New York's Subway May Not Survive Tropical Storm Nicole - Polidicks

[img]http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/09/gizmodo-gallery-poster1.jpg[/img] [url=http://gizmodo.com/5652348/new-yorks-subway-may-not-survive-tropical-storm-nicole]Source[/url] [release]There's a massive tropical storm headed to New York, one that may flood the subway. What most people don't know is that we depend on just 700 fragile water pumps to keep the tunnels dry—some a century old. In fact, if someone powered down all these pumps tomorrow, the entire subway network would be inundated in just a few hours. To give you an idea of how complex and massive this system is, it pulls 13 million gallons of water out of the subway on any sunny day. No rain. Not even a single drop of water from the sky. On a rainy day, it is absolute madness. To the point where the MTA—NYC's Metropolitan Transportation Authority—lives in permanent panic, fearing events like Nicole, the tropical storm system that is approaching the little town blue right now. "At some point, it would be too much to handle," said the head of the hydraulics team back in 2006, Peter Velasquez Jr., "you've got rain plus wind. It basically would shut down the system. You hope not. You pray that it doesn't." Maintenance hell This means that their hydraulic team—less than two hundred people—are now on full alert, ready to intervene and install additional portable water pumps in whatever stations are needed. This is not an easy task. When the water reaches a certain level it touches the third rail, which carries 625 volts. That makes the water extremely dangerous for these workers. Back in the 1990s, a water main broke open, completely flooding the station at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. They had to send scuba divers to fix it, and use a diesel-powered train car to take the water out. It took an entire week to drain the station, extracting 2,700 gallons per minute. That's more than 27 million gallons. But you don't need to fully inundate the tunnels to take the subway system out. The water flooding could take out entire lines if the pumps fail to keep the levels below their safety limits. In 2004, the subway system stopped after Hurricane Frances spewed two inches of rain per hour over the city. In 2007, things stopped again. Then Governor Eliot Spitzer declared that "the cause of the cascading outages across the mass transportation system this morning was the inability of our drainage system to handle what was, we believe, three inches of rain within a one-hour period." Not much has changed since then. The MTA's drainage system still can only slurp 1.5 inches of rain per hour, which is much, much less than what Nicole is bringing: More than 7 inches of rain per hour, with sporadic winds up to 60mph. It kind of sounds like Velasquez's It sounds like Velasquez's You hope not. You pray that it doesn't scenario. Pray.[/release]

:derp:?

That isn't good. So many people use the subway. I guess they'll just have the day off.

So does that mean I don't have to go to school

To be honest I would shut down the subway if there is a extremely high risk of flooding. I would not leave a system open just so water can mix with 625 volts of electricity.

I wouldn't worry too much. I'm sure that Bloomberg and the MTA have plans for this.

The tropical storm withered. It will be just like earl at most.

They should probably replace the pumps while they're at it.

[QUOTE=CanadianBill;25168537]They should probably replace the pumps while they're at it.[/QUOTE] But then they will have to choose between funding entitlement programs, or funding the police and fire department...guess which will get cut.