New York City to Shut Down City’s Mass Transit on Saturday, Anticipating Wrath of Hurricane Irene — UPDATE: New Yorkers, Stock Up on Food & Supplies
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 26, 2011
New York City’s subway, rail, and bus systems will be closed down tomorrow in anticipation of Hurricane Irene | Photo credit: Alberto Avramidis, Flickr.com
Hurricane Irene is expected to slam the East Coast within the next 24 or so hours.
From my New York Times news alert email messages, this just came in:
New York City to Shut Down Mass Transit on Saturday at Noon
With Hurricane Irene pushing relentlessly toward the East Coast, officials made plans to shut down New York City’s sprawling subway and bus system beginning at noon on Saturday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.
The commuter rail lines that serve Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut will also be shut down.
Officials decided to go ahead with the transit shutdown, which they had first mentioned on Thursday as a possibility at a City Hall briefing on Thursday, as the city was evacuating hospitals and nursing homes in low-lying areas. State officials continued arrangements for coordinating emergency services and restoring electricity if the storm does the kind of damage many fear.
Update… I live in the desert region of Arizona, where we have triple-digit, “scorch your bare feet” heat most of the year, but no hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or the like. This excellent, valuable advice (which I should have been stressing heavily all week, but didn’t think to) is from HillBuzz to New Yorkers and others on the East Coast who live in the predicted path of Irene: URGENT: If you know anyone in the path of Hurricane Irene, especially New Yorkers, urge them to either get out or stock up on supplies:
Today I’d like to ask you to please think about anyone you personally know who lives in Hurricane Irene’s path — especially any New Yorkers you know — because people have long stopped taking hurricane warnings seriously, due to the sensationalized and ridiculous “STORM OF THE CENTURY!” hyperbole our irresponsible media uses when talking about storms. They cry wolf, or more aptly “Killer Hurricane!”, so often that when a monster storm does emerge, people don’t much notice.
I have about a dozen good friends in New York City and the environs and all of them are getting personal calls and emails from me doing my level best to get them to take a weekend road trip away from the city, somewhere upstate and safe. A weekend away might be just a weekend away if Hurricane Irene doesn’t smack right into New York, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t urge them to leave and a New Orleans-style disaster happened.
If they are too stubborn to leave the city, I’m urging them to stock up on bottled water, canned foods that can be eaten without cooking, peanut butter, and any non-perishables that can fill their cupboards. I’m also telling them to get plastic water containers they can fill up and freeze so that if they lose power for several days (or weeks) during Irene’s wake, they’ll have ice in their freezer to keep things cool.
My biggest concern with Irene hitting New York City is the incompetence of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in a crisis.
Couple his ineptitude with several generations’ worth of union laziness, and New York is a city that is painfully vulnerable to any natural disaster. Just look at what happened last winter when it snowed like crazy around Christmas. Bloomberg was in Bermuda, at his island palace, when the unions decided to just stop snow removal services because it was too much work and they were upset the city was facing cutbacks of union perks.
Union work crews are an oxymoron, with most of them comprised of at most one worker and seven or eight supervisors who have not done any actual work in many years. When a disaster strikes, these guys aren’t suddenly going to know how to handle anything. They are, true to union form, most likely to run away and leave everyone around them to fend for themselves, just like they did during the Christmas blizzard.
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