before they got flooded).
Getting the water out was just the beginning.
absolutely, there can and likely will be significant unseen damage from the water that could render these stations unusable.
The damage cannot be undone by simply removing the water and making the mechanical systems operational. If one of these places collapses and kills people NYC will have a significant legal issue to deal with for not having done their due diligence post-Sandy.
Rushing to fix inoperative systems in a haste to stem the economic consequences is not permission to disregard seriously dangerous situations.
They hopefully will have the structural integrity checked prior to allowing the public back in.
I don't think it ever gets cold enough to freeze on platforms and in tunnels. Even if it does, the real threat of freeze-damage doesn't occur until 6 degrees Farenheit, and NYC almost never gets that cold.
All the flooding is certainly very bad for maintenance schedules, though, agree on that. They'll probably just raise the fares again.
I wouldn't stick my toe in that water to save my mother's life.
People are crapping in apt buildings
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.fr/2012/11/stranded-new-yorkers-are-defecating-in.html
And FEMA's cleaning the Plaza shops LMAO!!!
People in Coney Island have always crapped in their apartment buildings.
A couple guys with push-brooms, a little Febreeze, and that shit is as good as new..
Prolly needed a good cleaning after 100 years, anyway...
Fair is fair. I thought it might take a month, so score one for the MTA. And they had to make the video or I wouldn't have believed it.
Fair is fair but all I saw was the floor of one or two stations. Didn't see any railways dried out in that video.
Wow! Neat! Cool!
Now about those hungry, freezing and homeless people - did anything get fixed for them in the last three days?
How many people affected by the storm STILL without power?
Only auth Union Workers allowed Bitchezzz. Fuck NY and crap. NJ , NY all crappy places to live.
So they pumped water out so it runs downhill and becomes a problem for other folks. (preferably in Jersey) All to get people on the subway to nowhere and visit the Plaza Shops. Take a big bite of the big apple, don't mind the maggots.
They're mostly pumping to drains. Public workers are not quite the morons you might think.
Wonder if the candy machines still work...
I assume they are all getting overtime, right? Ever wonder why disasters cost so much?
"Every little bit helps",said the old lady pissing in the sea.
I have to find out who manufactures the endless miles of yellow police tape and invest... it seem to be a booming business with explosive growth potential.
It's made in China.
In America we even outsource our natural disasters and crime scenes...
First of all, we have to spend more hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan in order to protect Americans working on cleaning up and repairing NYC's infrastructure - we have to fight them over there; fighting them over here would greatly impact the much needed reconstruction work. Let's get our priorities straight people, - first install democracy in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc. and then when all is safe - rebuild our decaying infrastructure, 'cause it's hard to get work done when you're dodging AK-47 rounds and mortar shells...
Looking at the posted video, I see that the UPPER level is now clear and water appears to be 2-3 below the Ceiling height of the LOWER level. Seeing as the upper level only flooded to maybe 6-8 inches of water on the floor, I don't see a dramatic change of the water level in that station. Most of the water was/is in the lower level (subway level). With water seemingly still only a few feet from the ceiling I would expect at least a few more days to get it flushed out and clear of the tracks. I would hardly consider the station "almost dry".
I would be supprised if that station was fully operational any time before January of 2013, and most likely a good deal later.
Wait a sec..
Are you implying that the MTA might not be showing the world the whole picture..??
what this lacks is zombies.
Stations are closed to commuters at the moment.
Personally, I would like to see Bloomberg, Blankfein, Dimon et. al. do a little community service work for The City, like putting on some rubber gloves and boots and cleaning out this mess themselves.
I am surprised that stadiums aren't being utilized as shelters for those who have lost their homes, the inside infrastructure could be used to house the elderly [cots, blankets, etc.]. Tent cities could be erected on the playing fields and in the parking lots - providing cots, showering areas, and food preparation and distribution areas. I stayed in the media housing for the '98 Nagano Winter Games and in the commons area, they erected a huge tent that served as a food serving area and a recreational, lounging area. It was heated, well-lit and very comfortable. When planning for a disaster of this magnitude, you don't want to rely on politicians or goverment bureaucrats - they lack the skills and problem-solving abilities of say engineers or any group whose livehood depends on finding creative and quick solutions to problems. Politicians are good at bull-shitting and bureaucrats are infamous for doing the absolute minimum at their own pace, despite the circumstances. With the right group of people, solutions that would make us all proud to be Americans would have already been in place....
How come the US has the shittiest-looking subway systems..?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_transit
Making subways pretty doesn't have any effect on the profit potential. As any ZH reader knows, there's never any valid reason to do something that's not going to be profitable.
I watched the entire video...kind of wanted to see a dead squid. Oh well.
I don't even want to think about the crap/things that have been dislodged in those subway tunnels after almost 100 years.
Freaking "Godzilla and the Smog Monster", were probably re-awakened.
If they were only to realize, that by using the help of Gravity and some well drilled draining-tiny-diameter tunnels, connected to the sewage system in the right places, the entire system would have been a lot easier to maintain, would have been wonderful.
Regrettably, with such forward thinking, there is will be no much GDP increase (no need for so many people, going around, pumping out water) in case of such natural disasters.
Generally, with smart planning, one can save a lot of work down the road. Regrettably, this will save money, and will slash budgets down the road, and this seems to be something that ALL people in power want to avoid, they just want to spend more. No one wants to get less money they got the previous year.
That's not dry. They showed that station on Wednesday. The water at that level was "only" ankle high. The lower level was submerged, and still is according to this video (end of video, down "stairwell" is flooded.
City of N.Y needs to hire a bunch of those Alaskan XAU miners. Tell them they get to keep all the jewelry,and gems they find while pumping the water and sludge out of the tunnels., [as compensation]
They will finish ahead of schedule, and savings can be donated to the storm victims.
Can Roto-Rooter grab this as there Promo Video, that is , of course after these OSHA obliging Yahoo's are done with it......
Are we supposed to be impressed by this?
The red down arrow is juxtaposed to the male organ bulge on your avatar, so I clicked it. Were you referring to the video?
keep that water pumpin for the sluice box so we can find that buried fed gold!!
GOLD RUSH MANHATTAN
That's what I'm talking about! ;-)
On Wednesday Bloomberg said maybe 4 days to clean it up. I assume everything's going BAU today?
You didn't drain that....
Watching pump dry is no less thrilling than counting mosquitos on the porch on some remote farm in the old south.
What millennia was pumping invented? Was it before Thermite?
If by pumping...and you don't mean sex (where pumping is forever)...then it's been around a while.
Subway flushed organics, and mildew will be evolving in their odors. I would avoid street level food there for a while.