Good to read things like that santaman, in reality there will be far more cases of people helping others than hurting others. Sad fact is thought the gutter press only seem interested in publishing the doom and gloom tales.
Hurricane Sandy
- Thread starter santaman2000
- Start date
I just found this article. It's a little long but an iteresting read. It shows both the limitations of modern technology and out dependence on it:
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"NEW YORK—Alison Caporimo, a 24-year-old who lives in Manhattan's East Village, is undaunted by newfangled smartphones and computers.
But as for old-fashioned, coin-slot pay phones? The magazine editor had never really trained her Warby Parker eyeglasses on the contraptions.
"I lost a lot of coins," confesses Ms. Caporimo, who didn't even know how to work a pay phone before Tuesday.
[More from WSJ.com: The Case for NBA Jerseys as Billboards]
New Yorkers have seen long lines to make calls from pay phones.With power knocked out in her Sandy-ravaged neighborhood—rendering her cellphone useless—she got a crash course in the low-tech, low-status devices. She returned to her local pay phone Wednesday with more quarters and better knowledge of the pay-phone locations in her area.
"You miraculously get resourceful and start seeing them everywhere," she says.
Not since the birth of the iPhone has the pay phone experienced such demand, thanks to Sandy.
Natural disasters tend to vindicate the public pay phone. With their clunky bodies mounted high and sometimes behind glass stalls, they generally remain serviceable during power outages, even amid flooding. When times get tough, in fact, the biggest challenge is often keeping the devices free of coin overloads.
"Phones that normally do two dollars a day are taking in $50 a day," says Peter Izzo of Van Wagner Communications, one of 13 local pay-phone-operating franchises. "In times of distress, the people of the city love them."
[More from WSJ.com: Airport-Security Guessing Game]
After the storm struck, people under umbrellas waited in line at some pay phones downtown Tuesday.
"During disasters, we sometimes have to empty them every day," says Thomas Keane, chief executive officer of Pacific Telemanagement Services, a pay-phone operator whose New York locations include transit stations, hospitals and police offices. "It takes 300 to 400 calls a day for that to happen."
Like the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the blackout of 2003, Sandy has exposed the limitations of the cellphone. Not only does it require electricity for charging, but the cellphone also won't pick up service if a major storm has knocked out the telecommunications infrastructure that provides reception.
What is more, the cellphone's battery will drain faster if it is constantly searching for a signal.
On most days, New Yorkers breeze past corner pay phones with nary a glance. The devices are so foreign to many that the city's official website has a question-and-answer section about pay phones in New York: Does anyone actually use them? "Even though the usage has gone way down," it says, "the public pay telephones are still used for regular calls and long distance calls."
[More from WSJ.com: Post-Sandy, Tips for Parents with Anxious Kids]
The last time Leslie Koch picked up a pay-phone receiver was during the 2003 blackout. Since then, she says, "I didn't even know they were working."
But on Tuesday, old was new again, as her BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad and two laptops were idled. After calling her mother on Long Island from a pay phone, she commemorated the occasion by tweeting a photo of herself from Instagram.
For all the wonders of the iPhone, it can leave a lot to be desired in a pinch. Unable to get reception on his, Jordan Spak plugged coins into a pay phone in downtown Manhattan Wednesday morning.
"It's funny what's hiding in plain sight," said Mr. Spak, a 32-year-old television marketer. "It's invisible, but when you need it, it's there."
Despite their seeming anonymity, the devices aren't extinct just yet. Roughly 12,000 public pay phones still exist in New York City, down from about 35,000 two decades ago, says the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which regulates the pay phones on New York's sidewalks.
That number could dwindle further after October 2014, when the contracts expire for the 13 companies that own and operate pay phones here.
Of course, if pay phones were perfect, they would never have lost their cultural connection. In the West Village on Wednesday, Oscar Guzman had made a temporary office out of his corner pay phone, using it to seek out a pet-friendly hotel where he could stay with his two dogs.
With no electronic contacts at hand, Mr. Guzman, 34, had written down the phone numbers he needed on index cards.
"It's a nightmare," he said. "The audio is awful."
Terrence Ross, 64, was similarly displeased with the retro technology. It was bad enough that the phones didn't always work. But after gobbling up his coinage, they often failed to return the quarters. "They're an enormous pain in the butt!" Mr. Ross said.
The storm made casualties of some pay phones. Operator Van Wagner said that flooding left 35% of its phones in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn out of service. But other pay phones are uniquely wired and don't require commercial power.
Van Wagner also remotely programmed some downtown pay phones to work free of charge, as it did after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Mr. Izzo, the company's senior operations executive.
"You will lose phones during certain catastrophes," he said, "but the odds of losing all that communication is nil."
Already, though, there are signs of pay-phone disconnect.
A walk uptown Wednesday revealed empty phone booths plastered with advertisements for airport shuttles (useless to most this week), new television shows (ditto) and Heineken beer (quite useful this week). A receiver dangled from one device. The only sign of life at pay-phone stations near 14th St. was a half-eaten carton of Greek yogurt.
From 28th St. to 48th St., on the West side of Sixth Ave., not a single person was using a pay phone. The city looked like itself."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"NEW YORK—Alison Caporimo, a 24-year-old who lives in Manhattan's East Village, is undaunted by newfangled smartphones and computers.
But as for old-fashioned, coin-slot pay phones? The magazine editor had never really trained her Warby Parker eyeglasses on the contraptions.
"I lost a lot of coins," confesses Ms. Caporimo, who didn't even know how to work a pay phone before Tuesday.
[More from WSJ.com: The Case for NBA Jerseys as Billboards]
"You miraculously get resourceful and start seeing them everywhere," she says.
Not since the birth of the iPhone has the pay phone experienced such demand, thanks to Sandy.
Natural disasters tend to vindicate the public pay phone. With their clunky bodies mounted high and sometimes behind glass stalls, they generally remain serviceable during power outages, even amid flooding. When times get tough, in fact, the biggest challenge is often keeping the devices free of coin overloads.
"Phones that normally do two dollars a day are taking in $50 a day," says Peter Izzo of Van Wagner Communications, one of 13 local pay-phone-operating franchises. "In times of distress, the people of the city love them."
[More from WSJ.com: Airport-Security Guessing Game]
After the storm struck, people under umbrellas waited in line at some pay phones downtown Tuesday.
"During disasters, we sometimes have to empty them every day," says Thomas Keane, chief executive officer of Pacific Telemanagement Services, a pay-phone operator whose New York locations include transit stations, hospitals and police offices. "It takes 300 to 400 calls a day for that to happen."
Like the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the blackout of 2003, Sandy has exposed the limitations of the cellphone. Not only does it require electricity for charging, but the cellphone also won't pick up service if a major storm has knocked out the telecommunications infrastructure that provides reception.
What is more, the cellphone's battery will drain faster if it is constantly searching for a signal.
On most days, New Yorkers breeze past corner pay phones with nary a glance. The devices are so foreign to many that the city's official website has a question-and-answer section about pay phones in New York: Does anyone actually use them? "Even though the usage has gone way down," it says, "the public pay telephones are still used for regular calls and long distance calls."
[More from WSJ.com: Post-Sandy, Tips for Parents with Anxious Kids]
The last time Leslie Koch picked up a pay-phone receiver was during the 2003 blackout. Since then, she says, "I didn't even know they were working."
For all the wonders of the iPhone, it can leave a lot to be desired in a pinch. Unable to get reception on his, Jordan Spak plugged coins into a pay phone in downtown Manhattan Wednesday morning.
"It's funny what's hiding in plain sight," said Mr. Spak, a 32-year-old television marketer. "It's invisible, but when you need it, it's there."
Despite their seeming anonymity, the devices aren't extinct just yet. Roughly 12,000 public pay phones still exist in New York City, down from about 35,000 two decades ago, says the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which regulates the pay phones on New York's sidewalks.
That number could dwindle further after October 2014, when the contracts expire for the 13 companies that own and operate pay phones here.
Of course, if pay phones were perfect, they would never have lost their cultural connection. In the West Village on Wednesday, Oscar Guzman had made a temporary office out of his corner pay phone, using it to seek out a pet-friendly hotel where he could stay with his two dogs.
With no electronic contacts at hand, Mr. Guzman, 34, had written down the phone numbers he needed on index cards.
"It's a nightmare," he said. "The audio is awful."
Terrence Ross, 64, was similarly displeased with the retro technology. It was bad enough that the phones didn't always work. But after gobbling up his coinage, they often failed to return the quarters. "They're an enormous pain in the butt!" Mr. Ross said.
The storm made casualties of some pay phones. Operator Van Wagner said that flooding left 35% of its phones in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn out of service. But other pay phones are uniquely wired and don't require commercial power.
Van Wagner also remotely programmed some downtown pay phones to work free of charge, as it did after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Mr. Izzo, the company's senior operations executive.
"You will lose phones during certain catastrophes," he said, "but the odds of losing all that communication is nil."
Already, though, there are signs of pay-phone disconnect.
A walk uptown Wednesday revealed empty phone booths plastered with advertisements for airport shuttles (useless to most this week), new television shows (ditto) and Heineken beer (quite useful this week). A receiver dangled from one device. The only sign of life at pay-phone stations near 14th St. was a half-eaten carton of Greek yogurt.
From 28th St. to 48th St., on the West side of Sixth Ave., not a single person was using a pay phone. The city looked like itself."
Here's another:
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[h=1]Exasperation builds on Day 3 in storm-stricken NYC[/h]By LEANNE ITALIE and MEGHAN BARR | Associated Press – 50 mins ago
[h=3]Related Content[/h]
You read this
NEW YORK (AP) — Frustration — and in some cases fear — mounted in New York City on Thursday, three days after Superstorm Sandy. Traffic backed up for miles at bridges, large crowds waited impatiently for buses into Manhattan, and tempers flared in gas lines.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city would send bottled water and ready-to-eat meals into the hardest-hit neighborhoods through the weekend, but some New Yorkers grew dispirited after days without power, water and heat and decided to get out.
"It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big-time."
Rima Finzi-Strauss decided to take the bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.
"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."
The mounting despair came even as the subways began rolling again after a three-day shutdown. Service was restored to most of the city, but not the most stricken parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the tunnels were flooded.
Bridges into the city were open, but police enforced a carpooling rule and peered into windows to make sure each car had at least three people. The rule was meant to ease congestion but appeared to worsen it. Traffic jams stretched for miles, and drivers who made it into the city reported that some people got out of their cars to argue with police.
Rosemarie Zurlo said she planned to leave Manhattan for her sister's place in Brooklyn because her own apartment was freezing, "but I'll never be able to come back here because I don't have three people to put in my car."
With only partial subway service, lines at bus stops swelled. More than 1,000 people packed the sidewalk outside an arena in Brooklyn, waiting for buses to Manhattan. Nearby, hundreds of people massed on a sidewalk.
When a bus pulled up, passengers rushed the door. A transit worker banged on a bus window, yelled at people inside, and then yelled at people in the line.
With the electricity out and gasoline supplies scarce, many gas stations across the New York area remained closed, and stations that were open drew long lines of cars that spilled out onto roads.
At a station near Coney Island, almost 100 cars lined up, and people shouted and honked, and a station employee said he had been spit on and had coffee thrown at him.
In a Brooklyn neighborhood, a station had pumps wrapped in police tape and a "NO GAS" sign, but cars waited because of a rumor that gas was coming.
"I've been stranded here for five days," said Stuart Zager, who is from Brooklyn and was trying to get to his place in Delray Beach, Fla. "I'm afraid to get on the Jersey Turnpike. On half a tank, I'll never make it."
[h=2]Photos: NYC facing daunting commute[/h]
[h=2][/h]
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[h=1]Exasperation builds on Day 3 in storm-stricken NYC[/h]By LEANNE ITALIE and MEGHAN BARR | Associated Press – 50 mins ago
Enlarge PhotoAssociated Press/ Louis Lanzano - Dry ice is unloaded from a flatbed truck in Union Square for distribution to residents of the still powerless Chelsea section of Manhattan, Thursday, Nov.1, 2012, in New York. …more Three days after superstorm Sandy walloped the city, residents and commuters still faced obstacles as they tried to return to pre-storm routines. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano) less
[h=3]Related Content[/h]
Play VideoVideo: Gas lines stretch for more than hour0:38 | 0 views
Play VideoVideo: Bloomberg: 500K customers still without power1:10 | 0 views
You read this
NEW YORK (AP) — Frustration — and in some cases fear — mounted in New York City on Thursday, three days after Superstorm Sandy. Traffic backed up for miles at bridges, large crowds waited impatiently for buses into Manhattan, and tempers flared in gas lines.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city would send bottled water and ready-to-eat meals into the hardest-hit neighborhoods through the weekend, but some New Yorkers grew dispirited after days without power, water and heat and decided to get out.
"It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big-time."
Rima Finzi-Strauss decided to take the bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.
"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."
The mounting despair came even as the subways began rolling again after a three-day shutdown. Service was restored to most of the city, but not the most stricken parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the tunnels were flooded.
Bridges into the city were open, but police enforced a carpooling rule and peered into windows to make sure each car had at least three people. The rule was meant to ease congestion but appeared to worsen it. Traffic jams stretched for miles, and drivers who made it into the city reported that some people got out of their cars to argue with police.
Rosemarie Zurlo said she planned to leave Manhattan for her sister's place in Brooklyn because her own apartment was freezing, "but I'll never be able to come back here because I don't have three people to put in my car."
With only partial subway service, lines at bus stops swelled. More than 1,000 people packed the sidewalk outside an arena in Brooklyn, waiting for buses to Manhattan. Nearby, hundreds of people massed on a sidewalk.
When a bus pulled up, passengers rushed the door. A transit worker banged on a bus window, yelled at people inside, and then yelled at people in the line.
With the electricity out and gasoline supplies scarce, many gas stations across the New York area remained closed, and stations that were open drew long lines of cars that spilled out onto roads.
At a station near Coney Island, almost 100 cars lined up, and people shouted and honked, and a station employee said he had been spit on and had coffee thrown at him.
In a Brooklyn neighborhood, a station had pumps wrapped in police tape and a "NO GAS" sign, but cars waited because of a rumor that gas was coming.
"I've been stranded here for five days," said Stuart Zager, who is from Brooklyn and was trying to get to his place in Delray Beach, Fla. "I'm afraid to get on the Jersey Turnpike. On half a tank, I'll never make it."
[h=2]Photos: NYC facing daunting commute[/h]
[h=2][/h]
