DANICA PATRICK | VIDEO GAMES AS ART | UNTOLD WAR STORIES
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2, 2012
Sandy’s Devastation How a Building Frenzy Swallowed the Eastern Seaboard
ADVERTISEMENT
Get the HuffPost Live App for iPad速 & iPad mini速
Download Now
iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
12.02.12 #25 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Fox News Drama, Lohan’s Liz, Two and a Half Men Meltdown MOVING IMAGE: The Week in Photos LIVE Q&A: Danica Patrick
Voices GARY JOHNSON: Standing Still on a Down Escalator ANDREW LAM: The Petraeus Scandal and the Untold Stories JOHN FRIEDMAN: Black Friday’s Black Future
Exit CULTURE: Can Video Games Call Themselves Art? COMEDY: How to Take a Comic’s Breath Away GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK: Peter Brady MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
THE GILDED AGE: Lesser Figures of the Enlightenment TFU
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
BY JOHN RUDOLF, BEN HALLMAN, CHRIS KIRKHAM, SAKI KNAFO AND MATT SLEDGE
FROM THE EDITOR: Far From Unthinkable ON THE COVER: Photograph by
Mario Tama for Getty Images
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Far From Unthinkable n this week’s Huffington, five HuffPost reporters give a detailed and unsparing account of the man-made factors behind Hurricane Sandy’s damage. John Rudolf, Ben Hallman, Chris Kirkham, Saki Knafo and Matt Sledge not only tell the story of the storm, but paint a damning picture of the shortcuts, expedient
ART STREIBER
I
decision-making and lack of preparation that allowed it to inflict such suffering and devastation. “In the end,” they write, “a pellmell, decades-long rush to throw up housing and businesses along fragile and vulnerable coastlines trumped commonsense concerns about the wisdom of placing hundreds of thousands of closely huddled people in the path of potential cataclysms.” The story of Hurricane Sandy begins long before the storm made landfall. It’s a story of
Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
unheeded warnings — from evacuation orders to climate change — and reckless real estate development: In Staten Island, where Sandy claimed 21 lives, more than 2,700 mostly residential structures were built between 1980 and 2008 in coastal areas at extreme risk of storm surge flooding. “People love a view of the ocean but don’t understand what every geologist knows,” says Nicholas Coch, a coastal geography professor at Queens College. So what did geologists know, and what did they try to communicate to those in government and real estate? The answer to both questions is: a lot. There’s the 2010 study that placed Staten Island in the “bull’s eye” for a storm surge in New York harbor. There are the never-pursued suggestions for higher sea walls and a harbor barrier to protect New York City against storm surges. Blunt warnings from New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection about the lethal combination of hurricane risk and population growth along the coast. As Suzanne Mattei, former chief of the New York State Department of
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Environmental Conservation’s New York City regional office, puts it, “It’s just horrendous that there’s been all this research and all this analysis and so little action.” And then there are the unforgettable images: Vinny Baccale, who glanced out his window in Staten Island to see his neighSo what bor drowning in the did geologists street; night nurses at know, and a nursing home in the what did Rockaways, kneeling they try to together in prayer as communicate waves pounded the to those in building’s walls; Gov. government Chris Christie flying and real in a helicopter above estate? The the Jersey Shore, answer to calling the damage both questions “unthinkable.” But is: a lot. as Rudolf, Hallman, Kirkham, Knafo and Sledge write of those who have studied climate change and its effects, “for them, the catastrophe Christie was flying over was far from unthinkable.”
ARIANNA
POINTERS
JESSE GRANT/WIREIMAGE FOR AMAZON.COM/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
1
FOX NEWS GUEST USHERED OFF AIR FOR CRITICISM
Thomas Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize winner known for covering the military, took a quick hit at Fox News over its coverage of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. “I think the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox is operating as the wing of the Republican Party,” he said, and was then given a quick exit. Total interview time? About 90 seconds.
Enter
POINTERS
CHRIS CHRISTIE STAYS IN THE LIMELIGHT
FROM TOP: AP PHOTO/JULIO CORTEZ; OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL VIA BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES
2
3
4
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
About a month after his state suffered the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced he will run for another term. “It would be wrong for me to leave now. I don’t want to leave now,” he said. Christie, who said the Garden State faces more than $29 billion in damages from the storm, has garnered a surge of popularity in the polls for his response to Sandy. His blue fleece, which he donned during his recent SNL appearance, is by now a well-known trademark.
AMERICANS PREDICT: ELECTED OFFICIALS WILL ACT ‘LIKE SPOILED CHILDREN’
In a new CNN poll, two-thirds of Americans said that Washington officials will act “like spoiled children” instead of “responsible adults” in dealing with the upcoming budget negotiations. If elected officials do not reach a deal, 45 percent of respondents said they would fault Republicans in Congress, while 34 percent said President Obama would be to blame, the poll found.
TWO AND A HALF MEN STAR TO VIEWERS: ‘STOP WATCHING’ A year and a half after Charlie Sheen had a public meltdown and called Two and a Half Men a “pukefest,” the actor who plays the “half” on the CBS hit show is speaking out. In a video posted on a religious website, 19-year-old Angus T. Jones tells viewers: “Please stop watching it, please stop filling your head with filth.” Jones, who earns about $350,000 an episode, says the show is at odds with his religious beliefs.
Enter
5
POINTERS
GRINCH CAUGHT STEALING TOYS FROM SALVATION ARMY A former Salvation Army director found himself without a job as the holiday season approaches, after he allegedly stole about $2 million in toys and donations from the charity’s warehouse in Toronto. The 51-year-old David Rennie reportedly turned himself in and was charged with theft, possession of stolen goods and breach of trust.
LOHAN COMES UP SHORT IN LIFETIME PERFORMANCE
6
FROM TOP: DAVID LIVINGSTON/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF LIFETIME
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Critics have pounced on Lindsay Lohan’s performance as Elizabeth Taylor in Lifetime’s premiere of Liz & Dick, putting at serious risk the struggling actress’ potential for a comeback. Viewers flocked to Twitter to share their disparaging comments, calling the movie “pure torture” and advising Lifetime to change its motto to “Your Life, Your Time. We’re Sorry.”
THAT’S VIRAL A FACEBOOK STATUS CANNOT COPYRIGHT YOUR CONTENT
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
LARRY HAGMAN, 1931-2012
BALD CHEERLEADERS! (FOR A CAUSE)
FIONA APPLE CANCELS TOUR TO STAY HOME WITH DYING DOG
NAKED PROTESTERS STORM JOHN BOEHNER’S OFFICE
Enter
MOVING IMAGE
The Week in Photos HONG WU/GETTY IMAGES
From New Jersey to the Gaza Strip, ahead find our selections of this week’s most compelling images.
Chiang Mai, Thailand 11.24.12 Thai people launch khom loi (sky lanterns) into the night sky during the Yi Peng Festival. The lanterns are released in the belief that grief and misfortune will fly away with them. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Enter
DANIEL BEREHULAK/GETTY IMAGES
Kabul, Afghanistan 11.19.12 Bismillah Gul, 12, is helped by his father Masta Gul, after having travelled from Khost province to get treatment for polio at the International Committee of the Red Cross orthopedic center. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
Union Beach, New Jersey 11.21.12 The Princess Cottage, built in 1855, remains standing after being ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
ANDREW KELLY/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
New York City, New York 11.22.12 The Kung Fu Panda balloon is lifted before the 86th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
GLENN CAMPBELL/THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD/FAIRFAX MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES
Enter
Central Australia 11.21.12 Tens of thousands of budgerigars (parakeets) gather around a waterhole. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Enter
CHINAFOTOPRESS/GETTY IMAGES
Wenling, China 11.21.12 An isolated five-floor building stands in the middle of a new main road. While the rest of the neighborhood was demolished to make way for the road, 67-year-old Luo Baogen and his 65-year-old wife were the lone holdouts, and still live in the building. The images of Luo’s home have been widely circulated online and become a symbol of resistance. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Enter
DANIEL BEREHULAK/GETTY IMAGES
New Delhi, India 11.25.12 Shi’ite Muslim men participate in the religious festival of Ashura, commemorating the seventh century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Selfflagellation rituals are used to mourn his death by beheading at the battle of Karbala. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Enter
MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES
Taunton, United Kingdom 11.25.12 Anne Bartlett and her dog Henry look on at their flooded town after another round of heavy rain and wind, which brought disruption to many parts of the country this week. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
M ZHAZO/HINDUSTAN TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Enter
New Delhi, India 11.19.12 Devotees offer prayers to Lord Sun on “Chhat Puja,” a major festival of Bihar performed to give thanks to the Sun for sustaining life on earth. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
DANIEL BEREHULAK/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
Delhi, India 11.24.12 Deepak Sharma floats leisurely as passersby look on at Lodhi gardens. The secret to his trick? Magic, according to Sharma. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
CHINAFOTOPRESS/CHINAFOTOPRESS VIA GETTY IMAGES
Enter
Wuhan, China 11.25.12 Candidates testing for the National Civil Service Exam stream into Huazhong University of Science and Technology under a canopy of umbrellas. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Enter
URIEL SINAI/GETTY IMAGES
Israel/Gaza Border 11.22.12 An Israeli soldier stands on his tank on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appears to be in place, despite rockets being fired from Gaza. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
MOVING IMAGE
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Q&A
FROM TOP: WESLEY HITT/GETTY IMAGES FOR NASCAR; JARED C. TILTON/GETTY IMAGES FOR NASCAR
Enter
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Danica Patrick on Breaking the Glass Ceiling, in a Race Car “People always ask what it’s like to be a girl, and I don’t know what it’s like to be a guy, so for me it all seems quite normal.”
Above: Patrick at the NASCAR Nationwide Series Kansas Lottery 300. Below: Patrick leads Travis Kvapil at the Spring Cup.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE
Voices
GARY JOHNSON
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Standing Still on a Down Escalator WHEN I ANNOUNCED my candidacy for president in the spring of 2011, I did so as a Republican. It made sense at the time. After all, I had served two reasonably successful terms as a Republican governor of New Mexico, a 2-1 Democrat state that also happens to be the most Hispanic state in the Union. On pocketbook issues of taxes, spending and job creation, my credentials were strong. Trying to be objective, I understand the reality that my shot at the Republican nomination was severely hampered by a lack of national recognition and funding. But that wasn’t the only hin-
ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL FISHEL
drance. Though my record on fiscal issues is as conservative as it gets — I vetoed more bills than probably all the other governors combined, cut taxes at every opportunity, and balanced the budget — my positions on Republican litmus-test issues didn’t exactly endear me to the powers-that-be in the party of so-called “values.” I didn’t proclaim that gay marriage is a threat to society, as we know it. I actually believe a woman should make her own decisions about her body. I don’t even sup-
Gary Johnson was a 2012 presidential candidate and is the former governor of New Mexico
Voices port capital punishment, having come to the shocking realization that government makes mistakes — lots of them. On top of all that, I came into the campaign having long advocated an end to the failed prohibition of marijuana. On immigration, I foolishly refused to engage in the rhetorical contest of “who will build the biggest fence” and put the most guns on the border. On foreign affairs, I even had the audacity to say that we shouldn’t be fighting wars we can neither afford nor justify, and that national defense should actually be defense, not offense. We shouldn’t be attacking unless we are attacked. I was the skunk at the picnic. After being excluded from the all-important Republican debates — and even the polls used to determine who was invited to those debates — it became obvious that the nomination picnic didn’t have room for such a skunk. With eyes wide open about the challenges of mounting a “third party” campaign, I decided to cease my campaign for the Republican nomination and run instead as a Libertarian. Why? I felt strongly, and still feel strongly, that a sizable
GARY JOHNSON
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
chunk of the American electorate shares my fiscally conservative, socially accepting view of truly smaller government. And I wanted to do everything possible to give voice to that view, knowing that neither the Democrat nor the Republican nominee would do so. Fast forward to today. The
Elections should offer some semblance of a fresh start and the optimism of having either endorsed or changed the direction of the country. When that doesn’t happen, it is time for all of us to take a good look at what we are doing.” morning after the election, America awakened to realize we had reelected a status quo that virtually no one can say is satisfactory. Knowing that things aren’t good, the Democrats are wisely avoiding reckless claims of a mandate. Yet, the election really gave them no reason to change what they are doing. As for the Republicans, we are reading and hearing widespread
Voices shock that they couldn’t win an election after having systematically alienated virtually every voting group in the nation other than white men over the age of 40. It was a great plan for the Republicans: Go to shameful lengths to tell Hispanics they aren’t welcome, even though they are the fastest growing demographic in the country. Tell women their bodies really aren’t their own to manage. Call themselves small government “conservatives” while espousing that government should tell us who we can marry and supporting laws like the Patriot Act, FISA and the NDAA that give government powers the Founders never dreamed of. While doing and saying all this, on the key issues of the economy and war, the GOP managed to conduct an entire campaign without demonstrating enough difference with President Obama to compel anyone’s vote one way or the other. “Debating” which decade in which we might expect a balanced budget and simply putting a slightly different wrapper on the same foreign policies obviously didn’t cut it as real challenges to business-as-usual. Combine this lack of differen-
GARY JOHNSON
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
tiation on the budget and foreign policy with scary stances on the so-called social issues and immigration, and the result is the Republicans’ embarrassing failure to replace a president who is presiding over the worst economy and the most dangerous foreign policy in a generation.
Though my record on fiscal issues is as conservative as it gets, my positions on Republican litmus-test issues didn’t exactly endear me to the powers-that-be in the party of so-called ‘values.’” Even if you don’t win, elections should offer some semblance of a fresh start and the optimism of having either endorsed or changed the direction of the country. When that doesn’t happen, and I would suggest that it isn’t today, it is time for all of us — Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, et al., to take a good look at what we are doing. Otherwise, we are standing still on a down escalator, and the country really, really needs to be on an up escalator.
ANDREW LAM
Voices
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
The Petraeus Scandal and the Untold Stories
L
ONG BEFORE COMING TO AMERICA, the first English phrase I ever uttered was, oddly enough, “No money, no honey.” The painted girls in impossibly tight, colorful miniskirts who strutted on the sidewalks near my school in downtown Saigon said it shamelessly, and loudly, as they plied their trades with the American GIs during the Vietnam War. It became an expression among us pubescent schoolboys. ¶ That childhood memory comes back now, decades later, as I think of the political scandal that engulfed our nation right after the U.S. presidential election, and how, incredibly, a little honey and a lot of amorous email missives could take down America’s most admired general, and threaten to ruin the career of yet another. ¶ Gen. David Petraeus, erstwhile CIA chief and U.S. commander of the Iraq theater, and one of the most respected military generals and tacticians in modern time, ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL FISHEL
Andrew Lam is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora. His next book, Birds of Paradise Lost, is due out in 2013.
Voices resigned when stories of an affair with his biographer broke. Gen. John Allen, current commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, too, was for a time facing possible relieve of command if the 20,000-plus pages of email exchanges with a civilian woman named Jill Kelley had been found to have breached military codes of conduct. And, to make the story even murkier, the FBI agent who initially took up the investigation of all of this was discovered to have sent inappropriate shirtless images of himself to Kelley; so he, too, is now under investigation. Some called the complex situation a ménage à cinq, or better yet, a love pentagon. Still, regardless of the geometry, one can always rely on this old savory caveat: sex follows the army the way bottle flies follow fresh dung. In fact, it’s a little perplexing to see our nation’s press corps in a feeding frenzy over the rather commonplace adulterous love affair between army head honchos and socialites, as if unaware of the nature of sex and war and its consequences since the Iliad and Odyssey. In light of this, the news coverage following Petraeus’ resignation seemed rather disproportion-
ANDREW LAM
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
ate to the actual deeds, and the shock seemed manufactured in contrast to the real, untold story: That thousands of unwanted children born overseas from the American military rarely get to
Compared to past wars, there are few sexual outlets available; but the top brass can fly to and fro with their girlfriends-cum-biographers in private jets.” see their stories told in print, and that the number of incidents of women being assaulted in the military have a long history of going undercounted and underreported. Here’s a bit of history: The term hooker itself can be traced back to the American Civil War, when Union General Joe Hooker was famous for having a flock of women following his soldiers to the extent that they were known as “Hooker’s girls” or “Hooker’s division.” Sex with soldiers, indeed, was such a norm during the Vietnam War that it was an economy in and of itself. It propped up bars and fueled the black market of Saigon and Danang (soldiers sold army goods often in the same place where they
Voices conducted their amorous business). And if the U.S. army had a protocol against adulterous affairs, it sure wasn’t apparent on the streets of Saigon. During the Vietnam War, too, Bangkok’s most famous red light district, Patpong, came to prominence as the direct result of American GIs on R&R. Though despite the furtive promises of that false cliché, “me love you long time,” in the evening, the morning is often one of furtive denial. When the U.S. left Vietnam, it left behind thousands of mixedraced children known as con lai, and their collective effort to enter the U.S. took years before they found success. By then so many had been deprived of education that they ended up subsisting in ethnic enclaves of Little Saigon; some joined gangs. That is to say, the army that ventures overseas often leaves a division or two of unwanted brood. Think, too, of the thousands of Amerasians still living in poverty around Subic Bay in the Philippines — at one point the largest U.S. defense facility overseas. If there is a sense of inequality these days when sex and the army are concerned, it has to do with how little “honey” can be had in the Middle East even if one has plenty
ANDREW LAM
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
of money, given the nature of the way wars are conducted and the prohibitive culture of the region. A soldier who ventures alone outside his base in Iraq or Afghanistan
One can always rely on this old savory caveat: sex follows the army the way bottle flies follow fresh dung.” is a soldier begging to be captured or killed. Compared to past wars, there are few sexual outlets available; but, meanwhile, the top brass can fly to and fro with their girlfriends-cum-biographers in private jets. Their grand lifestyles stand in sharp contrast to those trudging on the ground. This undoubtedly leaves an isolated army full of frustrated men and women. The real untold story is what was and still is going on sexually with these tens of thousands of young men and women hunkered down during the Iraqi occupation and now in Afghanistan, a collective libido running amok. That’s a subject about which a real biographer or historian, not to mention a few — please excuse the pun — embedded journalists, could write an epic tome.
Voices
JOHN FRIEDMAN
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Black Friday’s Black Future The fall/winter holiday season in the United States has been undergoing a transformation for years, from a celebration of distinct and separate events into a severalmonth-long cacophony of merciless cheer, exuberant decorations and endless bargain shouting. Even the notion of “Black Friday” is a false one — while retailers do earn approximately one third of their income during the end of year holiday season, the notion that retailers only start to turn a profit the last week of November is an urban legend (perhaps to justify the relentless marketing). We intrinsically know and readily accept that some people never
ILLUSTRATION BY DANIEL FISHEL
get to take holidays when the rest of us do — just think first-responders, pilots and flight attendants, the coaches, players, concession-stand workers and others who make postThanksgiving possible, our armed forces and all those working in charity around the holidays, etc. As my friend Colin and I discussed this column, we added up literally millions of people who work during the holidays so that the rest of us can enjoy time off. And we, and the economy, rely on them to do so. This year, in addition to the ads, promotions and marketing around
John Friedman is a communications professional and sustainability expert
Voices Black Friday bargains (that often are not bargains at all), we heard increasing consternation in the media and online about the continued expansion of Black Friday shopping hours and the dreadful impact that was having on workers, families and American traditions. Despite the “outrage” last year, in 2012 more retailers opened early on Friday and even on Thanksgiving Day itself to meet (they will say in response to) consumer demand that drove some bargain hunters to line up a full week early. Some companies came under fire for opening on Thanksgiving Day, including Target, whose detractors included some of its own small shareholders. Target defended its decision to open at 9 p.m. by explaining that its customers and employees had expressed a preference for opening on Thanksgiving rather than waking up brutally early on Friday. Toys “R” Us, WalMart stores and Sears opened at 8 p.m. Macy’s and Kohl’s opened at midnight on Black Friday, just as they did in 2011. So, as Christmas carols and decorations appear earlier and earlier each year, consumers have been empowered to choose between spending time with
JOHN FRIEDMAN
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
loved ones or racing out to the store to purchase gifts in an effort to demonstrate their love for those same people. Despite a few threatened employee walkouts and online petitions, stores are obviously finding the income outweighs the negative feelings. When deciding when to open
Consumers have been empowered to choose between spending time with loved ones or racing out to the store to purchase gifts in an effort to demonstrate their love for those same people.” and what to offer online for the holiday weekend, stores were faced with a rather simple choice — with a projected 147 million shoppers ready and eager to spend their money (in person and online) during the Black Friday weekend, how much weight should they give to the 350,000 signatures on petitions asking them to close for the holidays (and allow their competitors to meet the needs of all those willing spenders)? It is an oversimplification of the issue to only see this as “greedy”
Voices stores putting profits ahead of people. The fact is that far too many consumers — post-weekend surveys estimated 247 million shoppers in person and online — are and were willing to shop during the extended hours, camp out, stampede and even trample and steal from each other for retailers to turn their backs on the windfall, or risk it going to competitors, so the trend of opening early becomes a necessary competitive strategy. Companies facing criticism for “taking advantage of employees” can make the strong case that by meeting consumer demand they are actually taking better care of their employees, avoiding layoffs and pay cuts, particularly in a weak economy. In addition, stores were projected to hire approximately 300,000 temporary seasonal workers to meet the increased demand. Retailers are not the only ones who benefit from maximizing holiday sales revenue. Others include the workers — both regular and seasonal — who count on the extra pay in order to provide for their families. Shareholders who own stock in companies that make a third of their profit in the last sixth of the year benefit from those returns. The sales
JOHN FRIEDMAN
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
taxes generated during Black Friday support local communities as well as federal government programs. Some advocates promote online shopping as the “best of all worlds” option, with consumers able to price compare and shop from the comfort and convenience of their holiday homes, while in-
Companies facing criticism for ‘taking advantage of employees’ can make the strong case that by meeting consumer demand they are actually taking better care of their employees.” store employees remain in theirs; but as the percentage of shoppers who hunt bargains on the internet increases, the number of employees — both regular and seasonal — who count on the extra money by working holidays will decrease. And the issue of sales taxes further complicates the equation. With far more elements supporting expanding holiday shopping than resisting it, there is reason to believe that we will see a continuing erosion of our holidays.
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
w
12.02.12 #25
FEATURE SANDY’S DEVASTATION: By John Rudolf, Ben Hallman, Chris Kirkham, Saki Knafo and Matt Sledge
SANDY’S DEVASTATION HOW A BUILDING FRENZY SWALLOWED THE EASTERN SEABOARD
PREVIOIUS PAGE: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES ; THIS PAGE: AP PHOTO/JULIO CORTEZ
>> O N THE NIGHT THAT HURRICANE SANDY HIT
the East Coast, Vinny Baccale was in his Staten Island living room, plotting a last-minute escape and regretting not evacuating, when his kids shouted to him from another room. Their neighbor was outside, trying to start his car in the rising water. ¶ As Baccale stepped to his window, a six-foot wave swept down his block and over the man’s car, propelling it down the dark street. As the wave fell back, a flashlight in the car blinked on and off in distress. Then the waters surged again and covered the car. The light went out. ¶ “We watched a neighbor drown,” said Baccale, 35. “Maybe things like this happen in Florida, places like that. But never here.”
>> By JOHN RUDOLF, BEN HALLMAN, CHRIS KIRKHAM, SAKI KNAFO and MATT SLEDGE
Floodwater rushes in, surrounding homes in Mantoloking, N.J., as Sandy makes landfall in the Garden State.
AP PHOTO/STAR-LEDGER, DAVID GARD/POOL
With historic ferocity, Sandy pounded the shorelines where people like Baccale lived, leaving a trail of destruction without parallel in New York and New Jersey, two states that bore the brunt of the impact. The storm’s most destructive feature was a wind-driven wall of water that swept in at high tide and engulfed low-lying coastal areas with an unrelenting fury. The surge flattened whole communities on New Jersey’s barrier islands, causing untold billions
in damage, and topped seawalls in lower Manhattan and throughout the metropolitan area, plunging millions into darkness. It also claimed lives, especially on Staten Island, where 21 people drowned during the storm. Given the size and power of the storm, much of the damage from the surge was inevitable. But perhaps not all. Some of the damage along low-lying coastal areas was the result of years of poor land-use decisions and the more immediate neglect of emergency preparations as Sandy gathered force, according to experts and a
Billy Major, owner of the Fun Town Pier in Seaside Heights, N.J., surveys damage caused by the superstorm.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
review of government data and independent studies. Authorities in New York and New Jersey simply allowed heavy development of at-risk coastal areas to continue largely unabated in recent decades, even as the potential for a massive storm surge in the region became increasingly clear. In the end, a pell-mell, decadeslong rush to throw up housing and businesses along fragile and vulnerable coastlines trumped commonsense concerns about the wisdom of placing hundreds of thousands of closely huddled people in the path of potential cataclysms. On Staten Island, developers built more than 2,700 mostly residential structures in coastal areas at extreme risk of storm surge flooding between 1980 and 2008, with the approval of city planning and zoning authorities, according to a review of city building data by scientists at the College of Staten Island. Some of this construction occurred in former marshland along the island’s Atlantic-facing south shore. The 21 people who drowned in the storm surge on Staten Island were clustered along the south shore, and died after becoming trapped in their homes or while
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
attempting to flee the rising water by car or foot, according to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. While many of those who drowned lived in small bungalows built many decades ago, at least two victims were residents in a large-scale planned community completed in the 1990s. “The city allowed development and growth to happen in areas that probably shouldn’t have been developed,” said Jonathan Peters,
“ WE WATCHED A NEIGHBOR DROWN.” a professor of finance at the College of Staten Island. “I think the fact is that you put a lot of people in harm’s way with the zoning.” The city did not respond to a question about recent development on Staten Island or on the Rockaways. It noted that experts on zoning and code had been dispatched to the field to respond to the aftereffects of Sandy. But it said that newly constructed buildings in the city are required to be flood-proofed to the FEMA-designated flood elevations. “As a part of our long-term sustainability initiative, PlaNYC, and our extensive climate change work, the City is reviewing both
MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
its building and zoning codes to better prepare for weather events and is continuing to develop measures that lower our risk and mitigate the impact of climate change,� said Lauren Passalacqua, a spokeswoman for the city. Developers built up parts of the Jersey Shore and the Rockaways, a low-lying peninsula in Queens, N.Y., in similar fashion in recent
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
years, with little effort by local or state officials to mitigate the risk posed by hurricanes, experts said. Real estate developers represent a powerful force in state politics, particularly in New Jersey and New York, where executives and political action committees have been major donors to governors and local officeholders. This coastal growth took place
An aerial shot of the flooding and destruction in Mantoloking, N.J.
STATEN ISLAND, NY
SEASIDE, NJ
CRESCENT BEACH, STATEN ISLAND
WIREIMAGE (SEASIDE HEIGHTS BEFORE); THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES (SEASIDE HEIGHTS AFTER)
BEFORE AND AFTER SANDY
As the East Coast assesses the damage wreaked by Hurricane Sandy, photos have emerged revealing a very changed coastline. As NBC’s Brian Williams said at a recent benefit concert, “It doesn’t look like our Jersey Shore anymore.” To learn how you can help storm victims, visit the Red Cross website. CLICK PHOTOS FOR MORE >>
SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ
MANTOLOKING, NJ
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
even as public and private sector leaders in both New York and New Jersey began expressing growing concern over the potential for climate change to intensify storms and accelerate already rising sea levels. New York City officials in particular were well aware of the ways in which climate change would make the potentially destructive effects of a major hurricane worse, scientists said. The city is “one of the leaders of the country and the world,” on climate change, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. She has worked with both the international Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the local New York City Panel on Climate Change, a body the mayor convened in 2008 specifically to look at how to adapt the city and its infrastructure to rising sea levels. Despite the known risks and a push for quick action by some experts, however, only limited protective steps were taken, even as development in at-risk coastal areas boomed. “It’s just horrendous that there’s been all this research and all this analysis and so little ac-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
tion,” said Suzanne Mattei, former chief of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s New York City regional office. “It’s a shame that we seem never to take the kind of action we need to until something really awful happens.” In New York City, the mayor’s office and the city council had entertained plans since 2009 for a massive harbor barrier, like those
“ IF YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL VIEW, SOONER OR LATER MOTHER NATURE IS GOING TO GIVE YOU THE BILL.” built in London and in The Netherlands, to deflect storm surges. But studies on such a massive and costly undertaking were only in their first stages. Higher concrete sea walls, meant to address the new dangers introduced by climate change, were also discussed but not pursued. More immediate steps, like using more submersible cables in Consolidated Edison’s electrical network in New York, or protecting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s urban subways against flooding, received only a fraction of
BEN HALLMAN FOR HUFFINGTON POST
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
the hundreds of millions of dollars required for adequate protection. And advocates in places like the Rockaways said that their pleas for more beach replenishment there, which might have blunted the impact of Sandy’s furious waters, went largely unheeded. Policymakers in New Jersey had their own warnings that a severe storm surge posed a major risk to the state’s densely populated coastline. In a series of reports over the past decade, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection warned in stark terms that increased risk of hurricanes from climate change, coupled with a continued population expansion along New Jersey’s coast, had set the stage for an enormously expensive disaster. For decades, critics pushed for greater scrutiny of new development by state and local officials along the New Jersey coastline. Yet new construction continued unabated, as state law requires only lenient reviews of smaller developments in coastal areas. “There’s plenty of information out there about the risk on the Jersey Shore,” said Ken Mitchell, a professor of geography at Rutgers University who has studied
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
hurricane risks in New Jersey and throughout the world. “But it doesn’t seem to have reached deep enough in the public policy system to do anything to handle the magnitude of this storm.” For example, Ocean County, N.J., home to devastated communities including Seaside Heights and Toms River, has been one of the fastest growing counties in the nation’s most densely populated state. Between 1980 and 2010,
John Cori of Friends of Rockaways Beach has advocated for a beach restoration project to help protect against future storm surges.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
the county’s population increased nearly 70 percent, from 346,000 to nearly 577,000. More residential building permits were issued in the county in 2010 than anywhere else in New Jersey. The intensity of development along the coast clearly influenced the scale of the disaster, said Bill Wolfe, a former analyst for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection who now leads the watchdog group New Jersey Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “There needs to be an acknowledgement that we can’t keep on doing what we’ve done in the past,” Wolfe said. “We have to face up to the problem.” Despite ample warning from forecasters that conditions were set for a record storm surge, when Sandy finally swept ashore on the eastern seaboard two weeks ago it still caught many officials and residents badly off guard. Evacuations stumbled in places like Atlantic City, where mixed messages from city and state leaders convinced many to ride out the storm with little understanding of its expected severity. New York City, which saw the most deaths directly linked to the
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
surge, also faltered in its efforts to get residents to safety. City officials waited until the day before the storm hit to order a mandatory evacuation of flood zones, then told 40 city-run elderly and adult care facilities in mandatory evacuation zones to ignore the order and ride out the storm. Some residents said the lastminute evacuation order and the decision not to evacuate the city’s nursing homes fed a belief that the storm would not be much more severe than Hurricane Irene, which caused only moderate flooding in the city. “When the city didn’t come for the patients, I figured it must not be too bad,” said Diane Castiglone, who lives by Park Nursing Home, a 182-patient facility in the Rockaways, an ocean-facing neighborhood badly battered by the surge. In a statement to The Huffington Post, a city spokeswoman defended the decision not to evacuate many nursing homes, saying it was made with the best information available at the time. But the day after the storm, as the death toll began to climb, Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared to acknowledge that the city’s early warning and evacuation efforts could be improved. “I think that the best thing we can do for those that we lost is to
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
make sure that we do everything we can, the next time we have a big storm, to do an even better job of protecting people, giving them more warning,” he said. “Maybe people will find different ways to communicate with them.” A more clear-eyed view of the interplay of haphazard development and natural forces would also help, analysts say. Research by Princeton University in 2005 — seven years before Sandy arrived — found that New Jersey’s rapid population growth in coastal counties was setting the scene for monumental environmental damage and property loss. The report argued that much of the hazards were man-made, and predictable. “In New Jersey, and the U.S. at large, there remains a significant lack of public understanding of the predictability of coastal hazards,” the report read. “Episodic flooding events due to storm surges are often perceived as ‘natural disasters,’ not failures in land use planning and building code requirements.”
IN THE BULL’S EYE
At the height of the roaring storm that accompanied Sandy’s arrival, some of the night nurses at Park
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Nursing Home in the Rockaways got down on their knees in the darkened hallways to pray. Waves broke against an exterior wall facing the beach, causing the whole building to shudder. Water surged into the evacuated first floor, throwing sand onto beds and flooding the lobby. One block
“ I THINK THE FACT IS THAT YOU PUT A LOT OF PEOPLE IN HARM’S WAY WITH THE ZONING.” away, a fire sparked by an exploded power transformer raged, engulfing an entire row of small businesses in towers of flames Patrick Russell, the administrator of the care facility, rushed from window to window, watching the ocean on one side and the roaring flames on the other. The fire “burned like a blowtorch,” he said. “I’ve never been so scared.” The Rockaways, a narrow, low-lying peninsula in southern Queens with a largely working class population of about 130,000, were badly flooded by the storm, its streets covered in sand and the mangled remains of trees, boardwalks and cars.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
At least six people in the area drowned, including a disabled man with cerebral palsy who couldn’t escape the water rushing into his first-floor apartment More than a dozen care facilities in the area lost power and heat and weathered a miserable 24 hours before they were finally evacuated. Two weeks later, thousands of residents still remain without power or heat. Park Nursing Home was fortunate. Its back-up generator didn’t flood out, unlike those at other care facilities, and its kitchen, on relatively high ground, stayed mostly dry. But a week after Sandy hit, it, too, was evacuated, out of fear that another looming winter storm would damage a huge generator provided by the Army Corps of Engineers. The lingering misery in the Rockaways, and the harrowing experiences of Russell and others who rode out the hurricane, owe largely to the incredible power of Sandy. But here, and all along the coast, the storm’s destruction was magnified by the failure of local authorities to prepare for a massive storm surge that scientists had long warned was inevitable. Before World War II, the Rocka-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
ways were a playground for New York City’s middle class, an 11mile spit of white beach with hotels, spas, amusement parks and a grand boardwalk. In the 1950s, suburbanization and car culture took vacationers elsewhere, and the area became something else: the place to send the city’s most vulnerable populations. On the eastern end of the peninsula, the city built huge public housing complexes. The Rockaways contained 57 percent of all low-income housing in the borough of Queens by 1975, though it contained only five percent of its population, according to a history of the region in the publication City Limits. Nursing homes, many established in the pre-air conditioning era when ocean breezes were welcome, crowd the narrow peninsula. Today, half of all such facilities in the city are in the Rockaways, many directly adjacent to the ocean. All of this construction happened in an area that had been battered by two major hurricanes, in 1893 and 1938, which caused massive flooding and devastation in the Rockaways and other beach communities in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Over the past few decades, scientists have developed a greater understanding of the particular
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
risks hurricanes pose to New York City. Though big storms are rare, they tend to be larger than southern hurricanes, and attack on a straight line coming in from the east. As happened with Sandy, storm water gets pushed into New York harbor and is then boxed in, with nowhere else to go but onshore, into the flood zones. One 2010 study by geologist Alan Benimoff found that Staten Island sat in the “bull’s eye” for a storm surge in New York harbor. Development had intensified that threat, as landscapes that once served as natural storm buffers were paved over and populated. Development on Staten Island slowed in the past decade, but only due to local and national economic conditions, experts said. Between 2001 and 2008, nearly 700 new structures went up in a high-risk storm surge zone on Staten Island, according to Benimoff’s study. Peters, the College of Staten Island professor, said a succession of city administrations, including Bloomberg’s, had taken a laissezfaire attitude to coastal development on the island. The city should have rezoned these areas to forbid new construction, and re-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
quired existing buildings to meet basic storm-resistant standards or be condemned, Peters said. In Oakwood, one of those coastal neighborhoods, a student in Peters’ department, John Filipowicz Jr., drowned with his father when the storm surge filled their home.
“ THE OCEAN WANTS TO EAT SOMETHING. WE’D RATHER IT EAT THE BEACH BEFORE IT EATS HOMES.” The two were found clinging to each other. “The developers are just going to do what they do,” Peters said. “You have to manage them.” Development along Staten Island’s south shore has been rapid since 1980, but was done largely in piecemeal fashion, as local builders tore down vacation bungalows and subdivided existing lots to make room for more densely-packed year-round homes. The most recent large-scale construction on the south shore occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the city cleared developers to build hundreds of closelypacked condominiums and master-planned communities just feet
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
from the high-tide line. One such community was Port Regalle, a 65-unit condominium project on the tip of Great Kills Harbor built by the Lockton Corporation, a Manhattan real estate development firm. The development was badly damaged by Sandy’s surge, and two elderly residents drowned while attempting to flee after failing to heed evacuation warnings until the storm was already upon them, according to the New York Police Department and the New York City medical examiner’s office. Police said the bodies of the couple, an 89-year-old man and his 66-year-old wife, were found several blocks from their home, under a washed-up powerboat near their water-filled car. “They thought they could outdrive the water,” said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman with the medical examiner’s office. Another development on the south shore, called Captain’s Quarters, sits directly on the water. It was built by Muss Development, which bills itself on its website as one of New York City’s largest real estate developers. Many homes in the community sustained serious flooding damage during the storm.
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
A spokesman from Muss Development declined to comment. Messages left for an executive at the Lockton Corporation requesting comment were not returned. Both developments were cleared by the city despite opposition by local conservation groups, said Richard Lynch, a biologist and environmental activist. “It’s literally been a pitched battle between conservationists and the developers,” Lynch said. “We’ve seen a lot of money going around.” These and other waterfront developments, along with the wide-scale subdividing of lots and the infill of vacant land in existing neighborhoods, magnified the power of the surge, by clearing vegetation and wetlands that act as buffers during storms. “We’ve hardscaped those sponges, so that they no longer naturally slow down the impact of that incoming surge,” said William J. Fritz, a geologist and president of the College of Staten Island. In the wake of Sandy, the city should explore rezoning the most at-risk residential areas on the south shore, and restoring natural barriers, as part of a broader effort to prepare for future and potentially more powerful storms, Fritz said. “I think we need to consider rezoning high risk areas,” he said. The Bloomberg administration
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
declined to comment on development and zoning on Staten Island. Not far from Staten Island, the Rockaways, too, have boomed — with new construction catering to a younger, hipper crowd excited by the chance to live on the ocean a subway ride away from midtown Manhattan. The largest new development there is Arverne by the Sea, a 117acre complex of townhomes and condos built to house 13,000 residents in what was previously an urban wasteland.
The project, which broke ground in 2003, was the brainchild of the New York City Department of Housing and Urban Development, which sold the land to Benjamin-Beechwood LLC after a bidding process for $1,000 per housing unit. The goal was to revitalize mostly empty and torn-down urban blocks with affordable, attractive housing. Federal stimulus dollars even helped bring a grocery store to the neighborhood. Yet here, as in beach communities around the region, planners appear to have paid little attention to the risks involved in build-
A man looks on as water fills the Bowling Green subway station in Battery Park, NY.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
ing in such a vulnerable area. The Arverne neighborhood, like the rest of the Rockaways, is a known flood zone. The two previous hurricanes caused major damage to the area. The surge from the first, in 1893, was so powerful that it obliterated an island off the coast of the Rockaways –- the only known incident of a hurricane wiping an island off the map, according to Nicholas Coch, a coastal geology professor at Queens College. Neither the developers nor the city responded to a request for comment about the project, but an environmental impact study conducted prior to construction gave the project a green light, noting that the complex was built one foot above the 100-year floodplain “as a requirement to provide for the safety of residents and tenants.” It’s not clear what qualifies as a “100-year storm,” but Sandy wasn’t even hurricane strength when it came ashore. Nevertheless, the complex flooded with several feet of water. Coch said he didn’t want to single out any one development for criticism, but said it is impossible to reconcile new coastal de-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
velopment throughout the region with what scientists know about the changing climate. “People love a view of the ocean but don’t understand what every geologist knows,” he said. “Sea levels are rising. Storms are becoming more fierce and unpredictable.” Possibly even more irresponsible, he said, is that no one — the city, the state or federal authorities — have made what he thinks are obvious fixes to protect the peninsula as best as possible from storm surges. “I see suicide,” Coch said, when asked to describe the Rockaway peninsula today. “I see very weak protections. The seawalls are cracked and ready to fall over. The roads are open at the beach end, allowing water to rush down the street. I see an almost total lack of flood protection.” This summer, New York City allocated $3 million to rebuild a section of beach in the Rockaways with sand dredged by the Army Corps of Engineers, but the project was delayed until next year. A federal study on solutions to the area’s beach erosion was started in 2003 and never finished due to a lack of funding. “Sand would have helped prevent the massive surge,” said John Cori, a Rockaways activist who started a campaign to rebuild lo-
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
cal beaches. “The ocean wants to eat something. We’d rather it eat the beach before it eats homes.”
‘WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT’
Even as the storm closed in on the East Coast, New York City still struggled with its best remaining tool to protect the populace: the evacuation of flood zones. On Saturday night, two days before Sandy made landfall on the Jersey Shore, Bloomberg had told the city that no evacuations at all were planned, and that a “sudden surge” of ocean flooding was unlikely. “Although we’re expecting a large surge of water, it is not expected to be a tropical storm or hurricane-type surge,” Bloomberg said. “With this storm, we’ll likely see a slow pileup of water rather than a sudden surge, which is what you would expect with a hurricane, and which we saw with Irene 14 months ago.” Hours later, the mayor’s rhetoric shifted dramatically. “If you refuse to evacuate, you’re not only putting yourself at risk, but also the first responders who will have to assist you in an emergency,” he said. The Bloomberg administration did not respond to a request for com-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
ment about procedures for warning coastal residents to evacuate. Many heeded the mayor’s evacuation order, but thousands did not. Some paid with their lives, as floodwaters engulfed their homes or swept them to their deaths in the street. Philip Ferrante, a pilot who lives on the south shore of Staten Island, about 100 feet back from the flood zone, said he understood why some in the most dangerous areas stayed, and called the city’s storm warnings inadequate. “On Saturday, the mayor said it was going to be like Irene and we didn’t have to evacuate,” said Ferrante, who took a leading role in the relief effort, gathering supplies and delivering them to people who’d stayed in their battered homes. “On Sunday he’s acting like you should have evacuated yesterday.” Adding to the confusion was the decision by the city to waive the evacuation order for thousands of patients and staff at the 40 nursing and adult care homes located in mandatory evacuation zones. These facilities, which house the city’s most vulnerable population, were told by the city’s Office of Emergency Management to “shelter in place,” or stay put. Samantha Levine, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office, said in an email that city officials
DAMON DAHLEN FOR HUFFINGTON POST
‘UNTHINKABLE’ DEVASTATION
made the decision that the homes should shelter in place on the Friday night before the storm, “at which time the most up to date information indicated that the storm was weakening and would be less severe than Irene.” “The City worked hard in advance to make sure those staying in place were safe by making personal visits to check that centers had extra staff,” Levine said. “We remained in contact before, dur-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
ing and after the storm so we could respond as soon as possible to any problems.” Russell, the rest home administrator, said the decision not to evacuate his and other facilities was a mistake, and may have lulled some in vulnerable areas into believing they could safely ride out the storm. “It’s incongruous to tell all residents they are under a mandatory order to leave but then the nursing homes stay,” he said. “We should have left.” Meteorologists also said they saw no sign of an abating threat
A gas line stretches on in Union City, N.J.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
as Sandy approached the Northeast. Gary Szatkowski, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s Mt. Holly, N.J. station, about 75 miles southwest of New York City, said that early satellite tracking led to projections that the storm would be far more dangerous than Irene. “By Thursday, when the storm was still south of the Bahamas, we started talking about how there was the potential for record flooding along the New Jersey and Delaware coast, which would exceed anything that we saw with Irene,” he said. On Monday, Oct. 29, when the storm finally hit, the Rockaways were under a mandatory evacuation order from the city, along with roughly 300,000 residents of other low-lying areas in the five boroughs. But that evacuation order had come only the day before. Some believe a more robust effort by the city to inform those living in threatened areas about the specific risks they faced might have saved lives. In hurricane-prone states like Florida, it is common for public safety workers to go door-to-door in low-lying coastal areas urging people to evacuate.
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
In some New York neighborhoods, police and firefighters did directly warn residents against staying. But some combination of the late order to get out, and the city’s immense size, meant that many residents didn’t learn until Sunday evening or even Monday that they were supposed to evacuate. Residents also complained that they didn’t know about evacuation buses parked in some neighborhoods to take people to shelters. “Notification is a problem in every place,” said Jay Baker, a geography professor at Florida State University who studies hurricane evacuations. “But being able to go door-to-door to directly warn people is by far the most effective way to convince people to leave.” Prior to the landfall of Hurricane Irene last August, Baker and other academics called 355 New Yorkers who live in beach communities and asked a set of basic hurricane preparedness questions. The takeaway, he said: Most people underestimated the potential damage from hurricane-force winds, but still ranked wind as a more dangerous hazard than flooding. Beryl Thurman, an environmental activist on Staten Island, said the warnings by the city before Sandy’s impact lacked detail, and left her shocked by the intensity
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
of the surge when it arrived. “It kind of helps if you have someone who can explain to you how a storm surge and flooding is going to affect you directly,” said Thurman. “If they had said this is going to be somewhat similar to New Orleans and Katrina, people would have got up and moved.” Instead, she said, “we did the same exact thing New Orleans did: we waited.”
SOUNDING THE ALARM
In 1992, an environmentalist named Suzanne Mattei was working on a report for the New York City comptroller about whether building garbage incinerators would contribute to greenhouse emissions. That answer was relatively clear — yes — but when Mattei looked further into the then-young science of climate change, she was shocked to discover what it might do to New York City’s coastline. She discovered that the unique geography of the New York Bight — the right angle made by New Jersey and Long Island, with the city its sharp tip — would greatly magnify the effects of a hurricane. Were a strong storm to whip up the coast, its surge would have
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
nowhere else to go other than straight into the city. Alarmed that few had taken the issue seriously, Mattei inserted a section into the report about the damage rising sea levels could inflict. The biggest concern: the nightmare scenario of a “combined sea level rise/storm surge event.” “Significant areas” would be flooded in Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan would be “vulnerable” and the surge would “endanger the underground subway system,” the report noted. All of this, of course, is exactly what happened when Sandy slammed into the coast. Even as the city continued to reorient its residential development toward the waterfront, others sounded alarms about dangers from the sea. In 1995, a joint study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and New York City’s Office of Emergency Management warned of fast-rising storm surges that could easily flood subway tunnels. “Coastal storms that would present moderate hazards in other regions of the country could result in heavy loss of life and disastrous disruptions to communication and travel in the Metro New York Area,” the report concluded. More recent studies have factored in the impacts of climate change, arguing that rising sea
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
levels will only worsen the hazards. In a 2011 report for the state, Klaus Jacob, a disaster expert at Columbia University, warned that even without climate change, almost all of New York city’s major subway tunnels would be flooded as a result of a Category 1 storm — a prediction that came to pass. Over the last decade, engineers started to seriously consider for the first time how New York City might react to the challenges posed by storm surges. In 2008, researchers at Stony Brook University’s Storm Surge Research Group recommended that a massive barrier in lower New York Harbor be built to protect residents and businesses against hurricanes. At a 2009 seminar attended by Joshua Friedman, a hazard impact modeler in the city’s Office of Emergency Management, participants reviewed the wide variety of death and destruction that could be expected to result from a major hurricane. Engineers then detailed a variety of surge barriers that might protect the city — at a price tag of at least $6.5 billion, according to a summary of the event provided by the American Society of Civil Engineers’ New York City chapter. In a 2010 report by the city’s
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Panel on Climate Change, officials acknowledged that the city might need to consider such barriers, although construction would entail “significant economic, environmental, and social costs.” The city says it is working with the Army Corps of Engineers to further investigate them along with more modest “soft edges.” But none of these proposals are
“ IF THEY HAD SAID THIS IS GOING TO BE SOMEWHAT SIMILAR TO NEW ORLEANS AND KATRINA, PEOPLE WOULD HAVE GOT UP AND MOVED.” near the point where they could garner the necessary federal aid to cover their enormous costs. Meanwhile, the city says new developments it is managing, like Willets Point in Queens and the Sims Municipal Recycling facility in Brooklyn, are being elevated out of the floodplain. A recently passed amendment to the zoning code will make it easier to elevate electrical equipment to building roofs. It is also working with FEMA to update flood plain maps, which inform
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
planning and zoning and trigger building code requirements. Despite the Bloomberg administration’s studies of climate change, however, it dissented from key substantive recommendations made by the the New York State Sea Level Rise Task Force in 2010 for planning development. Perhaps most critically in light of Sandy, the report said the state should seek to “reduce incentives that increase or perpetuate development in high risk locations.” The report advised making state funding for shoreline development contingent on planning for sea level rise and storm surges. Projects would be subject to review by the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of State. But the city objected, citing “additional burdens to the regulatory process by extending the level of review and approval by the State in local planning efforts.” Changes to state law were premature, said a letter from Adam Freed, then the deputy director of New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, especially before the state did a cost-benefit analysis of stopping growth on the waterfront:
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
“As written, the draft recommendations could result in a policy of disinvestment in and promote relocation from existing urban areas,” he wrote. “This would have dire economic and environmental consequences for the city and the state. There are over 215,000 people living within the FEMA 1 percent chance flood zone in New York City and more than 185,000 jobs present in this zone.” “Bloomberg has been out in front of these issues well before almost anybody in the country, but still they pushed back,” recalled Pete Grannis, the DEC commissioner under Gov. David Paterson who co-chaired the study. The report, he noted, looked at both the long-term issue of climate change and the short-term risk from storm surges associated with events like hurricanes. Some of the city’s objections were rooted in standard jurisdictional concerns about having more interference from the state, Grannis said. But he said the “huge, huge dollar signs” associated with the report’s recommendations and the “tension” between the goals of development and environmental protection also played a role. When the task force made its many recommendations, they essentially landed with a thud. Newly elected Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
administration seemed indifferent, Grannis said. If the state had adopted the recommendations wholesale, Grannis says, it is unlikely that most the damage that Sandy wrought would have been prevented. But he does assert that it would have given city and state officials “more time to focus rather than just the week before the storm was coming.” “We recognized when we put this out, obviously all the strategies all have implications, and for the communities who are strapped for cash, or have elective officials who serve on two-year terms or short terms, it would be somebody else’s problem.” With Sandy, he said, “it became our problem.” Some of the steps the sea level rise task force suggested, Grannis said, “are really long range. How do you move a highway?” On its own track, the city has explored long-range climate questions in a new waterfront planning document and a still underreview Waterfront Revitalization Program, which would require large projects that need city approval to plan for sea level rise and storm surges. But Bloomberg has in general been skeptical about actually lim-
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
iting development on the water. “People like to live in low-lying areas, on the beach; it’s attractive,” he told a reporter after Sandy. “People pay more, generally, to be closer to the water, even though you could argue they should pay less because it’s more
“ WHEN THE CITY DIDN’T COME FOR THE PATIENTS, I FIGURED IT MUST NOT BE TOO BAD.” dangerous. But people are willing to run the risk.” The city’s progress on adapting to storm surge risk has so far consisted mainly of smaller steps, like working with private and public players to harden the electrical grid and seal off the subway system against the threat of flooding. Indeed, the risks faced by New York’s transit system are well known, said Jacob. The MTA, New York City Transit, and Port Authority staff played a part in drafting a 2011 report that includes Jacob’s storm impact model and projected the city could lose $48 billion in economic activity from a subway shutdown.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
“The agencies that worked with us sent their engineers, not their board members, not their CEOs,” Jacob said. “When you send this information to them the result is always the same, this big silence and shock.” When New York’s subway system was designed more than a century ago, the city “did not anticipate water coming over the Hudson River, coming over the banks, being five feet deep on the West Side Highway, and filling subway grates,” Cuomo said the day after the storm. With climate change and storm surge fears in mind, the MTA had been proceeding with small steps since a 2007 rainstorm that shut down parts of the system: it had raised entrances at 30 stations and had begun to raise up ventilation grates. In the authority’s most recent budget, $34 million was allotted for these programs. Jacob refused to point a finger at any particular elected official. He described both Bloomberg and Cuomo as cognizant of climate change and the threat it poses to transit and other infrastructure. “You should really give Bloomberg and the whole administration and to some degree the state
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
credit. To keep the science in the spotlight is something,” Jacob said. “Where they have failed on this issue is the spending.” The city referred questions about the subways to the MTA. “We have a team of planners in our headquarters who specialize in sustainability issues and have long been active in the effort to develop strategies to counteract the climate threat,” said MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg. “The MTA knew it needed to do so long before Hurricane Sandy struck. But a comprehensive protection plan for a 108-year-old system of varied construction can’t be developed instantly, much less put into place in under a year.” “To prepare for weather events such as the one that devastated the region we had several emergency planning exercises in the months prior to the storm,” said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority. “We also have been designing our new projects and facility replacements with climate change in mind such as the World Trade Center site, which, once completed, should be resilient against surges. We will assess and revisit all plans in the coming weeks and months.” Like the MTA, the private utility provider Con Ed was cognizant of the dangers of both cli-
AP PHOTO/MEL EVANS, POOL
mate change and storm surges in New York — but not yet ready to spend large amounts of money to counteract them. Since 2007, the utility has spent $24 million on precautions like submersible switches that can keep power flowing even when exposed to corrosive seawater.
But rolling out similar changes across the whole system would cost at least $250 million — a cost that would likely be passed along to ratepayers. “Improvements to our systems are covered by rates,” said Allan Drury, a spokesman for the utility. “We seek to balance our obligation to maintain the most reliable utility service in the United States with our obligation to keep
N.J. Governor Chris Christie surveys the damage in Mantoloking.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
costs low for ratepayers.” “Since 1990, utilities and utility regulators have done a fantastic job keeping down rates, cutting costs, outsourced stuff, and that’s fantastic,” said Steven Mitnick, an energy consultant who advised former Gov. Eliot Spitzer in New York. “We have very low rates. When we have new challenges, it means you can respond less quickly.” Instead of spending money to protect what we already have, experts also suggest there’s another interim step just awaiting the political will to see it through: stop building more homes and businesses where they too will require protection. Nowhere in the region, perhaps, is this more contested than the Jersey Shore.
‘WE’LL REBUILD IT’
When Sandy barreled ashore in New Jersey, storm surges of nearly 10 feet shredded boardwalks in Atlantic City and crippled an amusement park in Seaside Heights, leaving a roller coaster in a shambles, floating in the surf. Three-story mansions were swamped by floodwaters and buried in sand, some torn from their foundations and lying on their sides. Boats were carried away
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
and flung onto dry land like toys. Economic losses in the state are estimated to be at least $9 billion to $15 billion, according to Eqecat, a disaster modeling firm. After flying over the Jersey Shore in a helicopter the day after Sandy’s landfall, the state’s governor, Chris Christie, called the damage “unthinkable.” He vowed to bring back what was lost, saying there is “no question in my mind we’ll rebuild it.” “I don’t believe in a state like ours, where the Jersey Shore is such a part of life, that you just pick up and walk away,” he told reporters. But in the view of many landuse experts, the governor had it backwards: a lot of that development never should have been built there in the first place, given the mounting and increasingly wellunderstood dangers posed by coastal surges. For them, the catastrophe Christie was flying over was far from unthinkable. Situated between two of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation, New York and Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore is a prime location for waterfront development. And over the past few decades, it has become one of the most densely developed coastlines in the country. Population growth along the New Jersey coast has soared,
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
nearly doubling over the past 40 years. More than 60 percent of the state’s population now resides in coastal counties, and the state ranks fourth in the nation for the number of residential properties at risk from storm surge damage, behind only the Gulf coast states
of Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Ocean County is home to Long Beach Island, less than a third of a mile wide yet packed end to end with homes, restaurants and boat docks. The county has consistently been the fastest growing in the state since the 1950s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, increasing tenfold  from around 50,000 in 1950 to more than 576,000 in 2010.
President Obama comforts Dana Vanzant, a victim of Hurricane Sandy, in Brigantine, N.J.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
Much of that growth has been aided by lenient land-use policies that have encouraged development in coastal areas known to be at monumental risk for damage, experts and critics argue. Real estate interests have historically been a powerful lobby in the state, ranking among the top donors to Christie and former Gov. Jon Corzine. Representatives from the state’s real estate and development trade groups declined to comment on their political activities, saying they were focusing on recovery efforts. In towns such as Long Branch, N.J., local officials have turned around ailing downtowns and waterfronts by granting tax abatements for developers to relocate there. But longtime residents criticized an aggressive approach by the town and developers to buy older, single-family homes to promote condo and retail development near the ocean. Beginning in the late 1990s, the city partnered with a development company on two residential and retail projects in Long Branch, known as Pier Village and Beachfront North. The plan involved a massive redevelopment of the city’s waterfront, which had burned down in the 1980s and never rebounded.
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Eager for new development and tax benefits, the city began using a claim of eminent domain for homeowners and businesses that held out. Many of the property owners in the footprint of the first project, Pier Village, sold to the developer, The Applied Companies of Hoboken, in the early 2000s. Watching the takeover unfold, property owners in the path of the next development refused to sell. The city attempted to use eminent domain, arguing the area was blighted, filing condemnation papers beginning in 2005. As the battle went on, a vice president for the development company said there were no plans to pull back on the project. “We believe it is a good project for the city, and we intend to complete it,” Applied’s vice president, Gregory S. Russo, told the Asbury Park Press in 2006. The city administrator, Howard Woolley Jr. told the Newark StarLedger that the decision was “for the greater good of the city.” The homeowners eventually prevailed in a state appeals court case in 2008, and the city settled the case. But development has cropped up all around the waterfront. “The developers are getting their way here,” Lori Ann Vendetti, a homeowner who was one of the key figures in the fight, told
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
The Huffington Post. She remains critical of the town’s eagerness to dole out tax abatements. “Why should the developer get that benefit?” she asked. “None of us got that benefit.” Officials with Applied Development could not be reached for comment. Mary Jane Celli, a
councilwoman in Long Branch, wrote in an email that the tax abatements were part of an effort to attract developers after many years. “They were the first developers to come to the city after years of courting developers and offers to build,” she wrote. “When folks are so negative about tax abatements they should look at the whole picture not the narrow view of one small segment.”
New Jersey Natural Gas technician Carlos Rojas looks for leaking gas mains in Long Beach Island, N.J.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
New Jersey is one of the most susceptible states along the Atlantic Coast to the effects of sea level rise, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania. Oceans along the Jersey Shore are predicted to rise nearly twice as fast as bodies of water near coastal areas elsewhere in the country because the state has few rivers that deliver natural sediment to replenish coastal areas, and due to natural forces depleting the stock of offshore sand. “We have this insane mentality, this boosterism along the coast,” said Wolfe, the former state environmental official in New Jersey. “For years and years, people have been putting up warning flags. The state has known this, and instead of regulating more restrictively they’ve pushed right ahead.” Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, argued that development along the Jersey Shore has been ongoing for decades, even before there was a coastal permitting program. He said it is not the state’s role to dictate how redevelopment should occur. “People who live along the shore always live with a risk, and
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
they know that. That’s understood,” he said. “We at the state are not going to tell these towns you can or cannot rebuild, but we will work with them to make sure that whatever comes back will be done in as smart or protective a fashion as possible.” For nearly a century, local and state officials in New Jersey have contended with erosion along state shorelines, as the string of barrier islands lining the coast lost huge amounts of sand during major storms that have whipped through the region. State reports have documented how resort towns such as Long Branch, Atlantic City and Ocean City faced challenges from eroding beaches as far back as the turn of the 20th century. To contend with disappearing shorelines and promote development along the coast, the state tried to delay natural forces by building bulkheads and seawalls meant to armor the coast against erosion. Hard structures are now present along nearly 80 percent of the state’s coastline, leading coastal researchers to coin the term “New Jerseyization” to describe short-term efforts to hold back rising seas. A strong Nor’easter storm in 1962 killed 14 people and injured more than 1,300, opening everyone’s eyes to the risks of living
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
along the coast. But over the next two decades, development of the shore continued at a rapid clip. A state Department of Environmental Protection master plan from 1981 predicted growing dangers from continued development. “Unfortunately, the devastation of the March 1962 storm was soon forgotten,” the report said. “Since present population and development levels of the state’s barrier islands exceed pre-1962 levels, future severe storms will undoubtedly result in far heavier tolls in lives, injuries and property damage.” In recent years, the effort to hold back the sea in New Jersey has shifted toward beach replenishment projects, where the local, state and federal governments all help pay to replace lost sand. Still, the state has spent disproportionate amounts of money on short-term coastal protection projects rather than pursuing, as many researchers and analysts have recommended, buyout programs that discourage new development in the most hazardous areas. Spokesmen for Christie did not respond to numerous requests for comment about New Jersey’s approach to coastal development. A
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
spokesman for Corzine could not be reached for comment. New Jersey allocates $25 million every year for shoreline protection projects, including beach replenishment, though in reality the cost is much higher because the federal government has historically paid for more than two-thirds of the bill. These funds protect developed land as well as national parks along the New Jersey coast, although more
“ WE HAVE THIS INSANE MENTALITY, THIS BOOSTERISM ALONG THE COAST.” than three-quarters of the state’s shoreline is developed. Past studies have shown that New Jersey’s coastal protection efforts alone account for 14 percent of the total price tag of such projects nationwide. Research from Duke University showed that it would cost $2.6 billion to maintain the state’s beaches over the course of a decade, and other estimates have suggested a cost of more than $4 billion over 10 years. A 2010 report from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection warned that the cost
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
of continued beach nourishment would “inevitably collide with resource and financial constraints.” “There is concern that less federal money will be available in the future for beach replenishment projects, just when need for the projects is increasing,” the report concluded. In contrast, the state reserves only $15 million each year for a program that allows local governments to buy out property damaged by past floods or purchase undeveloped land in hazardous flood zones. That, of course, has encouraged continued coastal development and prompted researchers to warn of growing risks. The state’s own Department of Environmental Protection has warned in a series of reports over the past decade that officials needed to relocate private development away from hazardous areas. One DEP report from 2006 cited the challenges of such a policy, including “lobbying efforts of special interest groups, legal challenges to [state] permit decisions, provision of flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program, and public perception that largescale beach nourishment projects eliminate vulnerability.”
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Over the years, critics have said the state has not been nearly aggressive enough in managing development in its coastal zone. Under long-standing state law, many smaller developments of less than 25 units in hazardous coastal flood regions don’t require any state approval, leaving decision-making to smaller local governments. John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, and a former official at the state Department of Environmental Protection in New Jersey, recalled that throughout much of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, nearly half the development on the Jersey Shore was in projects involving fewer than 25 units. “We all said that some day archaeologists will dig up the Jersey Shore and think the number ‘24’ had religious implications,” Weingart said. Property owners are also allowed to rebuild and in some cases expand on developments that have been damaged, leading to much larger and more expensive homes being built in risky areas. At the local level, New Jersey coastal communities have not pushed for major structural upgrades that would allow homes to better withstand floods and storm surges.
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
The National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System allows residents to receive deductions on their flood insurance premiums if their town officials require certain structural upgrades to reduce flooding risk, or do specialized floodplain mapping to pinpoint problem areas. Though nearly 60 New Jersey towns participated in the program, the vast majority received among the lowest ratings, according to federal data, meaning town officials had only done minimal preparations to prevent flooding risks. Several towns damaged by Sandy’s flooding, including Lacey Township in Ocean County, participated in the program years ago but withdrew because it was too expensive. John Curtin, Lacey’s community development director, said the town had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire engineers to do floodplain studies, which became “economically infeasible.” “It was certainly more than the township could afford at the time, and there was no grant money available,” Curtin said. New Jersey is also using flood maps that are more than two decades old to guide its development priorities. Although FEMA
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
has come out with maps showing greater risks in certain floodprone areas, the state has not formally adopted those maps, sticking with flood maps dating back to 1980. Legislators introduced a bill in the General Assembly earlier this year calling for the state Department of Environmental Protection to adopt more recent FEMA flood maps to better assess risks for new development. Environmentalists have argued that the outdated maps underestimate the risk because they
“ YOU CAN’T BLAME BUILDERS FOR BUILDING WHERE THEY’RE ALLOWED TO BUILD.” do not reflect rising sea levels and more up-to-date science on specific flood hazards, allowing some projects to get less scrutiny because they are not considered to be in flood zones. “There’s a whole series of regulatory things you have to do in order to build in the flood hazard area,” said Jeff Tittel, the director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club. “By not being in the flood hazard
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
area, you get to build whatever you want.” Ragonese, the DEP spokesman, said the agency’s experts on the matter were too busy responding to Hurricane Sandy to comment on development and regulatory questions affecting the shoreline. Real estate interests are a powerful lobby in New Jersey, particularly along the coast, according to a review of state campaign finance and lobbying data. Some of the largest developers include national giants such as Pulte Homes and K. Hovnanian Homes, which is based in Red Bank, N.J. Officials from both companies did not respond to requests seeking comment. The New Jersey Association of Realtors also declined to comment, writing in a statement: “This is not the time to debate development that has occurred in the past.” Commercial and residential real estate interests donated more than $250,000 to Christie’s gubernatorial campaign in 2009, the third-largest interest group behind lawyers and securities and investment groups, according to campaign finance data analyzed by the Sunlight Foundation. Corzine received more than
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
$230,000 in contributions from real estate interests, second only to the legal services industry, from 2005 through 2009. The New Jersey Builders Association often ranks among the top ten groups in lobbying spending among special interests in the state. The Builders Association did not respond to questions about political spending. The group’s director of government affairs, Jeff Kolakowski, wrote in an email that members were “focused on supporting the recovery efforts.” He characterized New Jersey as “one of the most highly regulated states when it comes to development activity,” and said the group “supports adherence to these laws and regulations, which safeguard our environment and require that development occurs in the appropriate areas of our state.” A past environmental affairs official for the builders association, Nancy Wittenberg, was appointed as New Jersey’s assistant commissioner of climate and environmental compliance during the Corzine administration, a move criticized by some environmental groups. Wittenberg, who is now executive director of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, disagreed with those criticisms, saying her past experience as a regulator and in-
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
dustry consultant has given her a balanced perspective on how to properly manage growth while considering environmental impact. She described the state’s coastal regulations as “fairly liberal,” and said officials need to be more proactive in mandating what makes sense for coastal development in the future. “People do what they’re allowed to do. You can’t blame builders for building where they’re allowed to build,” Wittenberg said. “You have to have regulatory agencies that make these calls and don’t waver on them. I’m hoping that some smart planning can come out of this and that we can come forward and rebuild the Shore in a way that can sustain itself.” Still, real estate development along the Jersey Shore played a central role in one of the state’s largest corruption scandals in recent years, known as Operation Bid Rig. New Jersey Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt was sentenced to more than three years in prison in late 2010 after being convicted on federal corruption charges for taking a $10,000 bribe in exchange for expediting environmental permits for a developer to build a project in Ocean County.
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
The developer who offered the bribe turned out to be an undercover FBI informant, Solomon Dwek, who last month was sentenced to six years in prison for bank fraud in connection with a real estate Ponzi scheme. In an earlier phase of the FBI investigation, in 2002, former Ocean Township mayor Terrance Weldon pleaded guilty to taking more than $60,000 in cash from developers in exchange for zoning approvals. Weldon, who has been released from prison, did not return calls seeking comment. Christie and President Barack Obama have both committed to rebuilding the Jersey Shore, a show of bipartisan support that typically follows a wrenching disaster like Sandy. Researchers say such responses after a disaster are understandable, but many argue that it would be best to consider where to rebuild because a wholesale reconstruction of the New Jersey coast would simply invite future, costlier disasters. “If you have a beautiful view, sooner or later Mother Nature is going to give you the bill,” said Nicholas Coch, the coastal geology professor at Queens College who has performed numerous storm surge predictions in New York City and along the Jersey Shore. “You have to learn to live with nature.
SANDY’S DEVASTATION
Nature will always win because she plays with a stacked deck. And unless we live with nature and accept the setbacks and all that we have to do, we’re in trouble.”
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
A FAMILY’S CHOICE
More than a week after the storm, Vinny Baccale and his family still hadn’t learned the identity of the man who they believe they saw die outside their window on Staten Island. He was likely one of the 21 drowning victims discovered in the storm’s wake there, a death toll more than half as high as the entire city’s. Baccale’s family has weathered floods before, but as his wife repeated in the days after the storm, they never imagined that the neighborhood might prove to be a watery death trap. “Never in a million years,” she said. Baccale’s wife, Tracey, traces her roots in the area back three generations. Her grandfather, a railroad worker from the tenements of Hell’s Kitchen, spent summers there when it was still more a bungalow community than a neighborhood. Tracey’s father grew up there year-round and eventually tore down their bungalow and replaced
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
it with a pair of two-story homes. By the time Tracey came along, the neighborhood was so densely developed that the family would flee the city in the summer for the Jersey Shore. Nearly a century after her grandfather found a respite from the crowded West Side on that peaceful plot of seaside property, she’s now questioning the wisdom of rebuilding. Unlike the bungalows that still dot the neighborhood, her two-story house is mostly salvageable — a beacon of relative stability amid homes knocked off their foundations, cars awaiting the junkyard, and the gutted interiors of countless rec rooms and dens. Yet she doubts that she’ll ever again feel invulnerable to the ocean that lured her family there in the first place. As she and her husband and two kids bide their time in her mother’s apartment on higher ground, she says she’s been dwelling on the shift in the weather that brought chaos and terror to her neighborhood. “I’m contemplating not even living there anymore,” she said. “I kind of feel like this is the start of something new.” Joy Resmovits, Janell Ross, Lila Shapiro and Joe Van Brussel contributed reporting.
ADVERTISEMENT
Live.HuffingtonPost.com
|
Facebook.com/HuffPostLive
|
@HuffPostLive
Exit
CULTURE
Can Video Games Call Themselves Art? BY HALLIE SEKOFF
N THE 40 YEARS since home video games emerged on the scene, they have flourished as a commodity, largely for a hungry market of forever-adolescent boys. Yet these “games” have progressed on a second track, gathering a robust roster of creative talent. Indeed, there are many games that stray from the usual “first-hand shooter play,” games that invoke visual depth and tell thoughtprovoking stories, exemplified last month by the release of The Unfinished Swan. And as buzz over
COURTESY OF ROCKSTAR GAMES
I
Grand Theft Auto V’s spring release begins this month, news of its virtual environment — twice the size of Manhattan — left fans breathless at the thought of entering such an immersive landscape. To find their cultural relevance, we need look no further than the Smithsonian, which earlier this year devoted an exhibit to the art of video games, or the NEA’s recent decision to make them eligible for artistic funding. Ahead, find 10 games from the past 30 years that offer points in their favor, curated by Killscreen founder Jamin Warren.
Grand Theft Auto V, set for release in spring 2013, will focus on capturing “contemporary LA culture.”
COURTESY OF ATARI (YAR’S REVENGE); COURTESY OF EA GAMES (CRYSIS 2); COURTESY OF DRAGON’S LAIR LLC (DRAGON’S LAIR); COURTESY OF CAPCOM U.S.A., INC. (VIEWTIFUL JOE); COURTESY OF SEGA (REZ); COURTESY OF SONY (ECHOCHROME, UNCHARTED 3, SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS); COURTESY OF KRYSTIAN MAJEWSKI (TRAUMA)
Exit
10 VIDEO GAMES AS ART 1982-2012
From Yars’ Revenge to The Unfinished Swan, these video games deserve a deeper look. CLICK FOR INFO >>
CULTURE HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Exit
COMEDY
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
How to Take a Comic’s Breath Away BY ROSS LUIPPOLD
N AUGUST, Tig Notaro took the stage at the nightclub Largo in Los Angeles for a show that was expected to be a typical Notaro performance: wry, acerbic and playful. But when a smiling Notaro opened by telling the applauding audience, “thank you, thank you, I have cancer, thank you, I have cancer, really, thank you,” the jolt in the room was palpable. What kind of person tells the world about her breast cancer diagnosis in a performance medium normally reserved for quips on airline food? The kind that has been producing some of the most inventive, if not
STEVEN DEWALL/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
I
Comedian Tig Notaro at the at Sasquatch! Music Festival in May of 2011.
AP PHOTO/CARLO ALLEGRI, FILE
Exit widely-seen, stand-up comedy in America for years. Louis C.K. was in the audience at Largo, and the next day told his nearly 2 million Twitter followers, “[I]n 27 years doing this, I’ve seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo.” The endorsement of the man GQ recently proclaimed to be the funniest person alive was immeasurable for Notaro, who is now cancerfree. She experienced the biggest boost of her 20-some-year career thanks to C.K.’s words, and his decision to release through his website the audio of her performance, “Tig Notaro Live!” (pronounced as in “Tig Notaro Will Live!”). Stand-up might be one of the most solitary ways to make a living, so support for a fellow comedian doesn’t always come naturally. Hell, C.K. seized control of his career by producing his TV show with minimal other people. But this time, he used his pulpit to broadcast that Notaro’s performance was a high point in the history of stand-up. It was a reminder that stand-up can transcend mother-in-law humor, deeply move an audience and even affect a comic’s harshest critics: other comedians. Soon after he released Notaro’s
COMEDY
performance, C.K. was quizzed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air on the other “masterful” performances he had witnessed throughout the years. His answers — George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock — were hardly surprising, but his lifelong comedy diet revealed the sensibilities that make C.K. the funniest comedian of the new millennium. I asked some of today’s leading standup comedians about their own favorite performances they’ve seen over their careers. Ahead, see how Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffigan, Andy Kindler, Marc Maron and Notaro herself responded.
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Louis C.K.’s public endorsement of Tig Notaro gave her the biggest boost of her career.
Exit
COMEDY
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
GARY GERSHOFF/WIREIMAGE /GETTY IMAGES(GAFFIGAN); SUSAN MALJAN (KINDLER) MICHAEL SCHWARTZ/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES (MARON)
JIM GAFFIGAN I’d say the best performance I’ve seen was Dave Attell on any night when I first started stand-up in the 90s. I would watch in amazement as Attell would do a new 20 minutes of material every night at the Comedy Cellar. You would only hear the new material once. I remember thinking, “If only I could write at the level of the daily material he threw away.” His daily new material would do all the work. It’s not that he wasn’t trying, he was, but it was the strength of the material that blew me away. Even audience members that didn’t like what he was talking about laughed. Dave Attell was, and is, undeniable.
ANDY KINDLER The set I remember was one that Brian Regan did on the old Dennis Miller show. This was when Dennis Miller had a network show, in the ‘90s... not that I want to give him any kind of positive notice in a story. [Regan] told a story about donuts, and he did a bit where he was doing that Brian Regan thing where he’s constantly confused, where he’s pretending he’s not that bright. But he is that bright; he wouldn’t be able to tell the story if he weren’t bright. Oh, and any recent set by James Adomian has been so funny. He’s the next coming of Jesus.
MARC MARON Sam Kinison at The Comedy Store. When he conceived the “homosexual necrophiliac” bit, it was beyond anything I’d seen before. He’d found some news article about two dudes who were paying mortuary owners to have sex with the freshest male corpse. He would lay face down and start speaking as the dead guy. Then he starts rocking back and forth as if someone’s fucking him. And then [he’s] like, “What’s this? Is that a dick in my ass?” The vulnerability of him taking the point of view of this dead guy who thinks he’s going to heaven, and then he just gets fucked — that one had a profound effect on me. There were no parameters other than the one’s you make yourself for what you can and cannot do onstage.
TIG NOTARO
MIKE BIRBIGLIA
One that pricks out [to me] is not stand-up, it was a sketch group. They’re called the Pajama Men. They both do unbelievable characters, and their bodies and faces morph into things I couldn’t believe. I remember just thinking, where is this going? But having all the faith in the world they were way too smart for this to not pay off. And Jon Dore. I was unfamiliar with him, I saw him in Portland the first time. I felt like he had that utter silliness that really gets to me. It’s so hard to get excited about comedy when you see it so much. But Jon Dore and the Pajama Men gave me such a thankful moment.
My wife and I once went to see Doug Stanhope at Caroline’s. He’s so fearless the audience settles into this level of connectedness with him that I’ve never witnessed before. I was watching this documentary on performance artist Marina Abramovic. She would sit basically from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and people would come up, sit down and she would just make eye contact with them. That’s along the lines of what Doug does. He’s letting people peer into his soul in a way comedians can only hope to come close to.
Exit
THE GILDED AGE
BY GREGORY BEYER
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Lesser Figures of the Enlightenment IMMANUEL PORTOFINO
If God exists, and God is love, why is there cruelty in the world? Unable to reconcile these thoughts, Portofino arrived at the belief that some circumstance or accident had prevented God from Old Testament-style intervention. His theory, published in a 1478 treatise, The Celestial Bathroom, argued that God existed, but was locked in. A band of disciples carried his theory forward well into the 18th century, debating such questions as, “If God is locked in the bathroom, and God is all-powerful, wouldn’t he be able to create a key that would fit the lock?” and “Does He use Q-tips?”
VIVEAU
The diplomat, lawyer and economist Claude Maria St. Montalban de Viveau, known to us today simply as “Viveau,” lived a privileged life in the court of King Louis XV. At the end of his life Viveau published Critique Societe, which examines a fictional society called “Teaneck, New Jersey,” but fails to address the questions of corruption, income inequality and unusually rapid soil erosion that plagued France in Viveau’s time. ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTOPH HITZ
JEAN-DAVID MANSEUR AND PIERRE PLUTEAU
The individual contributions of these French economists are considered marginal, yet they are remembered because of a single incident in 1801. When Pluteau arrived at his favorite restaurant to find Manseur seated at his regular table, he became enraged, even though several other tables were available. After a lengthy philosophical argument the men fought a duel on the muddy banks of the Seine. Both drowned. A community council was convened to prevent future needless deaths, and today Manseur and Pluteau are jointly credited with the notion of call-ahead reservations.
JOHN FOOTE
John Foote is little remembered today, but he almost became one of history’s great martyrs. A mid-level cleric in the Church of England, Foote worked tirelessly on scientific inventions deemed blasphemous by church elders. Sentenced to death, Foote at the very last minute renounced his inventions, pledged allegiance to the church and was released. For the rest of his life, he refused to attach his name to any one philosophy, but did quite well as a consultant.
We all should be doing something for the next person.”
Exit
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
Peter Brady
The Ideal Neighbor
BY EMMA DIAB
A COUPLE OF minutes into a conversation with Peter Brady, and it’s clear he’s a man of action. Ask him about his volunteer-based organization, and he’ll rattle off facts so nonchalantly it’ll take a minute for their gravity to sink in. But do run through them again — when he says he organized volunteers to rake leaves for a morning, what he really means is he PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIE BIDWELL
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Exit
raised an army of 1,000 people to descend upon their suburban Connecticut communities, aiding the elderly, sick and those “down on their luck” to tame the sprawling acres of dead leaves and autumn debris in their backyards. The annual Rake and Bake (which includes a community lunch at the local high school afterwards) is just one of the ventures Brady organizes for his non-profit organization, Handy Dandy Handy Man, which has been servicing the community since the year 2000. Whether a senior needs a light bulb changed or a hoarder needs
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
a $30,000 home makeover before his house is condemned and demolished, Brady who has a contact list of 2,000 people ready to back him up when he says the word. “We all should be doing something for the next person,” he says. “Love thy neighbor as thyself. Through the year is really where we make a difference for a number of people. We have served 600 families in these 12 years.”
BEGINNINGS Born in 1941, Brady is the oldest boy and fifth child in a family of seven children. He grew up Catholic in New Rochelle, New York, helping his father with the upkeep of their house on the weekends, a
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
A group of Handy Dandy Handy Man volunteers pose with Brady, who is kneeling in the forefront.
Exit home big enough to warrant constant maintenance. Weekend home improvement stints with his father were the extent of Brady’s handy-man training, as he spent 38 years working corporate jobs at Nestle, the chocolate manufacturer Brady believes makes “the best chocolate in the world.” Remaining a devout Catholic throughout his life, it was a Sunday mass in 2000 — just a couple of weeks shy of his retirement — that spurred Brady to action, after hearing the story of his namesake, Saint Peter. “And upon this rock I build my church,” quotes Brady, referring to Jesus Christ’s words to his apostle Peter, naming him as his successor and head of the Catholic church as the first Pope. “What really caught me was, I was sitting in the front row and the pastor was talking about Saint Peter and the great things he did for others. My name was Peter, and I was going to retire,” he says, going on to explain how he approached his pastor in the hopes of helping the elderly in the parish. His group, which he dubbed a ministry, operated from their church for the first three years. He started out with a very small
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
task force of about 10 people — including Brady, his wife and three daughters — who showed up ready to work on the doorsteps of two elderly parishioners, 90 and 94, respectively. The operation steadily grew, and after those three years, Brady filed for it to be a 501c3 non-governmental organization, though Handy Dandy Handy Man still has its “spiritual base” rooted at
Through the year is really where we make a difference for a number of people. We have served 600 families in these 12 years.” Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in Brookfield, Conn., where Brady was first inspired. While HDHM has taken off since its early days, there’s no real advertising for it, as the organization would be inundated with requests. People hear about it through word of mouth, at schools, churches, rotary clubs and through social services. A committee of seven review the requests and chooses which to follow up on.
Exit
GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
CHANGING LIVES From the smallest to the largest of requests, the organization has become a lifeline, bringing the community together in unexpected ways. When the home of a single father with three children burned down, Brady shot an email to his 2,000 contacts and before long, handed the man a crisp check for $10,000. They do one home makeover a year in the area, putting up the resident in a hotel for a month and using money either donated or awarded through grants to pay for the contractors, builders and materials to completely redo the house. Sometimes the requests are small, but the outcome is literally life changing — one man called Brady asking if he could have food for Thanksgiving. He received a similar call from a woman who happened to be in the same lowincome housing block. Brady introduced them to each other and loaded them into his car the next morning for a trip to Shop Rite. Somewhere between the vegetable aisle and the cereal aisle a spark ignited, and six months later Brady was asked if he would be the best man at their wedding. Not only did he and his wife stand as matron of
honor and best man, but he also set up a gazebo wedding for them, and a family donated their vacation house in Vermont for the couple’s honeymoon. As for Brady, the 71 year old doesn’t plan to slow down anytime soon. “My goal is to make 80 working for the ministry here, and then by the end of the year pass it along because I suspect I probably won’t be climbing ladders or anything,” he says. “But I’d like to spend more time with the grand kids.”
Brady works alongside other volunteers transporting donated books to Brookfield Library for a fundraiser.
01
TFU
Exit
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (BLANKENFEIN); JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES (TANTAROS); MICHAEL REYNOLDSPOOL/GETTY IMAGES (OBAMA); GETTY IMAGES/OJO IMAGES (GUN); LESTER COHEN/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES (KE$HA)
CEO Council Demands Cuts to Poor, Elderly, While Reaping Billions in Government Money
2
FOX News Host: I Should Live Off Food Stamps As a Dieting Technique
3
COPY EDITOR CHANGES STORY TO READ: ‘OBAMA WAS ALLEGEDLY BORN IN HAWAII’
4
Black Friday Line-Cutter Punches Man Who Then Pulls a Gun on Him
05 Ke$ha Made a Bra From Her Fans’ Teeth
06 Exit
TFU
HUFFINGTON 12.02.12
Power Company Charges Customers for Sitting
BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES (POWER COMPANY); GETTY IMAGES/F1ONLINE RM (FOXES); GETTY IMAGES (PINOCCHIO, SOCIALITES); STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES (BROWN)
in the Dark
7
11 Foxes Found Skinned in Pennsylvania
8
SCHOOL REWARDS STUDENTS WHO LIE CREATIVELY
9
Video Game Aims to Teach Girls How to Be Socialites
10
Chris Brown Makes Vulgar Attack on Female Comedy Writer
Editor-in-Chief:
Arianna Huffington Executive Editor: Timothy L. O’Brien Executive Features Editor: John Montorio Managing Editor: Gazelle Emami Senior Politics Editor: Sasha Belenky Senior Voices Editor: Stuart Whatley Quoted Editor: MacGregor Thomson Viral Editor: Dean Praetorius Social Editor: Mia Aquino Editorial Assistant: Jenny Macksamie Editorial Intern: Emma Diab Creative Director: Josh Klenert Art Director: Andrea Nasca Photography Director: Anna Dickson Associate Photo Editor: Wendy George Designers: Martin Gee, Troy Dunham Production Director: Peter Niceberg AOL Mobile SVP Mail & Mobile: David Temkin Mobile UX and Design Director: Jeremy LaCroix Product Managers: Mimmie Huang, Luan Tran Developers: Scott Tury, Mike Levine, Carl Haines, Terence Worley, Sudheer Agrawal, Jacob Knobel, Eisuke Arai Tech Leadership: Umesh Rao QA: Scott Basham, Eileen Miller Sales: Mandar Shinde, Jami Lawrence AOL, Inc. Chairman & CEO:
Tim Armstrong
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK