Stocked with a full fridge, preserved food, plenty of water and batteries, a Maltese living in New York was yesterday bracing herself for the predicted onslaught of Hurricane Irene.
The woman, who lives with her husband on the Upper East Side, was in the afternoon still mulling whether to join more than 370,000 residents who evacuated their low-lying homes and waterfront areas, largely in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and downtownManhattan.
“We are just a block away from the mandatory evacuation site so we’re still not sure what to do. We have a couple of hours to decide. The risk is mostly because we’re very close to the east river, which is expected to flood,” she told The Sunday Times, just as the rain pelted down on her apartment window.
Her next door neighbour has already left the block until the hurricane blows over, and her block was closing off its main entrance and urging people to use theservice entrance.
Preferring not to be named not to alarm relatives in Malta, the woman, who is in her 40s, described an eerie image of downtown Manhattan with empty streets as thousands sought safety elsewhere.
If the couple decide to leave, they will stay with friends outside New York or drive west and find a hotel. But she fears that if the tunnels are flooded, they may not be able to return home as quickly.
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday gave a press conference warning residents to follow the city’s unprecedented mandatory evacuation orders, saying the approaching Hurricane Irene was “life-threatening” and “not a joke”.
The Category 1 hurricane, expected to hit New York City late last night or early this morning, is likely to pack winds of 55 to 70 miles an hour, the mayor said, as the city prepared to shut down its transport system and close bridges. This is the first time New York has issued a mandatoryevacuation order for vulnerable neighbourhoods.
The Maltese woman, who lives in an apartment block on the 30th floor, explained that this situation brought a new set of concerns “as the higher you go, the stronger the winds will be”.
Experts have been warning that there may be debris flying and risks of windows shattering and urged people to stay away from windows.
“Ours is a corner apartment and the only place without windows is the bathroom or the storage closet. We have a few cardboard boxes and have started to tape them to the windows. In a worst case scenario, the corridor outside our apartment has no windows, so we can just go out of our door and sit it out there,” she said.
“This is one time when I’m glad we don’t own property. The worst that can happen is we have to evacuate and some of our belongings will be damaged... luckily, the bulk of them are insured,” she added.
Few were taking risks, and she described long line-ups at supermarkets as people stocked on foodstuffs, water, as well as candles and batteries in case of power cuts.
What is the couple’s biggest concern?
“It’s hard to say because this is quite unprecedented... All this media hype is scaring the hell out of me,” she said.