Sandy's shadow

New York City is still facing major disruption from ‘superstorm’ Sandy.   Up to 40,000 people have been driven from their homes, public transport is still severely disrupted, and 130,000 residents are still without electricity.

Across New York State, there are another 600,000 without power, as well as nearly a million in New Jersey.    The storm is thought to have caused 106 deaths in the USA, including 40 in New York City, and another 69 in the Caribbean.

At 900 miles wide, Sandy was the largest storm ever seen in the Atlantic.   It hit the Big Apple with a record 14 foot tidal surge, shutting down the subway system, and closing nearly all the road tunnels and bridges, virtually isolating Manhattan.    The National Guard had to be called out to deliver emergency supplies.

Only last year, a report from the New York State Energy Research and Development Corporation had delivered a warning of how devastating a major storm combined with a tidal surge could be for the City.

*The Londonist website has reminded us of another 'forgotten' London fire - the Colney Hatch asylum fire of 1903.  http://londonist.com/2012/09/londons-forgotten-disasters-the-colney-hatch-fire.php.   See also p 107 of A Disastrous History of Britain.

World's deadliest terror attack on a single aircraft

On this day…..26 years ago, the deadliest act of terrorism involving a single aircraft happened thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland.     An Air India jumbo jet en route from Montreal to Heathrow was blown up, killing all 329 people on board.

The previous year, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, had been stormed by Indian troops, and the police investigation in Canada centred on Sikh extremists.   One, alleged to be the mastermind, was killed in a gun battle with Indian police in 1992.

It was not until 2000 that the first suspects were charged.    Inderjit Singh Reyat was sentenced to five years in prison, but two others were acquitted.    There were claims that some witnesses were intimidated, and that another was murdered before he could give evidence.

An official investigation published in 2010 was highly critical of the government, the police and the intelligence services, while in January of this year, Reyat was gaoled for nine years for perjuring himself to protect the two men who were acquitted.     For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Amazing escape + air crashes over the ocean

A 14 year old Marseille girl plucked from the water appears to be the only survivor of yesterday’s air crash eight miles off the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean. Rescuers spotted her swimming in rough waters among bodies and wreckage. They threw her a life buoy, but she could not grab it, then a man leapt into the water to save her. Altogether, there were about 153 people on board.

In the five deadliest aviation disasters over the world’s oceans, there were no survivors. The worst three were no accidents either. The worst of all involved the Air India 747 brought down by a terrorist bomb over the Atlantic in 1985, killing all 329 people on board.

Three years later, an American warship shot down an Iran Air Airbus over the Straits of Hormuz killing all 290 passengers and crew. The death toll was 269 – again everyone on board – when Soviet jets shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007 just west of Sakhalin island in 1983.

The worst ever accident involving a commercial airliner over the ocean came on July 17, 1996 when a TWA flight to Rome blew up in mid-air about 12 minutes after taking off from New York’s JFK airport. All 230 people on board were killed. At first, there was speculation that there might have been a bomb on the jumbo, but investigators concluded the most likely cause of the explosion was faulty wiring.

Icebergs

On this day....153 years ago, the John Rutledge sank in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. The passengers managed to get into lifeboats, but the seas were so rough that only one man survived. Less than a month earlier, on January 23, 1856, the SS Pacific was also lost after a similar collision. All 186 people on board were lost. Later a message was found in a bottle washed up in the Hebrides, saying “ship going down. Confusion on board. Icebergs around us on every side. I know I cannot escape.”

The Titanic, of course, is the most famous shipwreck caused by ice, and the one that caused most victims (see my blog of January 21), but there were many others, like the schooner Maria, which went down off Newfoundland carrying 111 refugees from the Irish potato famine in 1849. There were only a dozen survivors.

The SS City of Glasgow which disappeared between New York and Liverpool in January 1854 is also thought to have been a victim of icebergs. 480 passengers and crew were lost.