Ten Words from Today's NY Times - October 31, 2012

Rescuers looked for survivors in the wet rubble in places like Atlantic City, and state and local officials surveyed wreckage.

Water climbed to the ceiling of the South Ferry subway station, the end of the No. 1 line in Lower Manhattan, and debris covered tracks in stations up and down other lines after the water rushed in and out.

The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel also remained impassable, he said.

The chief executive of Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, took the rare step of disputing a presidential candidate by calling the assertion “inaccurate.”

The Times, in collaboration with Quinnipiac and CBS News, has tracked the presidential race with recurring polls in key battleground states.

For nearly a decade, scientists have told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril: rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns.

“As soon as you breach the sides of Manhattan, you now have a whole infrastructure under the city that fills — the subway system, the foundations for buildings,” and the World Trade Center site.

But many experts say, given what happened with the latest storm, that inertia could be more expensive.

“A fair question to ask is, have we been as focused as we need to be for emergency preparations,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize ties to the administration.

Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution said that the city, to its credit, had developed a coastal storm plan that treated seriously the city’s susceptibility, given its 520-mile coastline.