Sandy 's unprecedented devastation

What happened

The northeastern U.S. began an agonizingly slow process of recovery this week after Hurricane Sandy devastated the region, killing at least 62 people and leaving behind a surreal landscape of submerged streets and neighborhoods, splintered trees, and shuttered businesses. The storm’s unprecedented fury knocked out power to 8 million homes across 17 states, and sent a record 14-foot surge of seawater barrelling into downtown Manhattan, flooding some subway stations and tunnels to their ceilings, and throwing much of the city’s skyline into darkness. The subway system was closed for days after suffering the most damage in its 100-year history. In Queens, a ferocious electrical fire reduced more than 100 homes to ash while the storm surge swept others off their foundations. “The damage we suffered across the city is clearly extensive, and it will not be repaired overnight,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

New Jersey also took a direct hit from Sandy, a freak combination of a hurricane and a nor’easter that covered a quarter of the U.S. Portions of the famed Atlantic City boardwalk were smashed to splinters. In the north of the state, emergency workers rushed to rescue hundreds of people stranded in houses and on rooftops after the swollen Hackensack River burst its banks, causing floodwaters to rise 5 feet in just 45 minutes. “I saw trees not just knocked down but ripped right out of the ground,” said Moonachie resident Juan Allen. “I watched a tree crush a guy’s house like a wet sponge.”

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What the editorials said

Those in Sandy’s path should be grateful Mitt Romney isn’t president yet, said The New York Times. Last year, the Republican pledged that, if elected, he’d shrink the deficit by axing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and handing its responsibilities over to state authorities and private companies. “It’s an absurd notion.” Who would decide where to send rescuers, desperately needed supplies of food and water, and federal aid? “Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages.”

Actually, Romney wouldn't abolish FEMA, said The Wall Street Journal. But he would reassert the “traditional federalist view that the feds shouldn’t supplant state action.” That makes a lot of sense. Hardworking governors and mayors are “best equipped to handle disaster relief because they know their cities and neighborhoods far better than the feds ever will, and they know their citizens will hold them accountable.”

What the columnists said

We can’t blame Sandy on climate change, said Mark Fischetti in ScientificAmerican.com. But global warming did help transform the hurricane into one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history. Climate change “amps up” storms by warming the oceans—September saw the second-highest average global sea temperatures on record—and those warm waters act like rocket fuel for hurricanes. Global warming has also raised sea levels, said Chris Mooney in The Guardian (U.K.), which means that Sandy and every future hurricane “surfs atop a higher ocean and can penetrate further inland.”

Since no restriction on greenhouse gas emissions is likely in the immediate future, said Matthew Yglesias in Slate.com, densely populated coastal areas like New York City will have to adapt. “The best place to look for guidance is probably the city’s former colonial overlords in the Netherlands,” who are experts in fending off flood waters with dikes and dams. “The idea of essentially damming up New York Harbor sounds extreme.” But if we do nothing, “the consequences are going to be disastrous.”

We can and should take precautions to protect against future disasters like Sandy, said Walter Russell Mead in TheAmerican Interest.com. But this storm has shown us just “how fragile the busy world we humans build around us really is.” The strongest walls, the sturdiest retirement plans, and the best doctors ultimately cannot “protect us from that final encounter with the force that made and will someday unmake us.” If we are sensible, we’ll “take advantage of this smaller, passing storm to think seriously about the greater storm that is coming for us all.”