Hurricane Sandy – day 9

VOTING

Make sure to vote today, and know that your polling place might have changed. In Westfield, those who typically vote at Washington will instead vote at Roosevelt. Those who vote at Wilson will instead vote at Franklin. New Yorkers can vote at any polling place. In New Jersey you can vote by email/fax.

MORE WAYS TO HELP

The New York Aquarium on Coney Island, which we’ve been to a couple of times, is down indefinitely. Here’s info on the aquarium damage, and here are pictures/my recent review. Help the New York Aquarium here.

A school in Lavallette, New Jersey is relocating for the next 8-10 months, and were able to take nothing with them. Here’s info on how to help them.

DOWNTOWN

We took a little tour of downtown yesterday to see what was open and get some lunch. As of Monday, we saw almost all restaurants open (albeit some with limited menus). Only Crumbs was still closed.

COMMUTE

Mark commuted into Manhattan for the first time yesterday. He managed to get a seat on the bus and there were no delays. Reports were of 15-30 minute train delays because of overcrowding. He said that normally 20 trains per hour go into Penn Station, but today there were only 4 per hour.

Of work, he said that while he’s grateful to be back, it’s decidedly not normal yet. There’s no heat and no talk of when it will come back. They’re all dressed in multiple layers and “thug hats.” The shuttles that take them back/forth to Penn Station (otherwise a 25 minute walk) all got flooded in the building’s garage.

PATH is starting limited service today – hooray!

According to NJ Transit today, 80% of the rail line is down due to storm damage. Only 13 of the usual 63 trains operating in/out of NY at peak are running.

POWER

Power was to be back on in most of town by Monday night, with the exception of those with lines down on their street. It’s now been more than a week without power, and it’s definitely getting colder. As of this morning, 26% of town residents still are without power. It’s really cold (in the 20s last night, and 31 as I type this). Fortunately power was restored last night to the senior housing building. PSE&G aims to restore 500 per day. All the substations serving our town have been restored, so now it’s fixing those wires on individual streets. In PSE&G’s service area, 310,000 are still without power, along with 12% of schools.

STUNNING PHOTOS

The Star Ledger has some before/after photos that allow you to scroll over the before/after areas of 4 beach towns to see the damage.

WORK

It’s always hard to work with the kids home. But this week it’s been very difficult to concentrate even if they’re not in the room. Aside from turning in one hurricane related story (I’ll post the link when it goes up), I’ve now got another, and need to get cracking on the work I ignored this past week (granted, I think my editors have no power still since I haven’t heard from them either).

GARDEN

On a lighter note, several have asked if my garden “survived” the hurricane. There are more leaves in it, but it looks just about the same as before (i.e. crappy). I do need to go harvest the basil, though, because there’s some left.