Dems in ‘uphill f ight’ on Barrett
Schumer says party lacks tools to delay Supreme Court vote
Shortly after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month, former Vice President Joe Biden, his running mate U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate
Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer met to plan their strategy to attack the confirmation process Republicans were quickly advancing to fill the vacancy.
The four Democrats settled on one area of focus: health care.
Preservation of the Affordable Care Act has been a battle cry of Biden’s presidential campaign ever since. Hearings to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett are scheduled to begin in the Senate on Monday, and health care will at the core of
after months away because of the COVID -19 pandemic.
The fast-moving storm, the severity of which took forecasters by surprise, took down trees and power lines from central New York east to Boston.
But when power will be restored was still unclear at 7 p.m. Thursday, as restoration times for National Grid were sitting at “assessing condition” for most areas — including hard-hit Bethlehem and Colonie, where more than 20,000 people remained without power.
Matt Barnett, National Grid’s vice president of New York Electric Operations, said some outages in the hardest-hit areas in eastern New York may extend beyond 48 hours. National Grid had more than 93,000 customers without power in the early evening Thursday. New York State Electric & Gas was also dealing with outages as more than 6,000 customers statewide remained without power.
At least one fatality from the storm is known in the Capital Region. William J. Oakes, 24, was killed while driving along Pierce Road in Clifton Park at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday when a tree landed on his car, State Police said.
Barely two hours after playing host to a Northeastern New York PGA tournament, Tom Sullivan, 71, head pro at the Wyantenuck Country Club in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was also killed late Wednesday afternoon at the club when a falling tree hit his cart, according to a report in the Berkshire Eagle. First responders were not able to revive him.
Meanwhile, residents in the most impacted areas Thursday hoped for relief and banked on resilience.
Near Adams Street in Delmar, Jill Knapp was walking outside with her black dog, Calista, on Thursday morning, observing the damage caused by the storm, which was “like something out of a scary movie.”
“I was sitting on my computer, and I heard a branch hit my railing on my porch,” she said. “That’s when I realized something was happening.”
Two trees were uprooted and
strewn across a yard near her house, which was without power. A couple of blocks down, another tree had splintered and fallen on top of a porch, and near that house’s mailbox was a BidenHarris political sign that strong winds had torn in half. At a house on Darroch Road, an inflatable black cat Halloween decoration was against a door, deflated and wrinkled.
David Murillo was also walking around the neighborhood with his black lab-mutt mix, Harley.
“How about this year?” a neighbor asked him.
“I’m surviving,” Murillo said. Murillo didn’t have power at home, so he was charging his phone in his car and telling neighbors over and over, “This is nuts.”
Tom Benware was blowing leaves off his front yard. A large tree sat fallen in his backyard.
“The wind sounded like a jet flying through,” Benware said. “It sounded like a freight train, so I hit the basement.”
The Albany International Airport reported a 67 mph wind gust Wednesday, which is the highest ever recorded in October since wind records began being tracked in 1987, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologist Neil Stuart said it’s very unusual for October to have such big thunderstorms that produce such widespread damage.
There were no actual tornados, but wind speeds were near that of
an F1 tornado, according to Mike Evans, weather service meteorologist in Albany.
Predicting the severity of the storm, Evans added, was difficult because although there were strong winds, it was not a particularly warm day, which meant the instability in the atmosphere was only marginal. Between 1 and 2 p.m., the National Weather Service knew it was going to be a strong storm, he said. The storm made its way to the region around 3:30 p.m.
“Sometimes we’ll see these kinds of things, and it’ll be obvious two, three days in advance: ‘Oh, we’re gonna get clobbered,’” Evans said. “In this case, it was not that obvious.”
National Grid spokesman Patrick Stella said the storm was the worst one the company has seen hit the Capital Region since Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Stella said they ’re still assessing the damage and working on restoration estimates. The areas experiencing the most power outages, Stella said, are Rensselaer, Schenectady and Albany.
Cities and towns and the utilities are mobilizing to help victims. National Grid will be distributing dry ice and bottled water at the Crossgates Mall parking lot (adjacent to Macy’s), the Schenectady County DPW building and Pittstown Fire Rescue during the following times: Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy said that beginning Tuesday, the city will allow homeowners to drag large tree limbs and branches to the curb for a week or so. The city usually requires that the debris be bundled into manageable sizes.
By midday Thursday, Schenectady ’s wastewater treatment facility was running on auxiliary power, Mccarthy said. It was back online by early Thursday afternoon.
Meanwhile East Greenbush’s Hampton Manor may not see electric power restored until Sunday, Supervisor Jack Conway said Thursday afternoon.“it’s a mess,” said Conway, who lives in Hampton Manor.
“The wind sounded like a freight train coming through,” said Rick Sprague, who was taking a walk through Hampton Manor Thursday morning. Streets were closed in the development, making it difficult to drive through without running into a blocked road.
The town opened Town Hall on Columbia Turnpike Thursday night as a warming station. Temperatures were predicted to drop to a low of 35 degrees with patchy frost, according to the National Weather Service.
“As temperatures are expected to be low tonight, we want residents to have a place to go to warm up. There will be light refreshments and coffee available to those who are without power. Bathrooms will also be available (no shower, but running water for using the restroom and washing hands),” the town said in a statement issued on Thursday afternoon. Anyone going into Town Hall will be screened for COVID -19.
Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said “911 worked seamlessly,” noting in a tweet that a woman was even walked through childbirth in the midst of the hundreds of calls.
Many traffic lights were not working as a result of the storm, and law enforcement reminded motorists that intersections should be treated as a four-way stop for as long as the lights are out.
The town of Clifton Park’s highway department also announced it will be helping residents clean up by conducting a roadside pickup of tree limbs and debris on Oct. 13.