flood, fire: low tide

With the waters receding, all the cars and heavy equipment densely parked behind the warehouse in the last photo were uncovered. My guess is that an electrical spark, coupled perhaps with some liberated gasoline from a submerged fuel tank vent, led to a small fire. Which led to a big fire. And some explosions. We are upwind and have a decent-sized concrete dock between us and the cars, so we stayed put while our tug called 911. The fire department took forever to find the place. I saw them 10 minutes before they got in the neighborhood, and then another 15 minutes to dig up a masonry saw to cut through the fences in their way. Eventually they got to the fire and about 30 minutes later they put it out. My camera was overwhelmed between the lights, backscatter from the fire monitors on the tugs being turned on (monitors are the super-sized water cannon that you see on fire boats; many tugs have one just in case for situations like this ).
EDIT: This were, apparently, very expensive electric cars. Like, $100,000+ each expensive. And mightily flammable, as well. The Fisker Karma advertising campaign doesn't mention that.

in case being completely underwater for a few hours didn't kill one of these cars, God decided to set 'em all on fire.

car exploding. Quite a unique sound.

Newark FD response was slow but damn, everybody showed up. 

 Next high tide is in a few hours. Not supposed to be as high as the last one, but still might be rotten.

2200 Update (now with photos!)

We're still here! We're moored to a dock that is completely submerged. Our mooring lines are stretched tight to moorings that are 4 feet or more underwater. The surge is about 14 feet above normal high tide. Gusts are over 115mph, seems to be holding steady winds around 75mph.

 My truck is gone. I loved that truck. I shall mourn it.
My employer's office presumably is a total loss.
So far, no one has been hurt or killed within my company's ranks. This is a major success.
 I don't think we'll be moving tomorrow. It's nasty.

 If you can see from the pic, the water is receding now. It's currently about the height of the doorknob at the warehouse, so, figure about 3 1/2 feet above the dock. Quite a misery.

Not much of a calm before the storm (updated!)

Winds are getting a little more lusty and a lot more gusty while I was off watch. I slept like a baby, though (And what does that mean? You woke up wet and crying a few times, and at some point you shit yourself?).

         Storm surge for this high tide seems to be about the same as the last one. So far so good. The news is too repetitive to watch. A bunch of folks on a bunch of beaches asking each other what the weather is. Here's the weather: It's wet, it's windy. Back to you at the studio, Linda.

         Maybe they're false memories at this point, but I remember the hurricanes when I was a kid as coming with an eerie yellow sky the day of, before the wind started, and all the neighborhood dogs getting weird. No dogs out here- but the damn tide is high, for sure, and it's been blowing hard for about 24 hours now, so I guess this is the weather we'll be having until the wind starts to moan and whistle through the antennas up on the overhead.


Edit: it's about 0900 now. In the last 30 minutes the wind has seriously ramped up, and the damn tide is still rising. 6 inches more and the dock we're moored alongside will be under water. 

1300: Winds are gusty but holding, and the tide dropped. Next high tide around 0000 is the troublemaker for us- predicted surge is trending closer to the high estimate of 11 feet, which will put much of the shoreline under water. 

1430: That blast of wind you ordered has now arrived. Our mooring lines sang out when it hit. That's a disturbing sound... a sort of high-pitched squeal followed by staccato booms as the line pulls tight across the steel cleats. Feeling very glad that I have a shit-ton of lines out and my very own assist tugboat standing by.

 

  

hunkered down

So we're in a hurricane berth, wedged between a couple of Army Corps of Engineers dredge ships, and there are 20 (!) dock lines out securing us to a dock that will probably be underwater in about 6 hours, but even so, we're in a nice protected spot up in Pt. Elizabeth NJ, which is good, because that bitch storm Sandy is about to rain on us directly overhead tomorrow.

 With a 6-11 foot storm surge predicted and 2 days of sustained storm-force or better winds, my psychic alter-ego, Nostradumbass, predicts a busy time tending lines and trying to keep us in the water and not on top of the dock or floating into the warehouses across the quay.

 Also, it occurs to me that my truck is sitting in Red Hook NY, which has been evacuated for fear of extensive flooding. My truck is in a lovely parking lot with a water view, only 6 feet or so above the high tide line.
 Fuck.

So...that happened.

With huricane Sandy on the way, and back to back large cargo parcels to be loaded and doled out, the last thing I wanted was a delay in loading the first job. Looks like we'll be discharging the second parcel in some strong breezes tomorrow before running for cover. Hope we get to go somewhere decent, and not an anchorage where our undersize anchor can drag every 30 minutes.

watching...waiting

Looks like we might get some saucy weather early next week. The National Weather Service is already blaming global warming, president Bush and the 1%.


 But, no, seriously, it looks like the weather might be shitty after the weekend. The NWS, having seen the writing on the wall after Italy threw their seismologists under the bus last week for not predicting an earthquake, have predicted a 70% chance or rain, snow, wind, Kansas-to-Neverland wormholes, frogs, locusts and death of the firstborn son of the pharoh for New York. In between the chicken little screaming and running in circles, there is an ominous, slightly more worth-taking-time-to- ponder pressure gradient forming in the upper atmosphere, which, when coupled with the predicted tracks of said systems, could be quite shittay.

 I'll keep my eye on it. I might have an unwanted day off next week, spent getting sandblasted by flying dust while trying to keep secured to a lay berth somewhere.

ta dah!

Back at work again for another 4 weeks. My vacation consisted of 5 1/2 days at home, which was nowhere near enough. I made it back to my job, and that was good. Asking me to do so with enthusiasm might have been a bi much. I've bitten off more than I could chew with the schedule I set up for myself. I figure that now that I'm back at work I'll take a few days to get into the rhythm in terms of the sleep cycle, then I'll be 100%. In the meanwhile I'm here and working, and doing my job, and that's a good thing.

          My first cargo discharge this time has come with some complications. A brand new diesel engine, so new that it hasn't even had it's first oil change, has been soggy and hard to light since it was handed down to us by the powers that be. Today the cooling system got airbound, and after I worked up the courage to poke around and find the issue, I rectified the problem after a bit of a to-do mostly consisting of me questioning if I dare to touch a new engine and then about 5 minutes to actually fix the problem.
         Am I mechanically inclined? Meh. 50/50 I guess. I'm not a natural, but once I'm oriented I do OK. It's the orientation that is the issue. It's need-based for me. I'm not going to tinker unless there's no one to tinker for me.
          As an example, when I was a new nugget of a biologist, I tore around the sleepy Cape Cod community of Woods Hole, MA on a motorcycle. Being in my early 20's, and therefore 8-foot 12 and bulletproof, I drove my bike, often as not, in man-sandals and shorts, long hair flying. The bike was what it was, something that a 20-something guy with $100,000 in student loan debt and a $18,000 a year job would afford. A P.O.S. (Piece of Shit, if you were wondering), in other words. The starter was worn out, so unless it was above 80 degrees outside (a rarity in Woods Hole), starting a cold engine required a running start to pop the clutch and turn the engine over. In the two years between buying the bike and investing in the next vehicle, the best pickup that $500 could buy, I became a pro at tearing down that bike. After, with the truck, I became conversant with the Chevy 305 block, as well, though, to be fair, it was the things you bolted to the block that were always dying on me.
      Nowadays, with engineers here than there in my job, it's a rarity for me to dive into an engine and hope that I can put it back together in the same shape I found it. As a habit from those days of being poor and driving shitty vehicles, I always buy new, and when there are two shop visits in the same year for the same vehicle, trade it in. With my free time so scarce, I'm not going to lose a half a day sitting waiting for AAA if I can help it... and in that vein, I couldn't justify sitting and shutting down a job with a recalcitrant cooling system that was sitting on a factory floor 3 months ago. Amazingly, it worked. I'm pretty sure I know what I did and everything.