Why We Chose to Ride Out Hurricane Irene at Home, in a Mandatory Evacuation Area

 
[Postscript, 9/2/12: Tonight, Peter Brimelow just published my VDARE Katrina update, “Revising Katrina for the Age of Obama.”]

By Nicholas Stix

1. We couldn’t get a hotel room anywhere nearby;
2. We didn’t want to spend two or three sleepless nights in a city shelter dominated by black racist cut-throats;
3. We didn’t want to risk running into said cut-throats while traveling to and from said shelter;
4. We had no intention of permitting said cut-throats to loot our home, while we were away; and
5. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s one-size-fits all warnings were inaccurate, regarding our particular street, and he has a credibility problem, to begin with.

The only nearby “evacuation point”—there was no list Friday morning that said “shelters,” and it looks like both terms are being used interchangeably—was at Aqueduct Raceway, which would be dominated by racist black cut-throats from Far Rockaway. That would mean two or three sleepless nights, danger going to the bathroom, danger guarding our stuff while the others go to the bathroom, and the black children running around, whose parents teach them to attack, steal from, etc. whites and Asians of all ages. (I lived in Far Rockaway for over three years, and experienced this repeatedly, and not just from so-called “underclass” children.) And while traveling to and from the shelter via public transportation, we would also be surrounded by racist black cut-throats. The MSM are not going to report on problems that whites or Asians experience with said cut-throats, and the NYPD is worthless.

On Thursday and early Friday, The Boss insisted on going to the shelter, but I worked on her Friday.

Neighbors, and even total strangers we ran into all said the same thing: The shelter would be like New Orleans’ Super Dome and Convention Center, following Hurricane Katrina.

I had earlier sought to get us a hotel room for Saturday and Sunday nights, but everywhere accessible and $200 per night or less had already filled up, hours before Mayor Bloomberg even made his evac announcement for our area, which is in “Zone B,” at about 5 p.m. Friday. Prior to that, our area was not a mandatory evac area.

On Friday night, we taped our windows and back door with duct tape on the outside (and with masking tape on the inside on Saturday night), then covered them with heavy plastic that we put up with more duct tape. By 9:15 Saturday, the plastic covering the back door had already come down, but the piece covering our bedroom windows was still holding up, as of 5 a.m. today.

The local hardware store had already run out of sandbags on Thursday, so I bought 20 “contractor’s bags” (big, heavy-duty plastic bags), in order to make my own. Late Thursday night, I started making sand runs with contractor bags, and when they proved inadequate, a large plastic bucket, using a creaky, rusted old shopping cart that had been out back, unused, for seven years. (By Friday, other neighbors were doing likewise.)

In the middle of the night, my gallant, 11-year-old son insisted on bodyguarding me with his martial arts sticks, while I carried a wooden club, though half the time I’d forget it, after dumping a bucket of sand at our place.

As much as I worry about protecting him, my boy worries even more about protecting me.

Friday night, The Boss insisted on helping and protecting me.

You’d never know that I’d been fighting off would-be muggers long before either the Boss or The Boss’s Boss was in my life.

We have about a ton-and-a-half of sandbags stacked up in the back.

I was going to make some more sand runs Saturday—I was aiming for three tons, not only as a barrier against flooding, but in order to discourage looters—but after sleeping little for days, I crashed Saturday, and instead of the rains starting at 7, as predicted, they began at 3:30 p.m.

We have over six gallons of spring water for drinking, The Boss filled a bunch of pots with water for washing dishes, and I’m going to fill the bathtub before going to bed, in case we need water to flush the toilet.

Tonight, I baked nine Idaho russets. If the power gets shut off, or the lines go down, they’ll stay cool in the freezer for a couple days, and baked potatoes even taste good cold.

In terms of what we can eat without power, we have a few pounds of breakfast cereal, some canned goods (e.g., baked beans), three pounds of cheese, half a loaf of bread, a half-dozen yogurts, and about three-and-a-half pounds of pork loin that I baked and froze Wednesday night. If the power goes out today, the pork loin’ll slowly defrost in the freezer, and we can eat it either later Sunday or Monday. And The Boss secretly bought some junk food Saturday morning.

When I went shopping for Irene on Thursday night, I knew that we had a 10-12 day supply of meat in the freezer, and that if the power went, we’d lose it all. But I couldn’t help myself. How do you go to a supermarket, and not buy meat? So, I ended up with 18 pounds of chicken, beef, pork and salmon. If we lose power, that’s $70 we’re out, but it still beats the hell out of the hundreds of dollars a hotel stay would have set us back, what a shelter stay might have entailed, and the nightmare of trying to get home with limited mass transit, at best, on Monday.

I had already calculated that, due to the lay of our place, it would take a tidal wave for us to get flooded with sea water in the back. Ocean water would tunnel down the street in front, where we've got more security and height, while our back door/patio is blocked by a massive apartment building. And last (Friday) night, while The Boss and I were making a sand run, a neighbor told me that our street is one of the highest in the area, ergo, that the massive flooding that is a realistic possibility in other neighborhoods, is highly unlikely here.

Of course, when Mayor Bloomberg ordered everyone in our area to evacuate, he didn’t distinguish between those neighborhoods at the highest risk of flooding, and those that weren’t.

His credibility is shot here, anyway. He screwed us on snow removal last winter, he’s lied about crime for as long as he’s been in office, he ripped off my family and many neighbors for $2,300 on a water bill scam, and his police and Parks Department employees have a history of harassing people in our neighborhood in ways they would never dare pull in black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Like how? Like having the overwhelmingly black, racist “brownies” constantly blitzing us with parking tickets, including illegal ones, while themselves showing contempt for traffic laws. Like permitting blacks, Hispanics, and Manhattan socialists to illegally drink and barbecue in city parks, but not only writing out illegal tickets to neighbors enjoying the beach in the evening, but once a racist black Parks employee had a neighbor arrested for drinking beer on the beach during a fundraising party for victims of 911.

On Saturday at 5 p.m., on a call-in show on NY1, the Time-Warner “all-news” channel, a viewer from lower Manhattan called in to say that a Parks police officer threatened him in Battery Park at 2 p.m., even though the evacuation deadline was three hours away. My son responded, “A parks policeman being bad?” dripping with enough sarcasm to make an old-time copper proud.

About 10 years ago, social democratic historian Fred Siegel called NY1 the “All-Sharpton News Network.” Six or seven years ago, it became the “Same-Sex Marriage Network.”

Tonight, it ran the same story at least twice, and even re-ran it within itself.

A news reader was doing a story on a public school in Ozone Park (near Aqueduct), Queens, that had been converted into a shelter. It showed a clip of a couple of black men in their twenties going separately into the school. Then it showed a second clip of a couple of people at the school’s doorway, including a bosomy little redhead or strawberry blonde in her twenties.

Then they showed separate interviews with a couple of whites in their late 50s or early 60s. One, a lady of about 60, was friendly to the reporter, but said that it was extremely hot and humid inside the school, with only some fans running, and that some old folks had had to be rescued for heat stroke. She also mentioned that kids were running around inside. The other white interviewee was a man in his mid-to-late 50s who was more positive than the lady, but who had such a strange way of speaking that I can’t recall anything he said, and I didn’t take notes or tape him.

The point of the clip of the little redhead, and the interviews with the two older whites was to show that some white people were at the shelter. In reality, I doubt that more than 10 percent of he people seeking refuge there were white.

Then NY1 re-ran, within the same piece, the original two clips of people entering the school!

Angry MSM personalities invented the myth of the 24/7 cable news cycle. It’s more like 24/7 news re-cycling.

NYPD squad cars drove on our street Friday night, ordering us to evacuate, and the Fire Department paid a visit Saturday morning, at 11 a.m. We’d smelled a gas leak, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. It runed out it was the lady next door.

When the firemen showed up in the morning, I stayed inside, afraid that they’d order us out. The Boss called me a big chicken. Whatever.

Once I saw neighbors outside fraternizing with the firemen, I shaved quickly, and went outside to get the all-clear. There any danger? The fully geared-up fireeater responded, “The only danger is the shaving cream in your ear.”

The Boss was surfing channels, and one station was interviewing State Assemblyman Harvey Eisenberg, in my hometown of Long Beach, which is physically laid out very similarly to where we now reside. Eisenberg said it was essential that everyone evacuate Long Beach, and that he was only staying behind, due to being an elected official. The reporter also identified the 77-year-old Eisenberg as “a lifeguard.”

A lifeguard? Maybe 60 years ago.

Eisenberg also asserted that when in the face of a hurricane, you have to evacuate either 2-3 or 3-4 days in advance. (I’m not sure which, but it was at least 2-3 days.)

Eisenberg’s claim left The Boss as underwhelmed as it did yours truly.

First of all, the evac orders were only issued at most two days before the storm was expected to hit.

Second of all, unless Long Beach has radically changed since I lived there are no houses within 1000-1500 feet of the ocean. (The shore line is uneven, so the distances differ, from block to block.) There are few hundred feet of beach between the water and the boardwalk, abutting which are some apartment buildings and hotels. One block up is Shore Road, which has only high-rise apartment buildings. Another block up is Broadway, also with only apartment buildings, and where I lived from the age of six until 18. One more block up is Penn Street, where you finally hit private houses.

For homeowners to follow the Assemblyman’s advice would be a great help to looters, but not so great for homeowners.

Speaking of which, in a feature on “Hurricane Irene New York: Top 5 Dangers of a Hurricane in the City,” International Business Times failed to list looting and violence.

Many of our neighbors are also staying. As one said, “I’m not going crazy.” This is also as a precaution against looters. The guy I just cited is an Italian electrician and retired garbage man of about 50, who still looks plenty formidable. He has massive shoulders, big arms, and only a small paunch of recent vintage. I’m sure he has at least a shotgun handy. He told me to let him know, if I need help, and he meant it.

On Saturday, Gov. Junior Cuomo called up 1,900 National Guardsmen, “to help with the clean-up,” but as The Boss said, “What they gonna clean up?” They’re coming to deal with looters. Cuomo doesn’t want a New Orleans-type situation on his watch.

Doesn’t he know that New Orleans never happened? Three weeks after reporting on the savagery, back in 2005, the media unreported it all.