by Julie Prince.
Epic.
Unprecedented.
Potentially devastating.
You’ll hear these words as the TV newscasters ramp up the histrionics before an impending hurricane, especially in a region where they hit comparatively infrequently, like the Northeast, and especially in a hot and heavy media market like New York and the Greater Tri-State area.
But it was different this time. It wasn’t just “hype,” as Peter was predicting.
“I don’t think so, Peter. I know what you’re saying, but it sounds more ominous this time. I think they mean it. Aren’t you listening?”
“Eh, the storm will just brush lightly off the coast and head back out to sea,” he said with a certainty he had no right to possess.
“Why, Peter? Why do you say that? Because that’s how you want it to be?” I asked. Peter looked at me as if he didn’t quite grasp the question.
“What’s it like in that little bubble you live in? Must be nice in there. Do you get free wi-fi?”
Hybrid.
Full moon.
Meteorological novelty.
Well, certainly those are words you don’t hear often from your TV weather team. If at all. “Meteorological Novelty?” What’s that, an Al Roker bobblehead to stick in the back dash of your car?
“They’re calling it a ‘hybrid storm,’ Peter. There’s another storm coming in from the west over the Great Lakes, a big cold front. And I think I heard about something else too, coming down from the north. They’re all going to converge somewhere and it’s going to make the whole thing much, much worse, much more than it would be as ‘just’ a hurricane by itself. It’s going to be mammoth.”
Mammoth.
I don’t know if I heard that word used by Jim Cantore on the Weather Channel, but I’m sure more than one weather TV person used it on more than one station.
And the full moon would just complicate it even further. Whatever time it hit, wherever it did.
“…Somewhere in the vicinity of Atlantic City. But don’t let that fool ya here in New York,” the newscasters were saying, because, after all, New York City is the center of the universe. “It will hit here plenty hard and will affect thousands. Pay attention to the mayor, and if you are in Zone A, get yourself to family or friends or to a designated shelter as quickly as possible. Subways shut off at 7 PM. City buses stop at 9 PM.”
Storm surge.
Evacuate.
Hurry.
It’s hard to tell Northerners what to do; never mind New Yorkers.
Surfers.
First Responders.
“Please, get out of the water, stay away from the shoreline. We don’t want to risk the lives of our first responders by having them attempt rescues that are completely preventable. Be smart. Go home. If you are in Zone A, relocate to a shelter. Be safe,” Mayor Bloomberg intoned in a periodic press conference. In English, thankfully; though listening to the mayor’s fractured Spanish provided some of the very few moments of comic relief as we all listened to tense directives.
“Don’t be stupid!” New Jersey governor Chris Christie chose to cut to the chase, receiving equal TV time in the crisis, and gaining fans, if temporary ones, among we liberal New Yorkers, who were hanging tight and crossing our fingers along with everyone else of every political ilk. “If you were told to evacuate, evacuate. If you need help to evacuate, call us, and we will come help you. After the deadline, we cannot help you. I will not risk first responders’ lives to rescue people who did not listen in the first place.”
Daughter called in from Philadelphia. “I wish you were here,” I told her. “Where’s Ryan?” Boyfriend was almost to her; they’d ride it out together and most certainly make a romantic night of it at the very least, assuming the sides of her little apartment building held together. She’d finally stocked up earlier that day, after she answered my third harried text message demanding she do just that.
* Oh, I’m fiiine. I’ll go to the store and pick up some things a little laterrrr…*
I refrained from telling her “I told you so,” when she wrote back “a little laterrrr” to complain about the two-hour wait on the supermarket checkout line.
The storm finally arrived. A big noise. I am tempted to call it “un-godly,” but cannot do that in the light of what we now see and what shambles others have been left in, in the two hundred-plus radius of the eye of the storm. What did some of them hear, what did some of them see when the storm finally hit its hardest?
Destruction.
Devastation.
Mine was just scaffolding. Scaffolding ripped from the perfect curve between our two apartment buildings—the perfect little wind tunnel where high winds, when we do get them, funnel through the hardest. Scaffolding flying about. Plywood boards, corrugated metal sheets. “Stay away from the windows,” my friend from North Carolina shouted at me on the phone, as I “ooohed” and “ahhhed” at the scene from four stories up. Friends from all over had called in, even an elderly friend from England. “On the telly it looks bloody awful,” she worried.
“I’m sure it does,” I said. “But we are on high ground here. We are probably in the safest area of all of New York City. I just hope a tree doesn’t fall on my car.”
It didn’t. It did on some around the neighborhood, most certainly, but not on mine.
But never mind my stupid car; never mind our neighborhood, where most of us could look from our windows many stories above the highway which runs many, many feet above the Hudson River, and had no cars—the bridges were closed. Disturbed-looking and brown, the river, dragging its angry self down and along and up and over the shoreline, but far enough from us that we could gawk from the safety of our kitchens and bedrooms and be thankful we didn’t live farther downtown, where Con Ed had turned off the power in lower Manhattan before the storm even arrived in order to minimize the damage to the system. Where the storm surges hit and that angry brown water ran so many blocks in.
Outtages.
Aftermath.
The next day. The storm rolled through neighborhoods—former neighborhoods. Rockaway Beach, Breezy Point, Seaside Heights. Dreamlike names; now nightmare names; names of places where people now sat on foundations of homes that no longer existed, unless they could be found washed up a few blocks along. Clutching their kids, clutching a damp wedding picture, wondering what happened to the dog. Wondering…what to wonder about first.
“If you have listened to the last fifteen minutes of this press conference, then you would not be asking that question.” Straight-shooting Governor Christie. Or words to that effect. “I just told you there are houses sitting on Route 135, there are shore towns in ruins, and you’re asking me about re-scheduling Halloween?”
Sorry.
“And residents of Atlantic City. If you can hear me at all, we won’t even be able to begin to try to get to you until tomorrow morning. I gave you fair warning—over and over—to evacuate, and your mayor, for some reason, thought it would be a better idea to direct residents to seek shelter locally…”
Mayor.
Shithouse.
“…So you are there, and we are here, and the roads are flooded out like we predicted they would be, and we will get to you when we can.”
Sorry.
“Con-Ed predicts it will take a week or more to restore service to parts of New York City.”
Sorry.
Hang in.
A fire in Queens taking down eighty homes which might otherwise have been saved and fixed and gone on to last for generations.
Salt on the wound.
Tents set up as polling stations in Staten Island on Election Day in the middle of all the mess.
Vote.
A snowstorm. A storm which wouldn’t have been awful—would simply have been slightly freakish for the time of year—had it not snowed down and pelted sleet on people who until a week before had perfectly adequate roofs over their heads.
Insult to injury.
Help.
And people are. Helping. They’re coming out. They’re taking collections at schools and synagogues, churches and community centers, police precincts and local bars. They’re bringing it all down—clothing and diapers and people food and dog food and soap and maxi pads and toothbrushes.
They’re going down there with shovels and work gloves and hammers and saws. They’re helping clean up. Helping rebuild. Rescuing pets. Feeding children. People helping people.
Give.
Give again.