Mind-boggling destruction all around us but we sit high and dry. Its old news now but Hurricane Irene has come and gone leaving flooding, beach destruction and major power outages from North Carolina to Canada. Here in Manhattan we were concerned and prepared for the worst. One block from the mandatory evacuation zone we didn’t know how safe we would be. We prepared ourselves. Water, food, taped the windows, got batteries for flashlights and a new radio. Not much happened to us though. Oh yeah, the wind blew, it rained 7 or 8 inches but none of our preparations proved to be necessary. We experienced no loss of power, no windows blown out, and only minor flooding.
This, of course was not true all around us. Power outages for thousands persist; flooding continues to be a dangerous problem and more than a thousand homes were destroyed. Farmlands, shopping malls and roads are under water. We were lucky we were where we were when Irene arrived. We were lucky Irene had weakened before she arrived. Since living in Manhattan we have experienced and survived a historical snow storm, Nor-Easters, an earthquake and now a tropical storm/hurricane. Let’s hope that’s the end of these sorts of mind-boggling phenomenon.
Irene did bring Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel to our neighborhood for periodic TV updates nationally. We enjoyed seeing him in locations we know well and then in person. I walked miles the day after Irene looking for damage but found nothing except a few small branches blown down in Battery Park. The sun was out and so were the tourists and shoppers. New York gets back to “normal” very quickly.
Stan the Man
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