Hi all!
As I am not on Facebook anymore, I just wanted to let you know I survived Hurricane (what became Tropical Storm) Irene safe and well.

I am pretty lucky. I live in the middle of Manhattan, on a high level street, in an apartment squashed between 4 other apartment buildings, surrounded by several high rise luxury buildings, across the street from NYU hospital and down the way from Bellevue city hospital.

That did not stop me, however, from contemplating evacuation, calling friends and family to see if and where I could crash on a couch for the weekend, and following Mayor Bloomberg’s advice to stock up with a week’s worth of food and water, and a drawer full of flashlights. Along with nine million other (frantic) New Yorkers.

It was actually pretty scary on Friday as we woke up to evacuation alerts in NYC and the surrounding areas, especially after having just experienced an earthquake on Wednesday afternoon. The stores were packed. There was a line out the door, down the block and around the corner just to get into Trader Joe’s. Not to check out, to get in.

Many stores ran out of food on Friday. Most were closed Saturday and Sunday.

All public transportation in and out of the city shut down on Saturday at noon, all flights were grounded in and out of the major airports and MTA warned that many of the bridges would be closed.

It wasn’t mass hysteria, but people were very scared.
I saw mothers lining the curbs, holding the hands of their children, with infants on their backs, hailing cabs with little more than 1 bag.

I saw people on the street crying.

The homeless sought refuge in the city’s evacuation centers, along with other evacuees in Lower East Side and the East Village.

While most of Manhattan did not experience damage, if it had, say, experienced something like Hurricane Katrina, the results would have been catastrophic.

I think there are many people who were just shrugging their shoulders this morning thinking, what was all the hype about? And I would say to them that precautions, as the Mayor and the nyc government took this weekend, were very necessary. Natural disasters and evacuations are no joke in a city this big, on an island this small, with this many people. If there were a mass evacuation, there is a very real possibility that many people would be killed, just in the evacuation process. If you’ve ever been in Times Square during New Year’s Eve (I did last year), you’d know this.

As it stands, many of my coworkers in Queens were evacuated and got news that their cars floated into the street this weekend. Other coworkers on the island haven’t had power in days. Friends in Brooklyn were evacuated and are now (as the roads have finally opened back up) coming home to flooded and wind damaged homes. Friends in Vermont and many states in New England experienced much worse.

Many of you I have already communicated with and thanked for your thoughts and well wishes this weekend. Your thoughts and prayers were very appreciated. Please be praying and thinking of those who have lost their family members, their homes, their cars, and experienced damage in the northeast.

Hoping you are well,

Bethany