<p>
I guess you weren’t understanding that I am at work today, not at home. I couldn’t post at home. But my building at work is fine.</p>
<p>I also live on an island. The bridges were shut for several days. No food got in. There is a food shortage where I live. The National Guard has been deployed where I live and where other people in the city live. That is my reality, about which you know nothing.</p>
<p>I would also like to point out that 24 hours is a very long time in such a situation. Some of the subways are even running now and many more people have power than did yesterday. I’ve always said that by the weekend things would be much better and it’s clear that they will. But I stand by my personal observations of yesterday.</p>
<p>However, I do not blame the Red Cross. They can’t be everywhere and many of our roads are impassable. And if they weren’t made impassable by the storm, the lines of cars trying to get gas surely made them so!</p>
<p><a href=“Latest Political News & Articles | Observer”>Latest Political News & Articles | Observer;
<p>zoosermom - you are living in as much of a bubble as anyone. You see what you see and you assume everyone is seeing the same thing and feeling the same way. That’s fine, but it is not for you to call anyone insensitive. You are no different.</p>
<p>For heaven’s sake. Zoosermom is clearly letting people know her own experience. That’s not being insensitive. That’s being factual. </p>
<p>After looking at photos, reading articles, and having been through Irene last year, my attitude is: “stay home and let the professionals get on with cleaning up.”</p>
<p>Actually I think life for a lot of people in the area is worse than inconvenient and frustrating. My whole family is back East. Here’s the rollcall:</p>
<p>Brother in NJ: somehow has power, though almost no families in his area do. His job is shut down until next Friday. My mother is staying with him because</p>
<p>Mom in NJ: Her continuing care facility has no power and no heat. Residents stayed there, but are now being evacuated.</p>
<p>Sister in NJ: No power, no heat.</p>
<p>Other sister in NJ: No power, no heat.</p>
<p>Niece at NYU: No power, no heat. NYU is serving hot meals.</p>
<p>Niece at Fordham: Has power. No classes for the rest of the week because commuters and professors can’t get there. She says, four hour backup on GW Bridge.</p>
<p>I’m very glad there are plenty of people who are safe and warm, with power, with businesses open. Not everyone is in that happy situation. As of last night, Hoboken, a major transit hub as well as a commuter town just across from Manhattan, was still underwater, and the National Guard was still rescuing people trapped in their homes in a sea of floodwater filled with sewage.</p>
<p>No one called zoosermom insensitive, I think it was the other way around.</p>
<p>sevmom, the article in Business Week was interesting, indeed. </p>
<p>“A more pressing question: Does it make sense for several hundred police officers to be diverted to secure the course when much of the city still doesnt have functioning traffic lightsand looting has been reported in at least three boroughs?”</p>
<p>I am just shaking my head in disgust at the idea that the marathon will go on. </p>
<p>After 9/11 the news was full of descriptions of the way the city came together. Well, that was against a foreign enemy. But this is Mother Nature. New Yorkers’ true natures are already showing themselves. The looting has already begun, and is only going to get worse.</p>
<p>New Yorkers’ true natures??? What, are they some kind of foreign creature unlike the rest of us human beings across the globe? </p>
<p>This is a densely populated area in a very difficult situation. Sure, there will be looting. You can’t have 10 million people without some of them being lowlevel creeps. But I’ve heard story after story of people coming together to help each other and cope. I don’t think the bad stories we may hear outweigh the good or somehow reveal a whole city’s “true nature”. You sound like someone who just hates NY and is looking for a reason to continue doing so.</p>
<p>There has been relatively little looting and pretty much confined to Far Rockaway & Coney Island and there have been arrests.This isn’t New Orleans after Katrina. Most New Yorkers are already back at work, even those who are living in areas hardest hit, and trying to figure out how to manage without power.</p>
<p>Food is on the way!! Woo hoo!</p>
<p>[Food</a> and water relief coming to Staten Island Thursday afternoon | SILive.com](<a href=“Food and water relief coming to Staten Island Thursday afternoon - silive.com”>Food and water relief coming to Staten Island Thursday afternoon - silive.com)</p>
<p>But bodies are still being pulled out of the debris regularly. And my D’s long-time boyfriend’s grandfather is missing in one of the hardest hit areas. He wouldn’t leave earlier, but the family is hoping he may have got to a shelter.</p>
<p>But zoosermom, since you are working, you won’t be able to get any of that food because you won’t be there to pick it up.</p>
<p>Doesn’t that make you even more frustrated?</p>
<p>
Well, yeah, sort of. New York isn’t really like any other place, in my opinion, anyway.</p>
<p>^ Maybe she is relieved for her community, in general, that they will begin getting some aid.</p>
<p>Re Zoosermom: Maybe she is happy for her community. I wouldn’t be able to be that nice, if all the food and water I could get is what I could carry home from work on a bus (or whatever form of transit Zoosermom is using), while my neighbors were getting relief packages delivered to their homes.</p>
<p>Of course, lots of people are nicer than I am ;)</p>
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</p>
<p>Basically, yes. I went to college with a lot of them and have worked with a lot of them, and they have always been a special breed, even before 9/11. They will be even more special after their recovery from Sandy. In my experience, nobody’s more resilient than a New Yorker (and nobody’s less capable of driving in the dark, but that’s a minor issue).</p>
<p>Hey, anybody who can eat the stuff sold by those halal food trucks while riding on the subway, standing up, and not spill a single grain of rice is different from the rest of the human species.</p>
<p>
I have two able-bodied, adult daughters with large, burly boyfriends! I really do think trucks are able to get back into some areas though, and supermarkets that have power may begin to re-stock. It may not sound like a lot, but having a community of 500,000 people completely cut off from the mainland made for very empty store shelves.</p>
<p>We do have water, though. For whatever reason, my moronic husband and his idiot wife stocked up on water, but didn’t do so much for non-perishable food, toilet paper, soap, you name it. We both should be flogged for stupidity.</p>
<p>" For whatever reason, my moronic husband and his idiot wife stocked up on water, but didn’t do so much for non-perishable food, toilet paper, soap, you name it."</p>
<p>The way you say that really cracks me up. So much better than, “My husband and I”.</p>
<p>I never understand why everyone goes to the store and buys all the bottled water. I’m cheap, and would probably just fill all the containers we have in the house with our better tasting tap water. The main thing anyways, is to stock up on wine and chips. And chocolate. Maybe get a little camping stove to heat up coffee, the other essential.</p>
<p>
Because everybody ELSE does and they must know something, right?</p>
<p>As God is my witness I will never turn up my vegetarian nose at canned vegetables again!</p>
<p>Thankfully, we did order 7 pounds of Wilbur Buds that were delivered on Friday, so we were good with chocolate. On the down side, D2 will be receiving on award on Sunday and with my husband’s work schedule, I don’t know if it will be possible to get there. Because she is still at my house. Evacuated last Friday and is returning tomorrow, but we can’t make two trips in three days, not the least of which because we don’t have enough gas.</p>
<p>‘The main thing anyways, is to stock up on wine and chips. And chocolate. Maybe get a little camping stove to heat up coffee, the other essential.’</p>
<p>Wine and chips and even chocolate gets old pretty quickly. </p>
<p>Just heard from my sister in Westchester. Still no power. They are going to Pittsburgh to visit her D for the weekend but if they don’t have power by Election Day coming here with her H and dog after they vote. They haven’t seen even one utility truck but she does understand that they are not in an area of distress so she figures they are far, far down on the list. </p>
<p>Also got an email from my cousin who lives on LI. She is fine, as is her home, but said it’s very depressing and a lot people at her work had “real devastation.” :(</p>
<p>Why buy water? Well, first, many of us living in fairly small apartments so we don’t have the space to have lots of empty containers. Second, as I understand it, bottle water is sealed so no air gets in. Even then, it has an expiration date, like canned food does. It’s impossible to do it as well yourself unless you have vacuum pack capability because you preserve your own vegetables or jam, etc. So, if you fill a bottle of water yourself, it may not be safe to drink it a week later. While any organisms are at a low enough level to make it safe to drink the water normally, the organisms will continue to grow and multiply while it’s sitting in a less than air tight container. To try to make it as safe as possible, I boil the water before I fill the containers and boil water and make ice cubes out of it. And then I buy some bottled water too, so if the outage lasts too long, I’ll have something I know is safe to drink. Then I fill the bathtub with water for the toilet and washing, etc. (But people with kids are warned not to do that.)</p>
<p>If anyone knows for sure that it’s perfectly safe to drink tap water stored in a closed but not absolutely air tight container a week later, please let me know. That’s sincere. I’d be happy to avoid lugging home water in future emergency.</p>
<p>Two Boys Found Dead on Staten Island</p>
<p>This makes me cry. :(</p>