Hurricane Predictions

jay718 wrote: Lost the awning from my new restaurant. Blew right down the fucking street. Could've been a lot worse though; lots of businesses are underwater, especially on the Lower East Side. It's gonna set me back a few grand, but what are you gonna do. I'm working tonight; I'll probably be putting a few back in the awnings memory.

A friend of ours in Jersey had a tree smash into her 5 year olds bedroom. The little guy was in his folks bed because he was terrified of the storm. Bananas.

That's a drag. Out of curiosity, is that "few grand" your insurance deductible? Insurance companies almost never cover "rain" damage, but wind, which is undoubtedly what caused your awning to go AWOL, is usually part of the policy.

Well we had plenty of rain and winds up to about 40 in gusts. Lost power (of course) Monday night in spite of a lull in the storm at the time. Phone service went out an hour later. Water in the crawlspace but nothing unscheduled. Translation -- business as usual in Anne Arundel County. Everyone's guess is that our buried lines are being flooded, because the outages never seem to be associated with wind.

Our power company is the running joke in the DC area. All the other power companies (there's four or five in the region) are reporting the number of people out and the time it will take to restore them. Our company, Baltimore Gas & Electric, sends out press releases simply stating that they have no idea how many people are out nor how long it would be before they will be back. Last night (Wednesday) they finally reported 18,000 homes down, but still won't report when things will return to normal.

This was a far weaker hurricane here than anticipated, but as best I can tell BGE sends crews out during storms to pull down their wires and store them in a dry place. Those things are expensive you know.

S.

Glad to hear everything is reasonably OK at Casa Sag.

Dogmatix wrote:

jay718 wrote: Lost the awning from my new restaurant. Blew right down the fucking street. Could've been a lot worse though; lots of businesses are underwater, especially on the Lower East Side. It's gonna set me back a few grand, but what are you gonna do. I'm working tonight; I'll probably be putting a few back in the awnings memory.

A friend of ours in Jersey had a tree smash into her 5 year olds bedroom. The little guy was in his folks bed because he was terrified of the storm. Bananas.

That's a drag. Out of curiosity, is that "few grand" your insurance deductible? Insurance companies almost never cover "rain" damage, but wind, which is undoubtedly what caused your awning to go AWOL, is usually part of the policy.

Looking back at this statement I feel like a complete asshole for bitching about my awning. Parts of the city are devastated and people are desperate. Old folks living above the 20th floor in public houseing with no water, working toilets, electricity, food, etc. Meanwhile in my part of Brooklyn there's record brunch crowds and people are out drinking and whooping it up like they're on vacation. We've had a banner week at the bar. It's bizarre. Two completely different cities. I just can't believe they're going ahead with the marathon.

They've canceled the marathon.

It made sense to go through with it from a financial perspective. The event brings $350 million to the city and the city is going to need a lot of money to repair all the damage. But the optics of it were pretty bad. Especially when they wanted to do things like use generators to power race clocks when they could be used for the relief effort.

The "optics of it were bad"? Really?

It was a no brainer to cancel that marathon. The money allegedly brought to the city by people buying shit is not going to help restore life to normal in the lower part of Manhattan and the Burroughs.

However, bringing in shit tons of people needing places to stay, diverting resources such as police and fire, and supplies and power to a needless fucking sporting event would make things just a tad shittier for those in the badly hit areas.

I'm glad somebody had some common sense.

Glad to hear you and yours are safe Dave. One of my bartenders family's from Long Beach and lost everything.

Octavian wrote: They've canceled the marathon.

Especially when they wanted to do things like use generators to power race clocks when they could be used for the relief effort.

Not to mention all of the water, powergel, gatorade, and other bullshit that winds up being trampled in the street that could be distributed to hungry families in shelters and devastated neighborhoods. The time spent cleaning up all the garbage leftover from discarded water cups alone would be far more constructive less than a quarter mile from the start line. Traffic around the city has been absolute murder and to make it worse with massive street closures would be unconscionable at best.

I lived half a block from the marathon route for over a decade and have seen first hand all the manpower that it takes to keep that shit going between the NYPD, the FDNY and volunteers. It can be put to far better use and I'm glad Bloomberg came to his senses.

We're donating all Sunday's proceeds from the bar to disaster relief around the five boroughs, so if any of y'all are around come buy a few drinks and say hi.