As New York City residents were yesterday being urged to stock up and stay indoors, Maltese expat and Manhattan resident Sarah Tabone was ready for a long slog inside.
Our biggest risk is having the windows blown out by the strong winds
“We’ve stocked up on water and foodstuffs that don’t require cooking, in case of power outages. We also have torches and candles which we had bought last year for Hurricane Irene,” she said.
Doomsday warnings about Hurricane Irene turned out to be a false alarm, but meteorologists were convinced yesterday that Hurricane Sandy would not be as forgiving.
And with the storm coinciding with higher tides, New York was on the verge of experiencing record floods.
“People are taking this very seriously and preparing themselves for the worst,” Ms Tabone, a manager at a large New York-based software company, said.
But with an apartment on the 18th floor of a high-rise on Manhattan’s midtown west side, flooding concerns were the least of Ms Tabone’s worries.
“Our biggest risk is having the windows blown out by the strong winds. It’s especially worrying because we have big wall-to-wall windows in many rooms – but the building is fairly new so we’re hoping to be OK.”
Both she and her Maltese fiancée, financial services lawyer Nick Curmi, have been given time off work due to the storm.
Former The Times journalist Cynthia Busuttil Clark, now a New York resident, was another bracing herself for the storm yesterday and described chaotic supermarket scenes, as people scrambled for supplies.
“Many stores have run out of water and one of the big hardware stores had a sign saying that more batteries would be arriving this morning,” Ms Clark said.
Like many others, Ms Busuttil Clark was working remotely from home. “Wind gusts are pretty strong and I can hear them even with the TV on. There are some people outside but the roads look pretty deserted.”
She felt the authorities’ caution was justified, arguing that the damage caused by Hurricane Irene last year might have been limited precisely because of such precautions.
Another Maltese expat living in New York was busy trying to scrape together some supplies of his own yesterday.
“Supermarkets closed early because of the storm, and I’ve only just returned from abroad so I’m running fairly low on food,” the expat, who asked not to be named, said.
Having filled his bathtub up with water, “in case the water supply is cut off”, he was looking forward to “a marathon DVD session to help soothe the jetlag”.
Ms Tabone and Mr Curmi were similarly prepared. “We’ve charged up our iPads, though hopefully the power won’t blow out. Now we just have to wait and see,” she said.