On the night Hurricane Sandy hit, two dozen members of the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department congregated in their snug firehouse in Breezy Point, Queens, not far from Jamaica Bay. It is a compact colony of 2,837 homes that undulates along the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula, cradled between the bay and the Atlantic Ocean. About 6:30 p.m., two turkeys beckoned on the table. The crew members barely savored a swallow when water lashed at their knees. Forsaking dinner, they scattered to the Clubhouse, a humble community center behind the firehouse that was several feet higher. A few residents had found sanctuary there. Homes were flooding and being hacked apart. The Sugar Bowl, a favorite bar, disappeared. Before long, water infiltrated the Clubhouse. Through the windows, the firefighters glimpsed the orange glow of a fire in the dark maw of the night. There was little rain. The water was four feet deep, bearing waves and wicked currents. “It was like the ocean was outside,” said Kevin Hernandez, 21, another volunteer firefighter. “The wind was 80 miles an hour.” It was impossible to reach the fire. They stared at the very menace they were committed to conquering, watching it strengthen, and could do nothing. On a night not meant for humankind, they could not help but wonder if they stood on death’s doorstep. It was about then that they began praying. Among the many cruelties delivered by Hurricane Sandy, the Breezy Point fire has inscribed itself as one of the storm’s hellish signatures. Ranking with the worst residential fires in New York City’s history, it burned down 126 homes and damaged 22 more, leaving a conspicuous hole in the heart of this genial shore community. The storm hit Oct. 29 and about two months later, the neighborhood remains a cindery reminder of what it had once been. In all, the New York City Fire Department counted 94 fires related to the storm. Nothing, though, approached the monster that visited Breezy Point. The Fire Department has not yet finished its investigation into the blaze. However, Robert Byrnes, the chief fire marshal, said that it had concluded that floodwaters caused something electrical, like a socket or breaker panel, to short and ignite inside the unoccupied house at 173 Ocean Avenue, random as the spin of a wheel. Breezy Point’s residents know grief, 30 people connected to the community having perished in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet the miracle of the torrid fire is that no one died or was seriously injured. The fire chose property and spared life. A Threatening Light The man unnervingly close to its origin, who saw it all, had been sleeping. Glenn Serafin, 62, is a media broker who lives in Tampa, Fla. But an 80th birthday party for his aunt in Totowa, N.J., on the Saturday before the storm, brought him north. After the party he and his wife, Josephine, drove to the two-story clapboard house they have owned for nine years in Breezy Point. It stood on Atlantic Walk in the area known as the Wedge, implying its tapered shape, where houses practically overlap. Streets do not exist in the Wedge, only sidewalks and sand alleys for sanitation trucks and emergency vehicles. Those who live there leave their cars in common parking lots and transport their belongings in little wagons. Long nicknamed the Irish Riviera, even as its population has become more ethnically diverse, Breezy Point is predominantly middle class and working class, home to numerous firefighters and police officers. Houses, some newer ones that stand with a certain hauteur and older ones dating back 70 or 80 years, are often passed down generations. It is a gated community, with its own security force, and residents belong to a cooperative association that owns the land. Originally the neighborhood was a summer retreat, but now its full-time population has swelled to over 60 percent. Not everyone holds flood insurance.
Thứ Bảy, 29 tháng 12, 2012
E-Book Price War Has Yet to Arrive
Last spring, the Justice Department sued five major publishers and Apple on e-book price-fixing charges. The case was a major victory for Amazon, and afterward there were widespread expectations — fueled by Amazon — that the price of e-books would plunge. The most extreme outcome went like this: Digital versions of big books selling for $9.99 or less would give Amazon complete domination over the e-book market. As sales zoomed upward, even greater numbers of consumers would abandon physical books. The major publishers and traditional bookstores were contemplating a future that would pass them by. But doomsday has not arrived, at least not yet. As four of the publishers have entered into settlements with regulators and revised the way they sell e-books, prices have selectively fallen but not as broadly or drastically as anticipated. The $10 floor that publishers fought so hard to maintain for popular new novels is largely intact. Amazon, for instance, is selling Michael Connelly’s new mystery, “The Black Box,” for $12.74. New best sellers by David Baldacci and James Patterson cost just over $11. One big reason for the lack of fireworks is that the triumph of e-books over their physical brethren is not happening quite as fast as forecast. “The e-book market isn’t growing at the caffeinated level it was,” said Michael Norris, a Simba Information analyst who follows the publishing industry. “Even retailers like Amazon have to be wondering, how far can we go — or should we go — to make our prices lower than the other guys if it’s not helping us with market share?” Adult e-book sales through August were up 34 percent from 2011, an impressive rate of growth if you forget that sales have doubled every year for the last four years. And there have been more recent signs of a market pausing for breath. Macmillan, the only publisher that has not settled with the Justice Department, said last week as part of a statement from John Sargent, its chief executive, that “our e-book business has been softer of late, particularly for the last few weeks, even as the number of reading devices continues to grow.” His laconic conclusion: “Interesting.” Mr. Norris said Simba, which regularly surveys e-book buyers, has been noticing what it calls “commitment to content” issues. “A lot of these e-book consumers aren’t behaving like lab rats at a feeder bar,” the analyst said. “We have found that at any given time about a third of e-book users haven’t bought a single title in the last 12 months. I have a feeling it is the digital equivalent of the ‘overloaded night stand’ effect; someone isn’t going to buy any more books until they make a dent in reading the ones they have already acquired.” Another, more counterintuitive possibility is that the 2011 demise of Borders, the second-biggest chain, dealt a surprising blow to the e-book industry. Readers could no longer see what they wanted to go home and order. “The print industry has been aiding and assisting the e-book industry since the beginning,” Mr. Norris said. It is possible that Amazon, which controls about 60 percent of the e-book market, is merely holding back with price cuts for the right moment. The next few weeks are when e-book sales traditionally take a big jump, as all those newly received devices are loaded up with content. Amazon declined to comment beyond saying, “We have lowered prices for customers from the prices publishers set on a broad assortment of Kindle books.” Barnes & Noble declined to comment on its pricing strategy. The question of the proper price for e-books has shadowed the industry ever since Amazon introduced the Kindle in late 2007 and created the first truly popular portable reading device. Amazon had a natural impulse to build a market and was an aggressive retailer in any case, so it took best sellers that cost $25 in independent bookstores and sold them for $9.99 as e-books. Consumers liked that. E-book adoption soared.
Jobs Compete With College in Montana Oil Country
It is a lucrative but risky decision for any 18-year-old to make, one that could foreclose on his future if the frenzied pace of oil and gas drilling from here to North Dakota to Texas falters and work dries up. But with unemployment at more than 12 percent nationwide for young adults and college tuition soaring, students here on the snow-glazed plains of eastern Montana said they were ready to take their chances. “I just figured, the oil field is here and I’d make the money while I could,” said Tegan Sivertson, 19, who monitors pipelines for a gas company, sometimes working 15-hour days. “I didn’t want to waste the money and go to school when I could make just as much.” Less than a year after proms and homecoming games, teenagers like Mr. Sivertson now wake at 4 a.m. to make the three-hour trek to remote oil rigs. They fish busted machinery out of two-mile-deep hydraulic fracturing wells and repair safety devices that keep the wells from rupturing, often working alongside men old enough to be their fathers. Some live at home; others drive back on weekends to eat their mothers’ food, do loads of laundry and go to high school basketball games, still straddling the blurred border between childhood and adulthood. Just as gold rushes and silver booms once brought opera houses and armies of prospectors to rugged corners of the West, today’s headlong race for oil and gas is reshaping staid communities in the northern Plains, bringing once untold floods of cash and job prospects, but also deep anxieties about crime, growth and a future newly vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust. Even gas stations are enticing students away from college. Katorina Pippenger, a high school senior in the tiny town of Bainville, Mont., said she makes $24 an hour as a cashier in nearby Williston, N.D., the epicenter of the boom. Her plan is to work for a few years after she graduates this spring, save up and flee. She likes the look of Denver. “I just want to make money and get out,” she said. The shift appears to be localized around centers of oil production like Sidney. School counselors in western Montana, far from the boom, said that few of their students were abandoning college for energy jobs. And even here, a majority of graduates are still choosing universities and community colleges. But school officials in eastern Montana said more and more students were interested in working for at least a year after graduation and getting technical training instead of a four-year degree. Last year, one-third of the graduating seniors at Sidney High School headed off to work instead of going to college or joining the military, a record percentage. Some found work making deliveries to oil rigs, doing construction and repairing machinery. Others decided to first seek training as welders or diesel mechanics, which pay more than entry-level jobs. Meanwhile, enrollment at Dawson Community College in Glendive, about an hour from Sidney, has fallen to 225 students from 446 just a few years ago, as fewer local students pursue two-year degrees. “It’s the allure of the money,” said Thom Barnhart, a guidance counselor at Sidney High. As more families arrive from Florida and Michigan and throughout Montana, seeking a new start after bankruptcies and layoffs, schools in places like Sidney are buckling. School enrollment leapt to 863 students from 723 in three years. The district is scrambling to hire good teachers who can get by on a $32,000 yearly salary in a town where apartments can rent for $1,500 a month. Freshmen are sharing lockers, and the district reopened a school that had been shuttered for years. But every year, hundreds of those new students depart within a few weeks, tugged along by parents heading off to another job in another town. “It’s a revolving door,” said Daniel Farr, the district’s superintendent. At the end of a gravel highway in northeastern Montana, graduating seniors in Bainville are asking similar questions about their future. Should they get an education and pursue their interests? Or should they stick close to home and surf a wave of cash and jobs that will only grow as companies begin to build a new industrial rail terminal and worker camps, forever transforming this quiet farm town where residents say the population has doubled since the 2010 census found 300.
Christmas Storms Blamed for Two Deaths
As predicted, conditions were volatile throughout the day and into the night with tornado warnings still out for some parts of Alabama. The storms were blamed for two deaths, several injuries, and left homes from Louisiana to Alabama damaged. In Mobile, Ala., a tornado or high winds damaged homes, a high school and church, and knocked down power lines and large tree limbs in an area just west of downtown around nightfall. WALA-TV's tower camera captured the image of a large funnel cloud headed toward downtown. Rick Cauley, his wife, Ashley, and two children were hosting members of both of their families. When the sirens went off, the family headed down block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile's Murphy High School. "As luck would have it, that's where the tornado hit," Cauley said. "The pressure dropped and the ears started popping and it got crazy for a second." They were all fine, though the school was damaged. Hours after the storm hit, officials reported no serious injuries in the southwestern Alabama city. Meanwhile, blizzard conditions hit the nation's midsection. Earlier in the day, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol there says a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy U.S. Highway near Fairview. The snowstorm that caused numerous accidents pushed out of Oklahoma late Tuesday, carrying with it blizzard warnings for parts of northeast Arkansas, where 10 inches of snow was forecast. Freezing rain clung to trees and utility lines in Arkansas and winds gusts up to 30 mph whipped them around, causing about 71,000 customers to lose electricity for a time. Blizzard conditions were possible for parts of Illinois, Indiana and western Kentucky with predictions of 4 to 7 inches of snow. An apparent tornado also caused damage in Grove Hill, about 80 miles north of Mobile. Mary Cartright said she was working at the Fast Track convenience store in the town on Christmas evening when the wind started howling and the lights flickered, knocking out the store's computerized cash registers. "Our cash registers are down so our doors are closed," said Cartright in a phone interview. Trees fell on a few houses in central Louisiana's Rapides Parish, but there were no injuries reported, said sheriff's Lt. Tommy Carnline. Near McNeill, Miss., a likely tornado damaged a dozen homes and sent eight people to the hospital, none with life-threatening injuries, said Pearl River County emergency management agency director Danny Manley. Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency in the state, saying eight counties have reported damages and some injuries. Fog blanketed highways, including arteries in the Atlanta area, which was expected to be dealing with the same storm system on Wednesday. In New Mexico, drivers across the eastern plains had to fight through snow, ice and low visibility. At least three tornadoes were reported in Texas, though only one building was damaged, according to the National Weather Service. More than 400 flights nationwide were canceled by the evening, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. More than half were canceled into and out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport that got a few inches of snow. Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power for at least a time in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. In Louisiana, quarter-sized hail was reported early Tuesday in the western part of the state and a WDSU viewer sent a photo to the TV station of what appeared to be a waterspout around the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans. There were no reports of crashes or damage. Some mountainous areas of Arkansas' Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel "very hazardous or impossible" in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the weather service said. The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email. The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32. In Mobile, a large section of the roof on the Trinity Episcopal Church is missing and the front wall of the parish wall is gone, said Scott Rye, a senior warden at the church in the Midtown section of the city. On Christmas Eve, the church with about 500 members, was crowded for services. "Thank God this didn't happen last night," Rye said. The church finished a $1 million-plus renovation campaign in June 2011, which required the closure of the historic sanctuary for more than a year. ___ Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark., and AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington, contributed to this report.
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