Not so perfect storm

According to the forecasts, we should currently be in the midst of a Category 1 hurricane in NYC, with high winds, torrential rain, flooding and all kinds of apocalyptic events. Instead, I am looking out my window and hearing a light breeze, people on the streets again, no rain, it even looks like the sun might come out soon. I am glad the city was prepared this time around: we all know what a hurricane can do to a densely populated area (New Orleans) and we know what happens to NYC after an unanticipated snowstorm (last Christmas). I am glad that the Mayor and the Governor were on top of things this time around, and since I do not live in or near the evacuation areas, I don't have much to say about that, but in the end it's better to be safe than sorry, I am sure most people would agree. But what's ridiculous is the panic that was created in the city. I wasn't worried until sometime on Friday: I went to the little 99-cent store by my apartment in the morning and people were buying water by the gallons, there was a bit of an argument over who gets the last flashlight in the store and there was generally this hysterical mood you could see in people. Just in case, to follow the crowd, I bought a gallon of water myself, some canned veggies, nutella (very important!), batteries - I thought that a battery-operated radio would be going a bit too far - and headed into work. There, my boss was creating panic: he ran around the lab all day checking all essential equipment and making sure they were all plugged in to the outlets that were connected to the hospital backup-generators. Ok, not a bad idea in any case. Then, there were the multiple emails from HSS, Cornell, and other affiliated institutions about the "hurricane preparations". Memorial Hospital was looking for volunteers for the weekend: some south Manhattan hospitals were evacuated and a lot of patients were brought to Memorial and so they were a bit overwhelmed. I put my name on the list for Monday; I had already planned a quiet weekend at home so I didn't want to worry about getting to the Upper East Side in the storm. Later in the evening, I also got an email from Beth Israel asking volunteers if they could come in during the weekend. Again, I said I could do some extra shifts on Monday if needed.

So, by Friday afternoon, the panic-mood had reached me too. Seeing everybody around me going with it, I felt like I needed to do something to prepare. So after I was done with my experiments for the day, I headed out with a friend to find flashlights. Here is what we found:




Loooong lines everywhere, especially at hardware and grocery stores. People panicking. Some people laughing. I was most disgusted by the $20 flashlights that you could fit into your pocket (without batteries, and at that point, it was no easy feat finding batteries in the city). COME ON PEOPLE! The forecast, at worst, called for the storm to linger for 12 hours. Even if there were massive power outages, we would not have had more than a couple of days without electricity. I know it would have been annoying and very inconvenient but do we really need 10 AA and 10 AAA batteries for each person in this case??? I said to my friend that I though this was a huge conspiracy between the city government and store owners to scare the shit out of people so that they would go out and spend money to stimulate the flailing economy.

In any case, after all public transportation was shut down, it became clear that they wanted people to stay put at home and that's what I was planning to do as well. Yesterday I woke up late, made a big breakfast (in case I never got to eat again??) cooked a lot of stuff from my freezer (in case the power went out), worked on some applications, watched a lot of apocalyptic TV - aka: weather reports and news, cuz that was all that was on TV yesterday - and then my roomie and I watched 3 movies (The princess bride, Wicker Park and Grease) with some beer and really unhealthy snacks. It was a good day, although I am not one who can do nothing for very long. Maybe it'll be nice enough by the afternoon to go for a run :)