DUMPSTER DIVING

[Gina]

There are reports of dumpster diving for food because people are starving in NYC.  Really?

Can it be that easy to not have food, what 4-5 days after the storm?

Educate me.  I just know I have cans and cans of food just from shopping, not actual stocking up.  I have tons of backpacking food. 

This makes me wonder if I should be stocking up a horde of food.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Perhaps they needed fresh organic arugula to survive...

Seriously, though, there are people who live hand-to-mouth even in places like NYC where the cost of living is so high that you would think a pantry stocked with canned goods would be a trifle.  You don't have to be a prepper to have a week or two worth of canned, dry, or long shelf-life stuff on hand, in fact it's been the norm for my life.

[Dori]

I could probably eat for a month on what I have in the cabinets and freezer.  Cooking might be a problem in NY without power. But I'm a camper, so I could figure out some way to do it. 

[Splashdown]

Don't forget that space also is at a premium in NYC. Lots of those apartments are pretty small. There's probably not much room for a week's worth of extra storage.

[Ballygrl]

The problem with NYC is this, you can't shop for a week or 2 like you can in the suburbs. I go grocery shopping twice a month so we're always stocked up on food, I go to BJ's once a month and load up (that kind of sounds dirty), but you just can't do that in the city because to get the food to your car if you have 1 or to get it home you need these little carts because you can't carry a lot of bags, and those carts only hold a few bags.

[formerlurker]

There are reports of dumpster diving for food because people are starving in NYC.  Really?

Can it be that easy to not have food, what 4-5 days after the storm?

Educate me.  I just know I have cans and cans of food just from shopping, not actual stocking up.  I have tons of backpacking food. 

This makes me wonder if I should be stocking up a horde of food.

Their houses were completely destroyed/flooded out. 

[zeitgeist]

Don't forget that space also is at a premium in NYC. Lots of those apartments are pretty small. There's probably not much room for a week's worth of extra storage.

Once upon my wild and misspent 'ute I use to be a regular visitor of former my roommates living in NYC.  You are right, I was alway amazed by what a shoe box rented for.  Crazy weird stuff.  I mean a 'studio apartment'  was barely big enough to change one's mind in.   We always ate out.  It may have been  White Castle or some such crap but we never cooked in those places.  I don't remember what they had for kitchens but it was not much, probably more like the old fridge / stove / sink combo unit you would get in the really bad no-tell motel rooms of the '70s.  

[USA4ME]

I agree that living in NYC and the space available are issues.  But I guarantee you there are people within the city living in the middle of the mess who did prepare, who did find space, who did make the trips necessary to the stores to be ready for this storm.  They aren't out diving into dumpsters.  They took personal responsibility and prepared, and that tells me it was possible for virtually everyone to have done the same.

.

[Wineslob]

Where is Oblahma?

[Chris_]

Where is Oblahma?

Duh, he's in Vegas.

[Karin]

Duh, he's in Vegas.

What's that you say?  Vegas?  Let's take a look at what Nevada's largest paper just said about king bobo:

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada's largest daily newspaper, has some extremely harsh words for President Obama in a new editorial. The words come in response to President Obama's leadership in the past four years, but specifically in response to his handling of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi known to the Review-Journal as Obama's "blunder."

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." He added, "Under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama's future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" - $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he's in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he's powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.

Snagged from Townhall--lots of comments

[DumbAss Tanker]

Don't forget that space also is at a premium in NYC. Lots of those apartments are pretty small. There's probably not much room for a week's worth of extra storage.

The most-affected residential areas are mainly single-family detached houses, really, though quite a few on Staten Island are likely rentals, it's still mainly houses.  But New Yorkers do have kind of a European mindset about food-shopping and so don't tend to shop the way most of the rest of the country does...of course, doing their best to keep out big box stores so the HAVE to shop a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there does kind of make them do that anyway, but that's all pretty much their own damn' fault.

[IassaFTots]

I can understand that they have a lack of space to put stuff, but I mean, everyone knew about the SUPERSTORM.  I dunno, I may have picked up a few cans of something extra. 

[A7X_foREVer]

I can understand that they have a lack of space to put stuff, but I mean, everyone knew about the SUPERSTORM.  I dunno, I may have picked up a few cans of something extra. 

That would be the smart thing

[catsmtrods]

Please realize the people you see picking thru the garbage don't have homes or closets. They were destroyed!

[vesta111]

Please realize the people you see picking thru the garbage don't have homes or closets. They were destroyed!

  ^5 to you.   

One big problem we have up here is the Ice storms that can knock out power for weeks at a time.   Shelters will open and find they are only half full as the people with no children refuse to leave their pets at  home.    We do have 2 shelters with in 30 miles of us that do take in pets [ small ones]  and you need documentation of shots etc.   

So correct you are about the Dumpster diving people left with no home,    One can have stocked up to the ceiling on canned food, flash lights and batteries but none of this is any good when the roof gets blown off the the home  and it no longer safe to stay there.

It took me over an hour to find a church key to open cans if needed, no electricity= no electric can opener. What horror to be cold, wet, surrounded with canned food and no way to get at it.

To make matters worse for businesses, a  few  unfortunately make an insurance claim for frozen or refrigerated food then when power comes on throw whatever back into the freezer and sell that to customers.   Interesting to note that after a bad storm with the power gone the number of people that get some form of food poisoning.

That fire that burned 50+ homes on LI in New York, it left the people with just the clothes on their back.    No transportation, no food or water.

Now we outside the zone that survived with little problems have to face our next insurance bill for our property and the jump in the cost to cover others will freak us out.  These storms do in fact effect everyone in some way.  Easy to think we ducked the bullet, but no we were only winged and wonder later about the blood on our shirts.    Others are burying their dead and the distruction of a life time of work that no amount of money can return.


                                                                                                                                                                                                           

[IassaFTots]

Please realize the people you see picking thru the garbage don't have homes or closets. They were destroyed!

CG, I would never begrudge a person for doing what they had to after they lost their home.  This is the group I was referring to. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emofly/hungry-new-york-families-dig-food-out-of-dumpsters

[vesta111]

CG, I would never begrudge a person for doing what they had to after they lost their home.  This is the group I was referring to. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emofly/hungry-new-york-families-dig-food-out-of-dumpsters

Facts are  for me, had I my 4 little ones with Hubby at sea  and a disaster hit you better believe I would be out looting food and dumpster diving to feed the kids, me, I would eat the neighbors cat if I got hungry enough. 

Hunger, shock, loss of home and a big storm, even if one is camping and manages to get back to the site and the tent and car is gone, desperate people do desperate things. 

People will do anything to quell that pain in the the belly from lack of food and water.  Comes down to self survival, the brain goes numb, no thought about anything but your own survival.     This is why I advocate people having the tools to defend themselves as others will kill you or your family for a candy bar if they are hungry enough. 

We sit here and judge others for their actions in desperate times for them,   We have no idea just how down and dirty we could become in their situation. 

[catsmtrods]

Looks like they found a dumpster full of frozen food. Honestly that's something I would not pass up even with no storm and my coffers full. Hell when opportunity knocks I open the door. What most likely happen there is the grocery store emptied its freezer B4 they rotted inside. No doubt they would have liked to give the food away but the Govt would not allow that!

[formerlurker]

Great I found a few cans of the canned food I stocked up on... now where is that can opener.... oh here it is.    Drat, it's electric.  

I am going to pass at throwing stones at these people.  

[NHSparky]

I am going to pass at throwing stones at these people.  

Same here.  But I think we've all see over the last week just how truly thin the veneer of society can truly be.  As bad as Sandy was, consider if it had been something much worse, like the 1938 hurricane, etc. 

Now imagine that such a storm was a widespread event, to the point where people all up and down the East Coast needed to use their resources there, rather than send them to a single spot.  Electricity cut to TENS of millions, refineries shut down for weeks or months, etc.

Even relatively unaffected areas like here would see fuel and food shortages in very short order.

And as far as the "dumpster diving" goes, yeah, the ex did a month-long assignment in NYC where her employer got her an apartment on the Upper West Side (quite a nice area) and it was the size of a cracker box.  Two electric burner stove, a mini fridge, and just enough cupboard space for a few dishes and a can of beans.  Compare that to living where I do, with plenty of storage and cabinet space, and if the electricity goes out, no worries, the BBQ on the back porch'll work just fine, and the generator can keep the stuff in the fridge and freezer nice and cold as long as I have gas (15 gallons plus whatever's in the generator.)

So space DOES in fact have a lot to do with one's ability to withstand disaster and the aftermath.  Manhattan has a population pushing 2 million, and is only 23 square miles.  Think about that.  My town has an area of over 50 square miles, and a population of barely 30,000.

[CG6468]

They need an organization like Yesterday's Meals on Wheels.

[Dori]

If they don't have the money to get another place, they need family/friends to take them in until next spring.  They are all going to get sick.  Winter is coming and I don't see a lot of help on the way anytime soon, let alone all the FEMA/insurance stuff that will have to be sorted out.





 

[vesta111]

I am going to pass at throwing stones at these people.  

Same here.  But I think we've all see over the last week just how truly thin the veneer of society can truly be.  As bad as Sandy was, consider if it had been something much worse, like the 1938 hurricane, etc. 

Now imagine that such a storm was a widespread event, to the point where people all up and down the East Coast needed to use their resources there, rather than send them to a single spot.  Electricity cut to TENS of millions, refineries shut down for weeks or months, etc.

Even relatively unaffected areas like here would see fuel and food shortages in very short order.

And as far as the "dumpster diving" goes, yeah, the ex did a month-long assignment in NYC where her employer got her an apartment on the Upper West Side (quite a nice area) and it was the size of a cracker box.  Two electric burner stove, a mini fridge, and just enough cupboard space for a few dishes and a can of beans.  Compare that to living where I do, with plenty of storage and cabinet space, and if the electricity goes out, no worries, the BBQ on the back porch'll work just fine, and the generator can keep the stuff in the fridge and freezer nice and cold as long as I have gas (15 gallons plus whatever's in the generator.)

So space DOES in fact have a lot to do with ones ability to withstand disaster and the aftermath.  Manhattan has a population pushing 2 million, and is only 23 square miles.  Think about that.  My town has an area of over 50 square miles, and a population of barely 30,000.

Sparky that 1938 storm hit a punch in the gut to many on the coast.    Mom remembers that storm, she was in HS at the time living in Mass.  Most homes and apartments had coal burners and were stocked up for the winter. Those with no gardens headed out in the summer time to pay to pick from farms and canned the produce. People still at that time cured meat and fish in salt brine.

Death toll was huge,the flimsy apartments of the mill workers were the first to go,  Fires took out half her town in the mill areas.    No police or few firefighters as most were volunteers and needed to care for their own family's.

There was no FEMA or national guard to truck in food, blankets or water to the survivors.  She lived in an area where her family's family had built their home themselves, strong and sure against the known elements.   Those in her area survived with little problem but were horrified at what happend to the other parts of their town.  

Very different time and age but all have one thing in common, the suffering  and death.  

In NY besides the all the problems there is another problem, the Rats that will fight for food with the humans.   5,000,000 of them hungry and angry.  It gives me the horrors as to what the people with all the garbage outside homes and spoiled food will do when those hungry buggers crawl out of the sewers looking for food.    Humans are way out numbered by the Rats and other Vermin in the city's

[Evil_Conservative]

The government is suppose to care (or so they think...) for them and that's why a majority of people don't have enough food for themselves.  We just went shopping yesterday and Smith's (Kroger) was having a HUGE canned food sale.  We have enough canned food to last the three of us a few weeks if something were to happen.