The moment I knew the storm would be serious was when I heard that the subway was to be shut down. I had expected it to be closed on Monday prior to the storm arriving but when I heard it was to be closed on Sunday it really hit home. The wind was fierce all through Monday - it get the city a sense of foreboding especially when a gust came along and hinted that this might be it.
We took a walk on Sunday afternoon to let Harriet feel the wind. She knew the storm was coming and we explained that, although everything would be fine, there may be a lot noise. She took it in her stride.
Flooding was never likely to be an issue for us. Our apartment sits on high ground near to Central Park and if we were to be flooded the whole island would be under water. Our main concern was power and by consequence water (since we rely on power to get our water up to the 10th floor). Every large pot and jug was filled with water.
Most stores had closed of course but the deli at the end of 79th street stayed open throughout. I overhead that their plan was to sleep in the back of the store if need be. So lunch was a grilled cheese for H and burgers for us from there.
I took Pip out one last time at 6pm. Thankfully she has recently started using the indoor toilet (a patch of artificial grass with a pad underneath). The wind was still strong and the streets had become increasingly deserted. My main concern with being out was flying debris - we could see well enough that some our neighbors had done only minimal amounts to secure their plants and outside furniture on their roof terraces (since we are so high for the area we get a commanding view of many roofs around us).
We settled down for the night - Harriet went to bed in our room since it has only one window whereas hers has two. A big shock came when a TV newsflash said a crane had collapsed. We recognized it immediately and looked out of the window to see, sure enough, the crane slumped over the side of the building. I am surprised that we did not hear the collapse but it was now clearly a serious threat. Later through the night we could see it swinging wildly but despite my most dire predictions it did not fall.
News arrived by twitter fairly quickly. People started mentioning that they had received robo-calls to warn that the power was being shut down preemptively in Midtown. News and pictures of the lower east side began to arrive - right up to the limit of zone A (the evacuation zone) cars were seen floating down the street.
We did not hear the explosion of the power plant on the East River at 14th street but videos came quickly on line. Midtown was in darkness and still the stories came of the Brookly-Battery tunnel now being flooded to the ceiling. No one could be in any doubt that an epic calamity was striking the city. Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island were taking a direct hit (and one could only imagine what it must have been like along the coast of Long Island).
I understood that this was by no means the end because the water would take a couple of hours to travel down Long Island to reach the harbor so it would become progressively worse.
Ultimately we would lose power a few times but it was never permanent. I went to sleep in Harriet's room listening to the ever louder winds but what else was there to do but hope?
As it turns out we were lucky. In the morning I ventured out with the dog and our street had seen remarkably little damage. We still had power and hence a working elevator and water. Later that day we explored a bit more and saw that there was in fact a lot of damage at the end of the street where scaffolding had collapsed and huge trees had been uprooted but our neighbor's glass patio table remained resolutely on their roof.
The storm took on many surprising forms. The pictures of the fires were stunning. I had never realized just how much the risk of fire increases but it is obvious when you think about it (e.g. increased use of candles. The pictures of a city split - with and without power were eerie. Pictures came and would keep coming of carnage and destruction all over the east coast - incongruous images of boats resting on railway lines and heartbreaking scenes of homes razed to the ground by fire.
What is clear is that this is not over yet and its effects will be felt for a very long time. We were lucky but so many others were not.
