Hello! I don't know if anybody is still out there, but I'm back! My last blog entry was when the weather in NYC finally turned warmer, and apparently I've been so busy staying outside and enjoying the fabulous spring and summer that I forgot to blog. It's now fall, and I have to say I love living in a place that has all four seasons. Spring, summer and fall here are all wonderful... you already know how I feel about winter.
The past couple of weeks I have been feeling very uneasy, almost anxious, about the weather changing and the coming winter. More so than I should, really. I finally realized why - because last year winter started off with a bang: Hurricane Sandy. Being that it was our first full winter here in NYC, I was subconsciously associating the start of winter with a giant superstorm/hurricane coming to town. After I figured out what I was doing, and could tell myself that it's probably not going to happen again this year (or any other year we're here, God willing), I felt much better!
Today is the anniversary of when Sandy hit, and being that I never blogged about it I figure now is a good time.
Sandy hit the night of Monday, October 29. The preceding weekend I had spent in Nashville with my BFF Merritt. Her wonderful husband, Dave, had flown me to Nashville to surprise her for her birthday.
Surprise!
The day I flew to Nashville I was aware of the hurricane in the Atlantic (kind of), but not paying much attention to it. By Saturday night it was pretty obvious that the storm had turned northwest and was heading towards New York. I was scheduled to fly out of Nashville back to New York sometime on Sunday afternoon, but instead I decided to head to the airport early Sunday morning to try and get on an earlier flight. It was either that or not get home to New York for a while.
I did get on a flight, it was the last one to New York before they shut down that route. My plane was so small - rows of just one seat on the left and two seats on the right. The storm system was already disrupting the air even though it hadn't yet made landfall, and that tiny plane had such a turbulent ride into Newark. The flight attendant was handing out free booze to anyone who wanted it. I took two bottles of bourbon!
When we landed, Newark airport was slammed full of people trying to fly out. Not me, I wanted to be home! I didn't want to leave Stephen and Grady alone; if they were going to have to struggle through something I wanted to be there, too. I caught a taxi into the city and have never had better (nonexistent) traffic into Manhattan. The other side of the road with people evacuating was a different story.
When I got to our apartment, Stephen had already packed a bag for himself and Grady, and he had booked us a hotel room on the Upper East Side. Our apartment building, which is located in TriBeCa, sits in the city's flood zone and we were under a mandatory evacuation. Mandatory meaning that the police aren't going to come and drag you out, but if you stay and something happens to you, don't expect quick service. So Sunday night, one day ahead of the storm, we headed to the hotel. Stephen decided that it would be kinda fun to use this time as a staycation, so he booked a great room at a nice hotel. And they accepted dogs!
I stole Grady's bottle of Fiji water for myself:
We didn't really need to be in a hotel that first night weather-wise, the storm didn't hit until the next day. But I am so glad we got out of our neighborhood early because after the storm hit and the flooding was so bad, everyone wanted a room and so many were booked up.
Monday, October 29
I took Grady out for a long walk in the afternoon a couple hours before the storm hit, we were on the Upper East Side near the Met. This is 5th Ave how it normally looks, and then 5th Ave how I saw it a couple hours before the hurricane:
Ghost town:
Grady on the normally-crowded steps of the Met:
Empty Madison Ave:
The subways were closed. Buses and commuter trains were closed The tunnels and bridges were closing. Taxis and pedestrians were off the streets. It was CRAZY how still New York was.
Monday night the hurricane blew in and we were glued to the TV. We could hear the wind and the rain, but what we were most concerned about was the flooding coming from the Hudson River. Our apartment building is just a few blocks from the Hudson, across the West Side Hwy, in the flood zone. The Hudson had a 13-ft storm surge that flooded most of Lower Manhattan.
The storm as it hit:
The day after the hurricane we were due to check out of our hotel, but the city wasn't letting anyone back into Lower Manhattan because the flooding was so bad. Initially we were told by a hotel employee that we had to check out of our room because someone else was checking in at 1:00 p.m. We went through a couple of hours of pure panic because we couldn't find a single available hotel room and we had no place to go. Eventually the manager knocked on our door and told us that due to the emergency situation no one would have to leave, whoever was in the hotel could stay. Hooray! It's funny, because Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber live in our neighborhood and I often see them walking around with their kids, and they had evacuated to the very same hotel! They had their little dog with them, too.
Outside of our hotel after the storm:
Even though Upper Manhattan wasn't affected by the flooding or power loss, it was still crippled because there was no easy going in and out of the city for a few days - very few food delivery trucks. Restaurants opened and served whatever they had until it was gone. Menus were obsolete, they would just tell you whatever options they had left. Which was fine, at least we had food and power. Gasoline was of very short supply - the storm surge damaged the local supply terminals and gas stations ran dry. There were people fighting in lines for gas.
Flooding in the subways:
Two days later as the water receded we were finally able to go home. We ordered an Uber car, which charged us 2.5x the normal rate (A LOT) to take us home. We had to though, we couldn't walk because we had 2 suitcases, a dog kennel, and Grady. Once we got to our building the power was out, and we had to climb 13 flights of stairs with all of that crap. Before the week was out I would say we climbed those 13 flights of stairs about 15 times. We made Grady do it, too, we didn't carry him the whole time!
Flooding in Lower Manhattan:
The nights back downtown were so eerie. The whole of Lower Manhattan had no electricity and the first thing we could see lit up was the Empire State Building, 48 blocks away. It was a little creepy to walk around in such darkness, but Grady still needs to be walked even in an emergency.
The day after we got back into our apartment we set out to walk back up north just to survey the damage. Water was being pumped out of buildings, and that continued for weeks. Underground parking garages were flooded and cars inside were lost. There is an underground parking garage right next to our apartment building, which flooded, and basically saved our building from the water.
Water being pumped out of a building:
The National Guard was here, it was so strange to see them parked on NYC streets:
Food trucks lined up to feed people:
Some places had charging stations available for anyone to use:
That afternoon we walked all the way from TriBeCa to Grand Central Station before we found a street with electricity.
A very important delivery, seriously one of the first trucks I saw on our street:
We finally got our power back on in our neighborhood on Saturday, 5 days after the hurricane, which really wasn't so bad. We were so lucky, our building didn't flood and our neighborhood didn't catch on fire. So many people had their homes completely destroyed. Entire neighborhoods are gone. At $68 billion, this was the second-costliest hurricane in U.S. history (after Katrina). It killed 160 people in the U.S., and about 290 total.
There are parts of Lower Manhattan that are still damaged and not up and running from the hurricane. One of Stephen's company's buildings located in the Financial District was so badly damaged that they just moved.
Because Sandy was so big, it stretched into Canada and swirled some of that freezing nor'easter weather down into New York; a week after Sandy we got our first blizzard because of this superstorm swirl.
Snow leftover from the nor'easter:
So that was the beginning of winter last year. Not awesome. This year is going to be better! Bring it on!
