NYC's top cop preps for Hurricane Irene
NEW YORK - With Hurricane Irene bearing down on the East Coast, the nation's largest mass transit system -- a system about eight million commuters depend on daily -- will shut down at about noon Saturday.
CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley spoke with New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly about the storm preparations.
Kelly: The subways are going to be shut down. The buses will shut down at essentially the same time.
Pelley: Manhattan of course is connected by nothing but bridges and tunnels to the mainland.
What happens to bridges and tunnels if hurricane-force winds come?
Kelly: In essense, 60 mph winds - the bridges are going to be shut down.
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Pelley: So, for some period of time, Manhattan is going to be isolated?
Kelly: Yes. Difficult to say how long, but once you shut down the subway system it takes a while to get it back up again.
Pelley: Has that ever been done before in New York City? The systematic shutting down of all the subways and the buses?
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Kelly: Not that I can recall. They have been shut down. For instance, we've had a blackout, in 2003. That subways just stopped - people were removed from trains.
Pelley: This is the first time the subway system has had a planned main shutdown that was purpose?
Kelly: Correct. That's right.
Pelley: It seems to me that you spend a great deal of your time thinking about counter-terrorism. And, here you've had an earthquake and a hurricane in one week.
Kelly: That's true. But interestingly enough, some the things that we do in our counter-terrorism efforts, for instance in being able to mobilize large numbers of police officers and actually create that task force for our counter-terrorism efforts will be helpful in this regard.
Pelley: So all of the work that you've done in couter-terrorism on coordinating the force, on rolling the force out for major emergencies on communication systems for example - all that's going to be handy now?
Kelly: That's correct. Yeah, it's going to help. I think the efforts to protect the city from the terrorists attack, it helps us in crime-fighting and sort of an all hazards approach or environment, we find ourselves in that.
