Shock News : The West Side Highway Was Permanently Underwater In 1660

3 Responses to Shock News : The West Side Highway Was Permanently Underwater In 1660

1. slp says:

   November 2, 2012 at 3:06 pm

   http://www.racontrs.com/stories/nyc-land-reclamation/

   Reply
2. Made in Manhattan says:

   November 2, 2012 at 4:51 pm

   The Staten Island devastation is shocking. However, some perspective from (yes) the Times:

   That the borough was the scene for so much loss of life had a lot to do with the storm’s path and the island’s own evolution, and what happened was not entirely a surprise to Staten Islanders like Dr. William J. Fritz, the interim president of the CUNY College of Staten Island, and Dr. Alan I. Benimoff, a geology lecturer there.

   Dr. Benimoff said Staten Island was in the wrong place at the wrong time for a storm that scored a perpendicular hit on the New Jersey coast. “That put Staten Island in the bull’s eye” for the surge, he said. “The water didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

   Dr. Fritz said Staten Island no longer had “what I like to call sponges, that absorb the energy of hurricanes.”

   “Jamaica Bay is a natural sponge with dunes and marshes that can do that,” he said. “Barrier islands in North Carolina did that. What have we done on Staten Island? We’ve hardscaped our sponge. We’ve made roads and parking lots and houses and paved over the sponge. We’ve created an urban area, and you no longer have a sponge.”

   Dr. Fritz said the development was “one of the reasons we have that much property destruction, and I think some of the deaths.”

   Reply
3. philjourdan says:

   November 2, 2012 at 5:29 pm

   Permanently seems to be getting shorter all the time.

   Reply