12 Hour Wait For Gas, Runs Out At The End

NYC Educator posted about his struggles to get gas this morning out on Long Island. 

I can attest that the lines are long and tempers are getting short here in New Jersey.

And DNAinfo reports that the free "Obama gas" has been running out before everybody on line gets it:

CROWN HEIGHTS — Jhonn Puente needed a few gallons of gas to keep his generator running in Brownsville apartment. A tree fell on his building during Hurricane Sandy and he has been without electricity or heat for nearly a week.

Robert Michelin ran out of gas Saturday and pushed his car to Crown Heights from Prospect Heights hoping to get enough fuel to start his engine and get the car to a safe location.

Don Fox's tank was on empty and he needs to get to work on Sunday. His family depends on it.
All three waited twelve hours to receive gas from the National Guard at the Bedford-Union Armory in Crown Heights, only to be turned away at 11:30 p.m. when gas ran out.

"It's freezing out here," said Puente. "I can't feel my toes and after hours of waiting they just turn us away? This was completely mismanaged."

Gas was like liquid gold to the hundreds of Brooklynites who lined up Saturday afternoon to receive free fuel from the National Guard.

A line of shivering, bundled figures on foot snaked down Bedford Avenue while people waited for the the chance to fill up red plastic gas canisters, Kikkoman Soy Sauce buckets and water cooler tanks with gasoline.  Only the pregnant were allowed to jump out of line for food.

Daisy Vanderyard is seven months along, and was standing in the cold for seven hours before she was able to fill her bucket.

"My husband needs gas to get to work," she said.

Travis Howard is a second-year psychology student at an upstate university and needs to get back for classes that start back up on Monday. He hugged his high school sweetheart throughout a six-hour wait in the freezing line.

"I came back to make sure she was okay after the storm," he said. "Now I'm stuck here without gas."
But Howard and Vanderyard were among the hundreds of lucky ones who were able to get gas. The reservists were met with grateful faces as they pumped fuel into empty tanks and buckets.

"Come out to visit Coney Island," Sean Shields yelled to the Guardsman who filled his tank. "I'll show you around and take you out to a hot meal."

But at 11:30 p.m., more than 12 hours after the free gas station opened, the National Guard ran out of gas. And with over 100 people still waiting, police were not met with understanding when they announced no more gas would be given out.

"People bum-rushed the front of the line at first," said Alonso PoCantor, a community affairs officer. "They were understandably distressed, but there is nothing we can do. When the gas is gone, it's gone."

After a few minutes of frustrated yelling, residents slowly began to leave the armory, limping away with empty canisters on frozen toes.

The car line was several blocks deep. Some ran out of gas while waiting to fuel up. Michelin pushed his gas-dry car to the curb with the help of some passersby.

"I can't push this car anymore," he said. "It'll just stay here, I have nothing left."

You can bet those wealthy white people eating $150 dollar steaks on the Upper East Side who applauded Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the "great job" he's doing with the recovery effort the other day weren't the ones turned away without the gas.

They also weren't the ones waiting on the line for the gas either.

Nope - they're back in their snug, well-lit, well-heated homes talking about how thankful they are to have the managerial genius of Michael Bloomberg running this city during its time of need.

Meanwhile government at so many levels is failing people in the Rockaways, in Coney Island, on Roosevelt Island, in Broad Channel, in Sea Gate, in Gerritsen Beach, on Staten Island and even in places that weren't damaged much by the storm itself but where resources and supplies are now running out.

But I reserve special disdain for our city government run by our Dear Leader Michael Bloomberg who is so clueless and disdainful of working and middle class people that he would be running the NYC Marathon today if he had his druthers rather than using the resources slated for that event for Sandy victims.

So clueless is our Dear Leader Bloomberg that he had his NYC Department of Education stay up late into the night on Thursday to put together a program for a Professional Development Day on Friday for teachers even though many schools are damaged, were without power, and some - like Graphic Arts in Manhattan - have turned into horrific sites for Sandy evacuees.

Incompetence through and through.

I will have more on this later becuase I have been asking myself why it is Bloomberg is getting a pass from the media on this.

Can you imagine if this was Dinkins running the recovery effort and hiding NYC Marathon generators from storm victim use (as the NY Post reported today) or running a storm evacuation center as horrific as the one at Graphic Arts as described by NY1 and the Daily News?

The media would not be so gentle toward Dinkins - or Ray Nagin - if those guys were running this incompetent recovery effort.

But somehow billionaire bozo Bloomberg gets a free pass, skating with some mild criticism from the media even as it becomes quite clear that he has no idea how to run a storm recovery effort for the whole city, indeed, may not even be interested in running a recovery effort for the whole city.

He and his merry men and women have been busy with the (now canceled) marathon prep, the NYCDOE PD Day By Candlelight extravaganza, the "Bloomberg endorses Obama" announcement, the multi-million dollar Bloomberg SUPERPAC ad buys for Tuesday's election instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing - helping this city - all of this city - recover from the storm.

I suspect if Dinkins or Nagin were acting as Bloomberg is acting, they would be hammered for it.

But so far, our Dear Bloomberg is skating accountability-free.

I have to think that the press is afraid to take on the billionaire media mogul for fear he will retaliate personally against them later.

Let's be honest, Bloomberg owns a whole swath of media already and is rumored to be in the market for both the New York Times and the Financial Times too.

With so few media outlets left to work at, I can't imagine too many in the press aren't treading carefully around Bloomberg.

Too bad some of them don't live in Rockaway.

Maybe then they would have the guts to tell the mayor to his face what an incompetent fuck he is.