The following is an article from the Star-Ledger for Nov. 21, 2012; but read the posting above first, and be sure to follow the link to the Reuters article.
NJ Transit boss defends decision to leave trains in area hit hard by Sandy flooding
By Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger
on November 21, 2012 at 6:30 AM, updated November 21, 2012 at 11:02 AM The executive director of NJ Transit is defending the agency's decision to leave trains in rail yards that ended up under water during Hurricane Sandy, saying those locations had no history of flooding and that no one could have predicted the extent of the storm surges that left some stations with six feet of water.
"We stored it where it should be," Jim Weinstein, who was joined by some of his top brass at the statewide transit agency, said during an interview Tuesday with The Star-Ledger. "Unfortunately, it’s the worst storm we’ve ever had in New Jersey."
NJ Transit has come under criticism for leaving equipment in places such as Kearny and Hoboken with Hurricane Sandy bearing down. Damaged during the storm were 261 train cars and 62 locomotives.
"They made a decision, and as Burke said to Ripley in Alien, ‘It was a bad call’" said David Schanoes, a railroad consultant from New York and retired deputy chief of field operations for the Metro-North railroad. "My God, New Jersey’s a swamp."
Schanoes said weather projections had the storm surge in the Kearny-Hoboken area at 10 to 13 feet.
"Look at it as a bank vault," Schanoes said, noting that some locomotives are worth $5 million. "You’ve got a bank vault with $5 million and robbers are coming. Do you leave the money in the bank vault or move it out of the way?"
Weinstein said NJ Transit officials were monitoring the storm and didn’t expect the surge to flood the rail yards.
The Meadows Maintenance Complex in Kearny has been around for nearly 30 years and never flooded the way it did during Sandy, he said.
Last year, NJ Transit lost no equipment during Tropical Storm Irene. In anticipation of that storm, officials made the decision to move trains from Trenton to an NJ Transit rail yard in Morrisville, Pa. That kept the trains dry, but also marooned the equipment because it couldn’t be reached from flooded Trenton.
Learning that lesson, NJ Transit officials this time moved trains from Morrisville to other locations in New Jersey. But that left little space for other trains to be moved.
"The answer is, there is no place to put them," Weinstein said of the trains in Kearny. "The MMC is our central maintenance and operations facility. That’s it. That is ground zero for the railroad."
Kevin O’Connor, NJ Transit’s vice president and general manager of rail operations, said finding a dry place to store trains is no easy task.
"If you take our rail map and superimpose it over a map of the state of New Jersey with rivers, the ocean and everything there, how close are all of our lines to water?" he asked. "They’re all close to water or on the water — every single one of them, whether it be the ocean, a river, a bay."
O’Connor said that given the massive flooding in Hoboken this time, "We’re going to have to look at where we could possibly store this stuff."
As with every major storm, he said, precautions are taken. Equipment is moved. The train wire system is de-energized. Rail crossing gates are removed so the wind doesn’t snap them or the gates don’t get stuck in the down position and impede residents who are trying to evacuate.
Joe Meade, superintendent of the Hoboken transit division, said floodwater has made it into the terminal before, but never onto the higher ground where the trains are stored.
"‘92 was the highest water that ever came into Hoboken — that was the Perfect Storm, the unnamed storm, again on Halloween, and we got about 2 1/2 to 3 feet of water in the terminal," he said. "The old-timers then said they’d never seen anything that high."
During Sandy, six feet of water poured into the Hoboken Terminal and some trains on the higher ground were also damaged by floodwaters.
Weinstein said he was proud of the way transit agency employees — despite some having their own homes damaged in the flooding — were able to get 80 percent of bus service restored within 48 hours of the storm and 93 percent of the rail service restored at the beginning of this week.
"They’ve done some miraculous stuff here," he said.
Employees worked 16-hour days to restore rail service, in spite of boats lodged in rail drawbridges, trees that toppled onto wires that power trains and stations that were left with flooding, mud and dead fish in the waiting rooms.
"It was important because, without (the system) back in place, this state can’t come back to normalcy," Weinstein said. "People can’t start conducting their lives the way they need to conduct their lives and the way they want to conduct their lives."
All rail lines but the Gladstone Branch have been restored to at least partial service, and at least partial service could return to that branch around Dec. 1, transit officials have said. Along the Gladstone Branch, the hurricane-force winds snapped the 90-foot wooden poles that carry the electrical train wires.
Weinstein was optimistic that most of the damaged rail equipment will be covered by insurance, and said some of the equipment has already been repaired and returned to service.
He said the agency will assess what worked well and what didn’t during Hurricane Sandy.
But, Weinstein said, critics of where NJ Transit kept the trains might not realize how complex a process moving them can be.
"People say, ‘Oh, you just move the trains,’" he said. "This is not a toy train set, They’re not buses you buy at a Hess station for your kids at Christmas. This is real life. This is big machines that take a lot of people who are very well trained."