Seriously thoughtful Hurricane Sandy: Your experiences?

[BelleZora]

Thanks for your wonderfully descriptive reports. The difference between them and news reports is sort of like the difference between walking beside you versus looking down from a helicopter flyover.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Thanks for the kind words. Ten years ago, I wrote similarly about 9/11, and even amid the mounting piles of testimony and reportage, no one seemed to mention most of what I saw.

Since then, I've tried hard to observe exactly what's there, without trying to make myself sound sensitive or good.

If I can do that -- if I can stay free of "The Narrative," as Bloomberg once called it -- the sequence of reported events and their so-called message, which then solidifies into pseudo-history -- then perhaps the actual people I see will be honored. Perhaps they can live just a little bit longer, if only in my head.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Let's hope it isn't happening again.

[BelleZora]

Oh yes, let's hope it won't. Still so much concern for those without heat. At Princeton where my granddaughter is a student, all academic buildings were shut down while on generator power so that heat for the students could be provided.

I'm so sorry for all those without that option. There is much concern in my disaster-free North Idaho town and contributions given to the Red Cross.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

Thanks for your wonderfully descriptive reports. The difference between them and news reports is sort of like the difference between walking beside you versus looking down from a helicopter flyover.

I agree. Please keep posting as you are able -- it reminds us that the hardship has only just begun, even if the news coverage shifts to others issues.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Unbelievably, the outage in my particular part of Manhattan is over.

I stayed at work for as long as I possibly could, knowing that darkness and cold awaited me later. By the time I left at 7:03 p.m., it was windy and frigid outside and the bench in the booth by the bus stop sign was too cold for anyone's behind. The Number 20 arrived late and even the aisles were packed with people -- an unusual situation for a bus in Battery Park.

I exchanged monosyllables with the driver and left him alone because he had to negotiate his way to the freeway without the drivers on cross streets even knowing it was his turn. We rode through darkness and I saw queues of hooded pedestrians with flashlights swiveling and shrinking as we passed.

We got to my destination faster than I ever remembered getting there before -- the driver must have skipped half the route. He let me off at 14th Street and 8th Ave -- I almost missed my stop. When I looked around, I was surprised to see traffic lights functioning on 14th, and even streetlights twinkling on the uptown side. Restaurants were fully lit over there on 15th and beyond. I made out candles in one, but the full overheads next door announced that both places had power, actual power.

From 13th Street down -- the downtown side of the street -- only the road flares were visible in what would have seemed black glass behind the first receding block, which was still slightly illuminated by the lights on the other side.

I stood beside a bus stop sign in the dark in front of a candle-lit bodega. The mustachioed child inside was still selling whatever stock the owner had left. I didn't go in because I made out my bus in the distance.

I didn't think the bus driver would see me, so I jumped up and down and waved at the 14-D as it approached.

I shouldn't have worried.

For three blocks going south, everything remained dark outside my passenger window but for the occasional traffic light. How could the driver even tell where he was? I wondered how I'd know when I was close to home if the window beside my seat was going to remain that uninflected.

Then on Broadway, the streetlights and the occasional drug store seemed to be fully lit. By Union Square, both sides of the street were white with neon and all the shops were open. You could see customers waiting for the cashiers in Whole Foods. It felt miraculous.

As we continued to drive, the other passengers and I became apprehensive. Surely the light and power were going to stop. We assumed our places near the projects would still be submerged in shadow.

We turned the corner on 14th and C: Con Ed's electric works were torchlight-bronzed and functioning. In the seats behind me, an African-American older gentleman and a younger Latino man held hands. "Look like Verizon doin' they business," the older man said.

"It sure does, baby," the younger man agreed. "Weren't none-a this on when we left."

All the way home, the streetlights and storefronts remained lit. Everyone was relieved or pleased, nodding or simply grinning. The people on a New York City bus usually look bored and annoyed. They didn't look that way this time.

"I can't believe the lights are on," I whispered to our white-haired driver.

"I know," he said. "I dint think they'd be on eitheh. My wife said they lit around five."

When the bus driver let me off, I jumped through the doors and ran to my building. I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to see the awning lit, the lights in the hallway when I entered. It was thrilling to unlock my door and glimpse the brightness inside through the crack.

The first thing I heard was my television tuned to the news channel, as it had been just before the power went down. The bland newscasters' voices greeted me as I put away the leftovers I'd taken home from the cafeteria, thinking they'd comprise my main meal for the weekend. I took the milk I'd tried to keep fresh out of what had been the tepid freezer. The liquid was already partly frozen.

I hadn't watched TV in years before the storm, but now I felt reluctant to turn it off. For the past six days, my only company at home had been the voices of those stagey weather announcers on my crank-powered radio. You get attached to voices when you're alone in the darkness and I definitely felt that. But then the spell broke and I switched off those alarmists' hypnotic mantras.

They're the reason, after all, that we tend to ignore true disasters. They make ordinary events sound so dramatic that the real ones don't seem real.

* * * * *

It feels amazing to have light, heat and internet service -- to type this message at home on my personal laptop at last.

Imagine how it would feel to live in a place where you lacked these things. Maybe life is actually better than we think. Perhaps ordinary things are exquisite luxuries.

[BelleZora]

Thank you for posting this! I am incredibly relieved and happy for you and for your neighbors. It was also good to see that help has arrived on Staten Island.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Thanks for your good thoughts, BelleZora.

I'm happy for the many victims on Staten Island, too. Let's hope for the best for the Jersey Shore and Hoboken as well.

[kindlekitten]

good wishes to you and yours and revel in your comfort!

fyi (everyone) the marathon has been cancelled (that was potentially the worst decision EVER!)

thoughts from an old SAR (Search and Rescue) 'gal... when you are told to evacuate, and ESPECIALLY when it is a mandatory evacuation, and you ignore the order, your ass should be charged a thousand bucks a minute for rescue services, and/or you should just be abandoned. the proceeding is brought to you from someone who has gone after too many idiots who have skied out of posted boundaries and done other equally numb nutted things in the wild.

the previous not aimed at our friendly reporter;o)

[mizzlia]

So glad to hear this now i need for the subway system to be working again fully that is because im in an area that buses cannot take me where i need to go and the subway isnt working where i live

[Prestidigitweeze]

Thanks for the thoughts, KinKit. And of course I knew you didn't mean me because I was never in Zone A (the evacuated area).

Yes, attempting to continue with the marathon was yet another perceptive decision on the part of Mayor B., the man who thought huge traffic islands on congested streets and bike lanes on mortally dangerous freeways were great ideas.

Did you happen to hear New Jersey Governor Chris Christie berate Atlantic City's Mayor Lorenzo for refusing to carry out his crucial evacuation instructions?

Mizzlia: Where are you roughly?

[mizzlia]

Im in brooklyn williamsburg

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Thanks for the thoughts, KinKit. And of course I knew you didn't mean me because I was never in Zone A (the evacuated area).

Yes, attempting to continue with the marathon was yet another perceptive decision on the part of Mayor B., the man who thought huge traffic islands on congested streets and bike lanes on freeways were great ideas.

Did you happen to hear New Jersey Governor Chris Christie berate Atlantic City's Mayor Lorenzo for refusing to carry out his crucial evacuation instructions?

Mizzlia: Where are you roughly?

yes, numerous times, what's the truth?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

yes, numerous times, what's the truth?

It's very clear that Mayor Langford advised residents to leave Atlantic City. It's also clear that Christie has politicized the governance of opponents relentlessly in the past and tends to approach press conferences with a kind of aggressive subjectivity, as if he were giving intimate interviews that verged on diaristic.

What I haven't seen reported is whether or not Langford actually implemented or restated Christie's explicit evacuation order. If Langford did not, then Christie has a point.

Whatever the case, Christie was completely wrong when he claimed that Mayor Langford had opposed the evacuation (as I heard him say just before the storm hit). Christie carefully rephrased the charge a few days later, saying that Langford "sent mixed messages" to the population of Atlantic City -- a charge which is serious enough in itself, but especially so if people truly weren't ordered to evacuate by the Mayor as well as the Governor. It's difficult enough to make people take an evacuation order seriously.

If we ever get to the truth, it will probably happen after the next election.

Originally Posted by mizzlia

Im in brooklyn williamsburg

Last night, I posted here after staying awake for twenty-two hours. I didn't want to risk sounding flippant because I was tired, so my apologies for waiting until now to respond.

Three of my friends in Brooklyn have been walking or biking to work in Manhattan. One of them lives next to the Lorimer stop on the L line, so she's quite close, but what's rather interesting is that she's also pregnant. Part of me suspects she doesn't want to give away the fact she has a ride from a co-worker (impropriety, etc.), but then I think of my friend and former co-editor in Brooklyn who lives more than twice as far away and made a point of walking from his place on Greene Ave to the bridge and across to the Lower East Side, which he did every day from the third day of the blackout until yesterday. Perhaps he's even doing it today as well, though I doubt it because of the cold.

If there's anything I can do to help, mizzlia -- any anecdotal, visual or empirical information about transportation to which I might have access -- let me know and I'll be happy to look into it for you.

[Fbone]

My electric was just restored this morning. Nine days later.

Flooding was the worst I've seen. Whole towns wiped out. Every home destroyed.

For others like me we've sustained some damaged. Flooded basements, trees down, etc. However, we're grateful to be alive.