Watching New York City drown

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:24:00 +0000

The high tide at 8:53 p.m. on Monday night, made higher by the full moon, sends the bay 13 feet over the Battery in Lower Manhattan. The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel is flooding; so are the subways tubes that cross the East River. At least 250,000 people are already without power in Manhattan. In the south, distant flashes of light look like explosions, diffused in the howling sky. From my rooftop in Brooklyn, the explosions burn for a long moment, then are gone. A half hour later, the sirens call out, the firetrucks and ambulances race, and I wonder what has happened. Nothing to do but head out into the wind on the bicycle—the ultimate hurricane-adaptive transport to move fast in a city where all public transit is shut—and take stock of the moment, for it is historic: This is the first major hurricane in the age of climate change to strike New York City nearly directly, drive the ocean across the land, and put the city in its place—low-lying, seagirt, exposed.

Drowning is contagious

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:00:00 +0000

When it comes to sacrificing yourself in an attempt to prevent a drowning, Australians Joseph and Carole Sherry may be the ultimate examples.

In January 2010, two of the couple’s three children, Elise, 14, and Nicholas, 9, were struggling in the surf at a beach south of Brisbane, according to a newspaper account, when Carole, 44, entered the water to help them and apparently got caught in a riptide. Seeing his wife in trouble, Joseph, 42, tried to save her. Instead, both drowned as Elise and Nicholas and their older sister, all now safely on shore, watched in horror.

It is a pattern that is all too familiar to Richard C. Franklin, senior research fellow at the Royal Lifesaving Society in Australia, and to John H. Pearn, a senior pediatrician at Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. The Western Pacific and Southeast Asia, with large populations near the water, account for six out of 10 drownings. And Franklin, in emails, says that his and Pearn’s investigations show that at least 86 potential rescuers “drowned for love” in Australian waters between 1992 to 2007.

Salon.com > Drowning

Watching New York City drown

Drowning is contagious