Hurricane Sandy: a record-breaking storm rocks America's east coast

Outdated flood maps of New York City put in danger some 35,000 buildings, many of which later ended up being damaged in the wake of Hurricane Sandy last year, according to a new report. A new investigation by ProPublica says the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ignored numerous pleas to update maps that dated back to the 1980s, resulting in surprise damage for city dwellers who unknowingly bought and lived in high risk flood areas that would have been identified using newer cartographic and scientific techniques.

Google has donated 17,000 Nexus 7 tablets to assist New York communities still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. The tablets, which have a retail value of over $2.7 million, will be used in libraries, senior centers, and small businesses. "For many of our state’s residents who are still building back, the generosity of companies like Google can make a huge difference," Governor Andrew Cuomo says in a statement. In areas where libraries haven't been reopened, the tablets will be loaned out as e-readers. Elsewhere, libraries and small businesses will use the tablets for job and skill training tools, and senior centers will use them to allow seniors to video chat with their family and friends.

"Increasingly, more and more people are using technology and the internet to educate themselves or provide for their families," Susan Molinari, vice president of government relations at Google, says in a statement. "Our hope is that these tablets will be a resource to do just that."

After the unprecedented damage to New York City's transit system brought on by Hurricane Sandy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has been looking into near-term solutions that could shield subway tunnels from flood waters come next storm season. It tested one of those safeguards yesterday for the first time by inflating a 30-foot plug (designed by the US Department of Homeland Security) that could effectively seal off New York's subways in the event of a natural disaster. The test run took place at the South Ferry station in Manhattan — one of eight stations consumed by flooding in Sandy's aftermath.

Incoming MTA chairman Tom Prendergast told the Associated Press that there are 540 spots in lower Manhattan alone that allow water to come in. Should an emergency situation arise, officials could use the inflatable plug to block off stairwells and ventilation grates that are easily flooded. The MTA is hoping to have the plug ready for use city-wide by the end of 2013's hurricane season or, worst case, by the time storms begin in 2014. New York's subways still haven't recovered from the devastating storm; the MTA yesterday announced the formation of a Sandy Recovery and Resiliency Division to further push along that effort.

One of the most heartbreaking aspects of facing a natural disaster can be the loss of precious photographs. Homes can be rebuilt, damaged cars fixed, and gadgets repurchased with the help of insurance. But the same doesn't hold always hold true for your personal photos. Their destruction can make it feel as though you're losing the very memory captured in the shot, which has prompted Operation Photo Rescue to mobilize in support of those impacted by last year's superstorm Sandy. We've already seen people band together to help reconnect displaced photos with their rightful owners, and now OPR is determined to help preserve timeless heirlooms. Founded after Hurricane Katrina, the volunteer group (estimated to have around 3,000 members) has restored some 9,000 images damaged by flood waters and other environmental hazards. The Associated Press has taken a close look at its latest mission and the delicate process of restoring what was once feared lost.

Hard drive crashes and corrupted files repeatedly instruct us on the importance of keeping media backups. But when data loss looms as the result of massive physical damage from a major natural disaster, finding better ways to digitally archive our history suddenly becomes a moral imperative.

As countless tri-state area residents were left without power, heat, and even their homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, art galleries and studio spaces in New York City wrestled with problems of their own. Like many other spaces in Manhattan’s gallery-friendly Chelsea neighborhood, non-profit art and technology lab Eyebeam sat well within high-risk "Zone A" when the superstorm made landfall last October. But despite preparations, the space became completely submerged, leaving its archive — comprised of various storage media containing over a decade of artworks — to drown in three feet of floodwater.

Hurricane Sandy's damage to the East Coast of the United States is now estimated at over $70 billion dollars. Thousands of people lost their homes in the worst affected areas. One of those harder hit areas is Union Beach, New Jersey. A neighborhood group, lead by Jeannette Van Houton and Mary Danielson, has organized with one goal: to scour the beaches in their local areas, rescuing photos which have washed ashore. The group then scans the photos in the hopes of eventually finding their owners.

Disaster recovery groups still have a lot of work to do in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and one of these volunteer organizations has optimized its efforts using software from a company called Palantir, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The software allows relief coordinators from Team Rubicon to track their volunteers using GPS, upload geo-tagged photos for reference, and determine which areas are most in need of assistance using demographic, census, and poverty data combined with damage reports.

Palantir — aptly named after the seeing stones in Lord of the Rings — gained prominence in the past several years not for designing disaster-relief systems, but providing US intelligence with software to track ally troops and suspected terrorists. The company's software, which is used by the US Defense Department, CIA, FBI, Army, Marines, Air Force, NYPD, and LAPD, brings together disparate points of data that could take an ordinary person years to connect.

Hurricane Sandy had a devastating effect on wireless infrastructure in areas hardest hit by the storm. As a result, the FCC today announced plans to conduct field hearings throughout the US that will assess network resiliency and investigate how carriers can keep communications flowing during natural disasters and other situations where their services become most vital. But the meetings will also address emergency preparedness to a wider degree. Aside from the telecom focus, these hearings aim to highlight our dependency on fuel during emergencies (many NYC-based companies relied on it to stay operational during Sandy), resource pooling in times of crisis, and 911 accessibility, among other timely concerns.

The first hearing will take place in New York in early 2013, with the FCC planning to make stops at various locales across the US that have faced major disasters in recent years. According to the commission, consumers, businesses, public safety officials, and experts in engineering and academia will take part. What the FCC takes away from the field hearings will influence its future recommendations to help strengthen the wireless industry against potential emergencies. Summing up the situation, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, "this unprecedented storm has revealed new challenges that will require a national dialogue around ideas and actions to ensure the resilience of communications networks."

At Broad Street, near the tip of Lower Manhattan, the situation is far from normal. Many streets in the area are closed off and packed with trucks, equipment, and generators. Manhole covers are open everywhere. Verizon’s Broad Street central office, which routes local phone, DSL, and FiOS data, resembles a military field base. Walls of sandbags remain around the building, and the constant hum of generators and pumps bounces down the streets. The lobby of the building is covered in plywood to protect any decorations it may have, and the entrance has become a type of checkpoint lit by a string of incandescent bulbs.

On Wednesday, two weeks after the storm, I met with Verizon's Executive Director of Operations, Christopher D. Levendos, who showed me the extent of the damage and repairs. Levendos tells me the 90,000 cubic foot cable vault has suffered a “catastrophic failure,” far worse than the damage done to a similar, but much larger vault at Verizon’s West Street headquarters near the World Trade Center.

New York suffered through an extended blackout in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, an issue that could have been avoided entirely given a rethink of how electricity is supplied to the city. The New Republic puts forward the idea of a decentralized power network, mimicking the physical topology of the internet while shunning the current system of having any one central point of failure in the grid. Rather than relying on substations for entire neighbourhoods, tenants could generate their own power through various methods and pass on the electricity to their local microgrid. The article suggests that the technical challenges aren’t impossible to overcome, but that the biggest hurdle facing decentralized energy is getting the utility companies onboard.

While Twitter has proven itself as a highly effective way for average humans to share news and information during times of crisis, Instagram and its 100 million users are starting to carve out their own place in that same niche. At the GigaOm Roadmap conference, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom indicated that users of the photo-sharing service uploaded more than 800,000 photos tagged with the hashtag #Sandy last week, and said that it was "probably the biggest event to be captured on Instagram." Comparatively, Instagram users tagged some 85,000 photos during this year's Super Bowl — though the hurricane was an ongoing event, rather than one day of concentrated activity. Still, it's clear that citizens participating in the sharing of news is an ever-growing trend, with Instagram the latest service that consumers are increasingly turning to. Even the staff of Time found it to be a key tool in covering the hurricane.

Systrom also commented on last week's report that Twitter was considering adding Instagram-style filters to its mobile apps — he's not worried, noting that the two companies have a good relationship. He also emphasized the fact that Instagram is much more a community of photographers than a "filters app." While we're not surprised to hear Systrom claim a positive relationship between the two companies, Twitter's move to block Instagram from using its friend-finding API earlier this year paints a bit of a different picture.

Dutch photographer Iwan Baan captured a stunning shot of New York City for the latest cover of New York Magazine, but how exactly did he do it? Speaking to Poynter, Baan described how he rented a helicopter on Wednesday night after the storm hit to try and take a photo that would convey the duality of the city at that moment in time. Despite the freezing cold and motion of the helicopter, Baan spent an hour taking burst shots with a Canon EOS-1D X and 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens, ultimately achieving the cover picture with an ISO of 25,600, 1/40 shutter speed, and a wide-open aperture. The photographer didn't stop there, though: Dezeen has put together a slideshow of Baan's various pictures taken across a largely blacked out Manhattan in the aftermath of the storm.

Consolidated Edison (better known as Con Ed) looks to have kept its promise to those living in Lower Manhattan without power. Word has just started coming in from Twitter users that power has been restored to parts of the East Village and the Lower East Side, and the power company later confirmed those reports, tweeting that 65,000 have power back. The area that's been restored was connected to the Cooper Square network, which is bounded by Canal Street on the south, Broadway on the west, 14th street on the north, and all the way to the East River. That still leaves many in Manhattan, as well as millions more in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the suburbs without power, but, considering the circumstances, it's a fairly quick recovery nonetheless.

Power was first taken offline in Lower Manhattan on Monday evening, after an approximately 14-foot storm surge flooded the southern part of the city, knocking out a few substations, including one on 14th Street. That substation was the site of a massive explosion after a circuit breaker failed, but the blackout was not caused by that incident — Con Ed says that higher than expected water levels rushing into the facility were to blame. The utility first estimated power would return to all of Lower Manhattan by Saturday evening, but current estimates say that all but 230,000 downtown will have power restored before tonight. Manhattan — which has all of its power lines underground — has only suffered four major blackouts since 1965.

For its photographic coverage of Hurricane Sandy, venerable weekly magazine Time took a new tack: it recruited five photographers and sent them to take pictures of the storm and upload them to the Time Instagram feed. The result was "one of the most popular galleries we’ve ever done," says director of photography Kira Pollack. Forbes has written a brief introduction to the collection, which Pollack says used Instagram because it was "the fastest way" to get content to readers. "It’s wasn’t like, 'Oh, this is a trend, let’s assign this on Instagram.'" A photo from the set even became one of the three physical Time covers for the week. These striking pictures would have drawn attention regardless of their delivery method, but it's another sign of Instagram's increasing clout in the world of photography.

In addition to displacing millions of New Yorkers, the catastrophic flooding and widespread power outages brought about by Hurricane Sandy have threatened a great deal of scientific research throughout the city. At New York University's Smilow Research Center in Kips Bay, the storm has claimed the lives of around 10,000 lab animals, dramatically setting back long-term studies on diseases such as cancer.

"These animals were the culmination of 10 years of work, and it will take time to replace them," Gordon J. Fishell, associate director of the NYU Neuroscience Institute, told the New York Times. The rodents in labs like Dr. Fishell's are specially bred and mutated, sometimes over years and years, to produce the effects of various diseases and disorders. The research involves studying abnormalities in brain activity that occur as a result of these mutations, gathering data that could be used to combat ailments such as cancer, autism, epilepsy, and heart disease.

Cellular service has been spotty at best in the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy, but Verizon wants you to know that it's working quickly to bring things back to full speed. The carrier says over 96 percent of its cell sites in impacted areas are operational and routing calls and text messages through as usual. Verizon has also taken the step of deploying what it calls Wireless Emergency Communication Centers (WECCs) that offer charging stations, computer workspaces, and mobile phones with which you can reach out to family and friends. Those have been distributed in Staten Island, New York, Monmouth University, and at two separate locations in Toms River, New Jersey.

If you're in need of a charger or perhaps a prepaid phone, Verizon has also established mobile stores-on-wheels that act as full-fledged retail locations. These can be found on Staten Island and in both Sea Girt and Howell, New Jersey. But you don't need to venture out to one of these spots to get help: Verizon is offering free domestic calls at all open stores; you'll also be able to plug in a device for charging while there. Verizon will continue to reopen stores that were forced closed by the storm and deliver additional device and accessory supplies in the days ahead.

Hurricane Sandy hit pretty close to home. While we're all safe and sound, and we have had extremely minor problems in the grand scheme of things, not everyone has been so lucky. A lot of people have lost power, access to their businesses, and many have even lost their homes.

One of the best ways to help those in need after Hurricane Sandy is to donate to the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross provides necessary disaster relief for thousands of people every year, and we're sure that they, and the sufferers of Hurricane Sandy, would be grateful for your donation. We're happy to help fundraise on their behalf.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, you can once again contribute to the American Red Cross' relief efforts in the United States directly from iTunes. Apple's music store is simply facilitating donations to the foundation, and thankfully 100 percent of contributions go directly to the Red Cross. You can donate anywhere from $5 to $200 via iTunes, but Apple warns that it "may not qualify for any tax deduction or other tax benefits." Of course, you can always donate directly at the American Red Cross' website, and you can volunteer with the foundation, the New York City government, with New Jersey's state government, and elsewhere.

Just before 5 p.m. on Monday, the team behind New York's Fog Creek Software announced in a blog post that its services would be online during Hurricane Sandy, despite the fact that the company's main data center was located in an evacuation zone in the low-lying Financial District.

"Given the preparation work that's gone into this, we are confident that all of our services will remain available to our customers throughout the weather," systems administrator Bradford Ley wrote. "Consider this the 'Everything is Perfectly Fine Alarm.'"

Frankenstorm. Superstorm. Sandy. Whatever you want to call it, this extremely unusual severe weather event has wrought havoc on the lives of millions of Americans along the East Coast.

As Hurricane Sandy approached New York, meteorologists and armchair weathermen alike struggled to explain how such a freakish weather event could occur in late October. Everyone agreed it was dangerous though. When the storm hit, the internet was inundated with photos, videos, tweets, and shenanigans. Now that the immediate danger has mostly passed, the focus here has shifted to recovery, repair, and rebuilding. Many Verge staffers live in New York. We collected photos we found striking and took a few ourselves. These images offer a glimpse of what life has been like for the past four days.

AT&T and T-Mobile have just announced that the two companies have decided to share their networks in the New York / New Jersey area. This move will let both AT&T and T-Mobile customers connect to either company's network, and should help those in the area that are having trouble finding cellular reception in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which hit earlier this week.

The carriers say that customers will be able to use their phones as they normally would, and that they will just connect to whatever network is strongest in their current location. Customers will not have to change their current rate plans or service agreements either. This is the first time that AT&T and T-Mobile have cooperated in such a fashion, and they are able to do so thanks to the similar GSM-based networks that each of them operate.

On Monday evening, on live TV, CNN reported that the New York Stock Exchange trading floor was literally underwater — three feet deep. It wasn't the only media outlet with the news: The Weather Channel and others reported the same story. Allegedly, Hurricane Sandy hit Wall Street so hard that it deposited three feet of water at that level of the building.

As local news anchor Pat Kiernan and others quickly realized, however, the report was false: a live camera feed from the trading floor showed no evidence of flooding at all. NYSE officials also quickly contacted the news channels to refute the story, and within an hour, CNN retracted the report. It wasn't the only fact-checking failure in the excitement of the storm.

When Hurricane Sandy drew near the East Coast, Twitter and Instagram came alive with pictures of the storm. One showed ominous clouds gathering over Midtown Manhattan. In another, soldiers guarded Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under a haze of rain. A third showed a massive wave crashing around the Statue of Liberty. They were stunning images, capturing the scale of the disaster as well as its human impact. There was just one problem: none of them were actually pictures of Sandy.

"I was absolutely sure that everybody knew that was a fake," says Tom Phillips, an MSN editor and author of the "Is Twitter Wrong?" blog, of the Statue of Liberty photo. The picture in question is a shot from disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, overlaid with an NY1 TV banner, and was frequently tweeted satirically. "It was on the poster of the film, for goodness’ sake... Then it became evident from the way some people were linking it and talking about it: no, they actually think this is real!" Phillips spent much of Hurricane Sandy debunking that and other photos, a few of which made it onto major news sites before being removed. Every event begets misinformation, but as people increasingly look to social media in times of disaster, fact-checking viral images can be as useful as issuing a news update.

Verge employees in and around New York City are reporting that some carriers' networks are spotty today — in particular, T-Mobile and AT&T have confirmed outages in certain areas, and it's likely that the severe weather, flooding, and extended power outages brought about by Hurricane Sandy have knocked out others as well. "Verizon isn't holding up well," reads an email we just received from our own Lorien Olsen who's currently in lower Manhattan. The outages appear to be tower-by-tower; service may work in one neighborhood and not in the next.

Under normal circumstances, backup generators at cell sites are expected to keep the towers (and the network) alive in the event of a power disruption. Clearly, Sandy is anything but normal — but it's good to remember that the cellular networks are not impervious as a failsafe when power and landline internet services go down.