I have been dying to write something for a few days now, but the recovery has been a little bumpy here, to say the least. While I have power, heat and water again, our internet service has been very strange. It mostly works, but somehow, certain websites would not load, including our school email sometimes, and blogger. So here I am in the lobby of the wonderful Ace Hotel, with its free WiFi and the best coffee in town!
Last week was arguably the strangest in my life so far. After 2 and a half months of non-stop work and studying and trying to catch up with the rat-race that is medical school, I suddenly had nothing to do for 5 whole days. Without going into too much detail about the storm - you've all seen on TV I am sure - it was windy and loud, but from my 4th floor bedroom, where I spent most of last Monday, it was not that scary. Especially considering that for the worst of the storm I was not alone (I have to say it's a great idea to start dating someone right before a hurricane hits). At one point, there was a really bright flash and then darkness. No internet, no lights, power out. We looked out the window: neighboring buildings all dark. Shit. Where are the candles? I had bought many last year before Irene, but where are they??? Somewhere in a box probably. Not at all prepared this time around... thankfully, I am a little bit of a candle person so there are always some decorative candles in my room. It was very useful. I had enough cell phone reception to snap a picture and post on Facebook. I didn't think at the time, but several people have told me that was a great idea since for the next 24 hours or so, we had very limited communication with the outside world. A few minutes later my phone lost all service.
For a couple of more hours, the boy's phone was still working, but we could not really figure out what was going on in the outside world. What was that flash? What were the screams coming from the street? Was there some dramatic rescue going on? Why were people walking across 1st Ave in the midst of the storm in the middle of the night? He was getting emergency text messages both from NYU and NYC telling us to stay inside. Of course, we had no idea that there was in fact a dramatic rescue of patients going on from NYU Medical Center at the time. Some of our fellow students were going over to the hospital to help with the evacuations - part of me wishes that we had gone, but then again, some people went and were turned away because there was already chaos at the hospital. We decided that getting killed by a falling tree would not benefit neither us nor the patients at NYU. And that was likely wise as this was seen on our street a couple of days later:
Being cut off from the world is a strange feeling. At the time, we had no idea about the extent of the devastation NYU would suffer; the fact that we would not have access to our school email or any online materials for several days, or that all three hospitals would eventually be evacuated and shut down for many weeks to come; or that our medical school was so badly damaged that we no longer have a library, a student lounge, any lecture halls, study spaces or printers. We considered watching a movie on the remaining power of my laptop, but instead, spent hours freaking out about not having any connection. It wasn't so long ago that we were completely fine without constant internet connection, cell phones, social media and other means of communication. It's a strange feeling, to say the least. It took us a little while to come to terms with it and figure out that there were plenty of other things to do, like talking, and other more fun things :)
For about 3 hours, I was actually really excited about the candles and the darkness, and brushing teeth in the dark and eating all the ice cream before it melted. But as soon as our water shut down, I realized this was not exciting at all. I don't think we slept much that night. It was loud, we were too excited, too preoccupied. The next morning, the realization hit us that we were free. Also, that we didn't have water. No cell phone service either. At certain spots in the lobby, I could receive text messages. There was an amazing outpouring of support from my friends! I got many text messages asking if I was all right and offering places to stay in case our power was out. I was so touched. I still am. To have the best friends in the whole wide world. I literally had at least a handful of options for where to stay for the next few nights.
But our first thought was - yup, we are nuts! - to get on our bikes (yup, it was still raining) and head downtown to see what had happened. I did something similar after Irene last year with Daniel, but that was in August and at that time, the storm had completely passed by then. Not so much this year. We rode in the rain and wind. However, we were in a crowd! There were many people out running, exploring, walking dogs, all kinds of crazy things New Yorkers do the morning after a major hurricane hit the city. I tried to take a similar picture - it doesn't look all that different from last year's day-after-the-hurricane shot. But it was SO different!
Sine we had no power or water in our apartment building on Tuesday morning, I had no coffee (not a good way to start my day) and I was beginning to give up on getting any coffee below 26th St. And then, I saw a couple walking by, holding paper cups. "Where did you get those??" There was one building in Battery Park City that had power (don't ask me how) and they happened to have a deli on the first floor. Imagine all the grumpy New Yorkers who couldn't make their morning coffees in their apartments, or go to the Starbucks down the block. They were all in that one deli! I was determined though. 20 minutes later I had a cup of coffee! Life never stops in NYC!
We even found a bar in Chinatown that must have had its own generator because they were open for business - although with candles, but that might have been just for the heck of it.
But in general, the destruction was obvious around the city. Overturned trees everywhere, no traffic lights, anarchy on the roads - awesome for bikers!
When we made it down to the Southernmost point of Manhattan and stopped to take some pictures, we ran into this guy standing by a small building housing public bathrooms. He was standing near a random outlet hanging off a railing as you can see, charging his phone. We presumed that some TV crew must have left the cable there - where the power was coming from, who knows, but we plugged out phones in and I even managed to call home and send a couple of emails.
From there, we headed uptown towards civilization - we had heard that above 39th St., there was electricity! Kelsey had offered her apartment for whatever we needed, so we rode up to 85th St to charge our phones and find some food. On a Tuesday afternoon, the Upper East Side looked like on a Friday night: all pubs full, every restaurant with over an 1 hour wait! People had nothing to do, so they were out eating and drinking. We walked around for nearly an hour trying to find wings - we gave up after the 5th bar and settled for Mexican. And some beer. Later on, we found the same scene on the Upper West Side. It was as if nothing had happened and people just had a day off. The contrast was extremely stark.
At that point, we didn't even know about the condition of NYU. Later in the evening, at the boy's friend's apartment on UWS, we finally checked the news. We found a video on CBS news reporting on the evacuation of the NYU Medical Center and they showed some shots of our very own lecture hall being under 12 feet of water! The reporter called it a "swimming pool". That was when we started wondering what would happen to our school!
Like I mentioned before, last week was the most surreal! We ended up having the whole week off, with very little communication coming from the school. We just assumed that there wouldn't be classes since we had no lecture hall. Now, it is clear that we don't have much of a school at all: just today, we took an exam in a room without any heat, and with no working bathrooms - that is real good motivation to finish an exam very quickly! - and all that I could see remaining from the library was boxes stacked upon each other - no books on the shelves, non computers where there used to me many.
For the rest of last week, I got to catch up with some good friends in Astoria, who took me and one of my classmates, who had nowhere to go, in. We made guacamole, baked brownies and watched girly romantic movies. It wasn't so bad being a refugee. :)
Now, it's back to reality: post-hurricane lifestyle. It has't been much fun. Before Sandy, I finally got into a good routine of classes, studying, figuring out how much time I had for other things, like running, friends etc. This week, it felt like everything has been turned completely upside down. Our deans were scrambling to figure out where and how to make up for the lost week in the curriculum - it's not so trivial as medical school goes just so fast! So we had an extreme number of lectures this week, either in a very uncomfortable small auditorium at an off-site hospital or in one of the surviving lecture halls at the medical center which had no heat, no bathrooms, and smelled like mice!
Yes, a few words about the devastation of the research departments. I cannot even imagine what those poor people are going through. 7500 mice drowned in the storm! The building lost power almost 2 weeks ago, and much of it is still not restored. Backup generators failed. No power means no freezers. No freezers means dead samples. DNA, RNA, proteins, reagents, tissue samples all gone bad within a very short amount of time. Still today, I saw many people walking up and down 1st Ave with boxes, buckets, carrying valuable samples over to other buildings, other institutions. Other universities in the area sent dry ice to keep freezers cold for a little longer. The outpour of support has been quite amazing. Cornell, Columbia and Mount Sinai opened their libraries to us. Many researchers around the country have offered to replenish the lost mouse colonies. It's still going to be much time and valuable resources lost, but at least there is hope for recovery. Still, I understand all too well the value of these resources and just thinking about what these scientists must have been going through over these past two weeks makes me want to cry.
Today, walking through the dark and cold hallways of the Medical Science Building was a sobering experience. All the labs were dark and empty; a few postdocs all bundled up in coats, scarves and hats carrying boxes, some sitting in a barely lit conference room with their computers. All because of a hurricane we were so very unprepared for! Very humbling to think about the power of nature, and the vulnerability of our civilization. We are just tiny specks of dust on this planet. We should be more careful how we treat Her.
