Surviving Sandy: A Midwesterner’s View
Hurricanes are not supposed to happen in New York City. Even as a Midwesterner, I know this. After two cancelled flights and frayed nerves, I made my way last Thursday out of LaGuardia Airport, where two days earlier runways became urban swamps floating with debris.
I had been visiting my daughter Abby when Sandy hit, plunging her Lower East Side apartment into darkness. Five flights up, we worried little about flooding or surges, yet cars were buried under water two blocks away in the evacuation zone. We had dutifully stocked up on candles, flashlight batteries and peanut butter, filled the tub with water, and charged our cell phones.
But little had prepared us for surviving in what felt like a post-apocalyptic New York, where a third of Manhattan was transformed into a ghost town. This was a 21st century tale of two cities: crossing 40th Street propelled you into an eerie darkness, illuminated only by headlights and Com Ed trucks. Silent avenues lined with tenements and high rises waited impatiently for daylight. There were no traffic signals for miles, but I never witnessed an accident. Pedestrians and drivers were remarkably civil. I never imagined I would see New Yorkers trotting down Second Street sporting miner’s helmets with lights beamed on darkened sidewalks. Suddenly phone booths became popular, attracting crowds like moths to light bulbs.
On the morning after, there were scores of people cruising the sidewalks, hoping to score some caffeine or find out what public transit was running. For the most part, it wasn’t.
As often happens during such disasters, there were many small acts of kindness. On Eighth Avenue, a young man stood with a sign that offered ‘Free Ramen Noodles” – presumably cooked. I met a young woman named Anita who had been checking on older neighbors in her high rise, where there was no water since electric pumps were needed to move water higher than five floors. A CNN truck dispatched to the scene of a collapsed building (the one whose front wall had been peeled away like a dollhouse) offered to charge cellphones.
Owners of corner grocery stores lit candles and sold bags of chips and candles. Like many of our neighbors my daughter and I sought refuge in Midtown cafes, where we could charge our cell phones and indulge in cooked food. By day, we became urban trekkers, hiking forty blocks north, but usually opted for a cab after nightfall. After creeping up our five flights with a flashlight, we watched Madmen episodes my daughter had downloaded on her laptop. Outside her window facing south, we could see only the lit top floors of the First Freedom Tower where the World Trade had stood.
We were, of course, among the privileged who could find light and warmth, who had strong legs or could afford a taxi ride. The morning after Sandy threw her strongest punch, I helped give out food to men and women who had come to Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen where my ex-husband is rector. Some said they had spent the night on the street, wrapped in garbage bags. A Vietnam vet said he had walked 70 blocks because he didn’t know where else to go. Since the church had lost power, all we had to give were some leftover min-muffins and cheese sandwiches. A neighborhood resident and her two kids had come over to help. Such relief is needed on an unimaginable scale. Nearly 40,000 New Yorkers, many of them stuck in uninhabitable housing projects, were left homeless by Sandy.
On my return, I saw the beaming skyscrapers of Chicago and lit streets running perfectly straight as if glued to graph paper. I took the O’Hare blue line, which was running, to my Forest Park home.