Sandy officially U.S.'s second-costliest hurricane

1:30 PM hurricane, officially, Sandy, secondcostliest No Comments

DAVID PORTER Associated Press – 5 days

Superstorm Sandy was the deadliest hurricane to hit the northeastern U.S. in 40 years and the second-costliest in the nation's history, according to a report released Tuesday.

The storm's effects reached far and wide, according to the National Hurricane Center report. While Sandy visited devastation on the East Coast, principally New Jersey and New York, it created wind gusts as far west as Wisconsin and as far north as Canada and caused water levels to rise from Florida to Maine, the center found.

The hurricane center attributed 72 U.S. deaths directly to Sandy, from Maryland to New Hampshire. That is more than any hurricane to hit the northeastern U.S. since Hurricane Agnes killed 122 people in 1972, according to the center's records covering 1851 to 2010. The report counted at least 87 other deaths that were indirectly tied to Sandy, from causes such as hypothermia due to power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning and accidents during cleanup efforts.

The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history hit Galveston, Texas, in 1900 and killed 8,000 to 12,000 people.

The report estimated damage caused by Sandy at $50 billion, greater than any U.S. hurricane except Katrina, which in 2005 caused $108 billion in damage, or $128 billion adjusted to 2012 dollars. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 caused $26.5 billion in damage in Florida, or the equivalent of $44 billion today.

Tuesday's report describes Sandy's beginnings as a tropical wave off the coast of Africa on Oct. 11 that initially produced a wide area of showers and thunderstorms in the eastern Atlantic. It reached the Caribbean on Oct. 18 and gradually strengthened into a hurricane by Oct. 24. It temporarily weakened below hurricane strength while passing Cuba, then regained hurricane strength as it approached the U.S. on October 27.

The storm grew significantly as it passed through the Bahamas on Oct. 25 and 26, so that by the time it reached landfall in southern New Jersey its gale-force winds covered a diameter of 870 nautical miles, or about 1,000 miles.

While passing over Jamaica, it dumped up to 28 inches of rain in some spots. In the U.S., southern New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Maryland were hit the hardest, with the peak amount of rain measured at just under 13 inches in Bellevue on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

More than 650,000 U.S. homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm, and more than 8 million customers lost power, according to the report.

The highest storm surge measured by tide gauges in New Jersey was 8? feet over normal levels at Sandy Hook, though it likely was higher because the storm knocked out the gauges, according to the report. The highest surge in New York was more than 12? feet at Kings Point on the western edge of Long Island Sound.

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Jobless claims drop for 2nd straight week as Sandy effect fades

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Reuters

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped for a second straight week last week, unwinding some of the storm-related surge, which has muddled the labor market picture.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 393,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's figure was revised up to show 6,000 more applications than previously reported.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to 390,0000 last week. The four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of labor market trends, increased 7,500 to 405,250, the highest level since October last year.

Superstorm Sandy, which ripped through the East Coast in late October, has distorted initial claims data in recent weeks, making it hard to get a clear pulse of the labor market.

A Labor Department official said there was no pronounced impact of the storm in last week's data, adding that claims also tended to be volatile around this time of year.

The labor market improved in October, with employers adding 171,000 jobs to their payrolls, up from 148,000 the prior month. Economists say stripping out the three states - New York Connecticut and New Jersey - hardest hit by the storm, new applications for state unemployment benefits have been steady.

The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid dropped 70,000 to 3.29 million in the week ended November 17. So-called continuing claims covered the week of the household survey from which the unemployment rate is derived.

The jobless rate increased by a tenth of a percentage point to 7.9 percent in October, as more Americans - including those who had given up the search for work - entered the labor market.

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Sandy washed away job market gains

3:30 PM gains, market, Sandy, washed No Comments

It takes a lot to knock the U.S. economy off course.

One month after being clobbered by the largest storm ever recorded in the North Atlantic, it’s becoming a little clearer just how big an economic impact Superstorm Sandy is having.

As the cleanup of visible damage continues around his office in lower Manhattan, Brian Drum is tallying up the damage to the job market.

“Hiring has slowed down tremendously – it’s almost like it’s come to a halt,” said Brian Drum, CEO of Drum Associates, an executive recruiting firm. “The jobs seem to be open, and the inventory seems to be available in terms of competent people. But companies are not making decisions.”

Those hiring decisions will have to wait for many potential employers – still without power, communications or a place to issue paychecks. In New York City alone, about a third of the 100 million square feet of downtown office space was still out of operation a week after the storm, according to brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle. That’s roughly the total office space available in downtown Houston.

Sandy hit the East Coast on Oct. 29 and disrupted businesses from North Carolina to Maine. The nearly 1,000-mile-wide storm cut a wide path of death and destruction, killing 113 people, through a region that represents about a quarter of the U.S. economy.

Heavy rainfall combined with a storm surge, high winds, inland flooding and fires to leave millions without power and tens of thousands homeless. Thousands of retailers and restaurants were closed, many for good. Some 20,000 airline flights were canceled. Miles of roads and railways were destroyed or damaged. The storm forced shutdowns of financial markets and several nuclear power reactors.

With so many businesses closed, many of the roughly 10 million workers in coastal counties were tossed out of work. On Wednesday, the government reported that more than 75,000 workers filed a new unemployment claim last week in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, mostly in the construction, food service and transportation industries.

After a healthy pickup in hiring in the second half of the year, some analysts expect Sandy to wash away a big chunk of employment in the monthly jobs data for November, due out Dec. 7.

“We are concerned there may be an acute hurricane impact on November payrolls,” Deutsche Bank economist Joseph LaVorgna warned earlier this week in a note to clients.

LaVorgna noted that, following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, the pace of new hires saw a downward swing of 127,000. He estimates the November report will show that hiring slowed to just 25,000 new jobs from a gain of 171,000 in October.

To be sure, there are other reasons for the pause in hiring decisions. Even before the storm hit, the ongoing recession in Europe and slower growth in China has brought a coordinated slowdown in the global economy. The November election did little to break the political gridlock over the federal budget and tax policy.

“I think people are still waiting to see whether there’s going to be compromise between the two factions in Washington,” said Drum. “But the situation was certainly exacerbated by the storm. “

A month later, thousands of families are still homeless and tens of millions of dollars of repairs have yet to be made. Despite lingering shortages of gasoline and isolated power outages, the region’s economy is back up and running.

“It wasn’t the massive disruption in the supply chain that might have been thought, given the severity of the storm,” said Andrew Tananbaum, executive chairman at Capital Business Credit, a lender that services the retail sector.

With the insurance claims process just getting underway, industry estimates – of as much as $50 billion in property damage – are still preliminary.

“This is the fourth loss we’ve had of significance in the last couple of years which is outside the models we might use to ascertain the cost of such extreme losses,” said Stephen Catlin, CEO at Catlin Group, a Bermuda-based insurer. “There are still people without houses to live in and still people without electricity. It’s going to take a few more weeks before we’re really clear as to how much damage and how much insured loss has been incurred.”

Apart from the visible destruction, the economic impact has been widespread. The chaos unleashed by the storm has already begun showing up in the monthly data from industrial production and retail sales.

The Federal Reserve reported that the nation’s total industrial output shrank by 0.4 percent in October, largely because of storm-related production shutdowns at utilities and makers of chemicals, food, transportation equipment and computers and electronic products.

Airlines sustained hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from more than 20,000 canceled flights. United and Delta reported last week the two carriers lost a combined $135 million in revenues from the storm. The shutdown of New York City’s subway and commuter train network cost the city about $50 million in lost revenues, according to estimates from IBISWorld. The market research firm also figures the financial services industry lost $150 million in revenues after the storm knocked the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchanges offline for two days – the first such weather-related outage in more than a century.

Mortgage applications fell by almost 40 percent in Connecticut, 50 percent in New York and more than 60 percent in New Jersey in the week after the storm, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Retailers were among the hardest hit. A surge in sales of critical supplies and equipment before the storm was more than offset by a week of closed stores. Just a few days of lost business in October put a dent in the government’s monthly retail sales tally.

November sales data will show an even bigger impact. Retail spending (not including cars) dropped in the Northeast by about 20 percent in the week following the storm, according to data collected by MasterCard. But that drop in spending will be offset as households hit by the storm spend to repair and replace damaged items, including waterlogged cars and trucks.

“A large number of dealers are back up and running, but there are still dealerships facing difficulties – just as there are neighborhoods still facing significant problems,” said Paul Taylor, chief economist at the National Automobile Dealers Association.


Taylor said it’s too soon to know how many cars will have to be replaced, but initial estimates put the figure at between 100,000 and 250,000. He also estimates that the increased demand for used cars will push up prices up by about 1.5 percent nationally – with bigger increases in states like New York and New Jersey, where demand is strongest.

Increased spending on repairs and shopping trips delayed by Sandy could help boost sales in December. But it may also cut into savings that were intended for holiday shopping.

That means nervous store managers may have to slash prices to avoid getting stuck with unsold goods, according to Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation.

“I would imagine that those retailers in the area that were affected by the storm are going to be more prone to try and move their promotions and incentives out there,” he said.

The wider economic outlook is harder to assess, as the stimulus effect of rebuilding is spread over many months. But Sandy’s economic headwind at the end of 2012 could provide a boost to the first half of next year.

“With housing strong and vehicle sales likely to rebound as people replace Sandy-destroyed autos, the economy is on the rise,” said economist Joel Naroff. “The only thing we have to fear is Washington itself.”

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Christmas tree growers hit by Sandy

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David Dishneau, AP
HAGERSTOWN, MD. - The World Bank, CIA and other customers of Washington area is not the huge Christmas trees always ordered a Maryland farm in more than 2 feet of snow buried them after Superstorm sandy and many of the 15-35-foot fir trees torn.

Gale-force winds drove up deep Christmas trees in Swanton, wet snow in the branches of FIR at Pinetum in the Appalachian mountains. The snow then froze and limbs from the orbital rim, pulled, said the owner, Marshall Stacy. More than 3,000 trees were damaged, resulting in approximately $40,000 losses.

"It was like dominoes – a tree came down and press the next," said Stacy. He has been reimbursed by almost 70 percent of its orders.

Customers must look elsewhere, but there are only a few companies that sell oversized trees. This is because it takes so long to grow, said Rick Dungey of the National Christmas tree Association. Other breeders in Garrett County Maryland said that the storm not so little damage to their smaller trees.

It said the Group of Brickman, Gaithersburg-based commercial landscape gardeners, another supplier for 15 trees that adorn a business Office Park in Virginia are found, but they are smaller than the 16-footers, which the company typically provides about 3 feet.

Stacy said the damaged trees for paper pulp not be sold because its makes them bushy branches - the result of the annual trim - too expensive to process. Some of the branches into wreaths will be made, he said.

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Small businesses struggling to recover from Sandy

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Reuters
After filling trays with ruined inventory, advised many owners of New York City shops and restaurants wait for emergency loans and insurance or to try to finance their recovery by Sandy Superstorm personally.

Progress is uneven on lower Manhattan's trendy Avenue C, which was heavily flooded the historic storm over the past week.

Demand was a still unheated hardware store doing a cleanup and busy trade but a supermarket on the next block equipment was still closed and in disarray, one and one half week after Sandy flooded their basement and selling floor. A bar and a beer shopping on the other side of the road was open, but serve a limited menu for less than the usual customers.

"We have not the product to sell and we have to sell, not the people," said Zach Mack, co-owner of ABC beer co., which last week flooded for days save power.

The massive storm lashed ashore Oct. 29 and caused widespread flooding in New York and New Jersey, to more than 50 billion $ results in economic losses. The recovery effort, already by hindered sustained power outages and fuel shortages, was dealt another setback this week when a nor blew through Easter, provides the range of the first snow of the season.

With PSTN always still down, companies lose they say potential sales because they accept non credit card payments and insist on cash.

Recovery of the destroyed camps and equipment is slow because many suppliers were lost in flooded halls have and deliveries have been stopped if truck is either damaged or were not gas found after the crippling storm.

"It is by the fact, people here get so their own lives in order, they are not go out again put together," Mack said, though election night drew a decent crowd for his company.

How other entrepreneurs neighborhood told Mack that he was for emergency loans from the Federal Administration for small businesses and the city of the application.

The emergency increases Mayor Michael Bloomberg loans for small and medium-sized businesses by Sandy on $25,000 affected, and they are interest-free for the first six months. Around 1,000 companies have asked about the loan, said a spokeswoman for the Mayor.

On Friday morning low-interest loan of up to $2 million crowded more than 200 entrepreneurs Community Center neighborhood learn more about the loan request a gymnasium of the city and the SBA, offers. Many had complaints about utilities and grants referred to rather than loans should be.

After a weekend, filling a dumpster with flood damaged goods, hardware store owner Monica Pedreros said she would rather plunge into their savings as an emergency loan to take, they say new debt could not afford.

Laura Tribuno, co-owner of a nearby restaurant of Austrian cuisine, with a scaled-down menu again manufactured, said that it had requested in order to determine whether it was for the emergency loans but was undecided are, whether they were created in the value of interest.

C Avenue entrepreneurs say they have begun, claims file, but some are paralyzed by everything from telephone and Internet outages of the absence of an accounting staff still dealing with their own personal crises of the deadly storm.

For now, companies rely on their customers and the generosity of others. Many entrepreneurs said providers have offered, give them more time to pay bills, and some already wearing gloves, masks and boots strangers on their doorstep, and helps to drain basements and ruined the roadside equipment arriving towing.

"they made, what seemed like an insurmountable task of much go faster," Mack said.

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