TRIAGE: Amtrak Chose Not To Deluge Penn Station During Hurricane Sandy. “While Hurricane Sandy raged over the New York metropolitan area, the underground infrastructure of the city began to flood. Now Amtrak is revealing that they could have let Penn Station flood instead of the East River tunnels, using a long-forgotten barrier designed to protect the city during World War II. . . . A former employee told WNYC that the barrier was created to protect the transportation system from attack and other explosions during the Second World War, but it was apparently never used. The barrier worked by cutting off the mouth of the tunnel, but a lake would have been created right at the entrance to Penn Station and could have filled the entire thing. . . . To try to rehabilitate all that would have been an enormous task, even bigger than the cleanup we currently face. As it stands, the Montague Tunnel, which carries the subway system’s R train under the East River, was completely flooded, and now faces a 14-month long shutdown and repair. Cutting one subway line in half is one thing. Cutting Amtrak in half, at least in the Northeast, is another.”