Thursday, August 25, 2011
New York City is preparing for a hurricane. Hard to believe. The mayor is actually talking about evacuations. Meg is checking maps to see if her apartment is in an evacuation zone. She is still in Denver and will miss the storm, but the impact will be felt long after she is scheduled to go back next week.
The idea of a hurricane hitting the City is unfathomable to me. I cannot imagine 70 mile an hour winds whistling between the buildings on Broadway or shaking the Empire State Building. Storm surge flooding Battery Park. Subways shut down. Power out. How can you survive in a high rise without electricity? In many buildings the widows don’t open. How many windows might break?
Evacuations? Eight million people live in New York City, over a million and a half in Manhattan. Most of them do not own cars. How can that many people evacuate an island? Where will they go? The storm will have impacts miles inland. Not to mention everyone on Long Island, New Jersey, etc. having to evacuate. (I suppose this means Snooki will have to leave.) The Weather Channel said 60 million people live in the path of this storm.
I will be watching the news intently through the weekend. New York is full of cameras. This should be the most well-documented weather event in history. Will the Statue of Liberty’s island flood? Will winds knock down massive amounts of trees in Central Park? How about the Brooklyn Bridge? It is over 130 years old.
Meg and I were fortunate enough to see New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. It was a charming, vibrant city. Quaint old buildings hosting hot jazz and big drinks (the most famous ironically known as “The Hurricane”). When we returned after Katrina it was not the same. Could a hurricane have the same kind of impact on New York? Much of lower Manhattan is landfill. Could the sea reclaim that land? Can flooding cause permanent subway damage? There are dozens of bridges, and a tramway to Roosevelt Island. La Guardia Airport is right on the water.
Can you imagine all the crap that will be flying around if the winds are over 70 miles per hour? This will be one for the ages. I keep hoping something will push this away or reduce its force. If not, New York City might never be the same.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]