The New York Financial Establishment is at it again!
New Yorkers woke up to a strong gas smell over much of Manhattan and New Jerseyans just west of them noticed it too. The authorities contacted all acted as if they were baffled.
The War on Terror boys searched high and low for possible scenarios for another attack on the world's financial capitol and Mayor Blumberg assurred the public that although the odor was everywhere, it would be traced to some simple explanation and soon!
This new event brought back memories of all the early AM reports of rumblings in Fort Lee, NJ and eastern Long Island that I used to hear while I readied myself for work in New York City 50 years ago. The radio newscasters told of dishes being dislodged from shelves and pictures falling from walls due to "quakes" felt by inhabitants all over the area and from 5:30 to 6:30AM, they would have much to report and then the call would come from the powers that be...."Cut it out - you are rattling the real estate values of the city, the linchpin of our wealth...we have survived and get on with life!"...and by 7AM, all mention of the event would cease on every station and there would be no mention in the media other than a notation that someone somewhere lost a dish or so, or picture!
The fact of the matter is that New York City is in the middle of an earthquake zone that rivals anything on the West Coast - California. The San Andreas fault, which bedevils our Far West, is an extension of the Hudson trench, one of the largest earthquake faults in the world and Manhattan sits right on it!
The history of New York City tells of many past brushes with earthquakes. The most important one was just after the Dutch took over Manhattan. Early residents woke to a terrible smell over the town and in a few days, heard a terrible roar which shook their small homes violently. When they went looking for what had happened, they found that north of their town, a whole hillside had disappeared and another island had been created. The land bridge which had connected them with Riverdale had collapsed and in its stead, was the East River now joined to the Hudson! The Dutch named this event Spuyten Dijvil, the Spitting Devil, to memorialize this terror forever! Later maps anglicized it as "Hell's Gate".
Another cataclismic event happened in the late 19th Century, when a large populated island just off Brooklyn's shores, disappeared in another shake, with many lives lost!
New York City had a limit to the heigth of buildings in its early centuries because of the problem It wasn't until the use of steel frames, set in deep rock to control tremors from shaking construction apart, that it allowed "skyscrapers". Today, most New Yorkers think they are just parking garages of so many stories below ground level!
This brings me to the real absurdity. The authorities know full well the cracks and faults of New York, especially the one that traverses near 46 street. It has cost the city dearly in just the last fifty years. Once again they are treatng the public as they always do. What has happened has passed...get on with life!
This is all fine and good but we live in a new age. People say they want to know and I think they should be told. Katrina destroyed New Orleans because people were kept in the dark as to their real danger. New York has survived because in the past, its citizens knew what they had and how fragile it was and its new denizens had best be told the facts of life!
By the by, most earthquakes worldwide are presaged by a strong smell of gas that permeates the atmosphere!
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