Sandy, oh Sandy
Greetings flist! Thanks to everyone who posted their concerns, well wishes, prayers, and so forth. Last week was . . . intense. This week I've taken a few comp days to recover. Soon both my flat and myself will have some semblance of order and equilibrium again.
So what happened, you ask? Hurricane Sandy! Last year we had a hurricane in August that for me consisted mostly of rain and wind that left little damage, and a delightful few days with doctorpancakes that resulted in a Boosh claymation video. Calliope was, if you recall, largely unimpressed. This year? It felt more like
Well, lemme tell ya...
T-Rex and I did some last-minute shopping and hunkered down for a day indoors. Like last time, I hugged my breadmaker, because this is what the bread aisle in the supermarket looked like:
We'd spent the Sunday before putting together the Ikea furniture I'd picked up.
The kitties explored and approved
T-Rex looking exceptionally handsome after a day of hard labor
We took a late walk for dinner on Sunday night, then hunkered down for the storm on Monday. We watched Lexx, listened to music, ate nachos, played with the cats, tracked the storm, and then I received a phone call that the power was being turned off around the corner (at a sister program to my shelter). We wondered how far it would extend. Then the lights flickered . . . and flickered some more . . . and flickered even more. Then BLAM LIGHTS OUT!
Out came the flashlights. We foraged for candles (because I forgot to pick some up, in my hubris after the last hurricane); I had a few stashed around though. And delightfully, T-Rex had given me the "Personalize Your Own Sonic Screwdriver Kit" as a gift last month and I wound up using that for light as well! BEST GIFT IN AN EMERGENCY EVAR!
I called the shelter and it turned out we had a power outage in the whole of lower Manhattan on Monday evening. So the Super turned on the emergency generator in the shelter.
You might have seen this video of the power plant explosion in Manhattan? (First minute of the video is where it's at, as it then loops into a slo-mo replay).
Yeah, that was 16 blocks from my house . . .
So I was without electricity, heat or hot water. I figured I'd be ok. T-Rex and I could play games and read to each other. I could still cook on the stove (gas range FTW!). We'd hang out, wait it out a day or so for the power to return. In the meantime, I'd go to work and soak up the heat and working phone lines there (oh my mobile service also became nearly non-existent). We figured we'd be ok for a few days at the shelter, since the generator is meant to work for 3 days straight.
You see, 36 hours later it went down and we were without ANY power in the shelter for 2 days.
It was . . . intense.
I wanted to evacuate the shelter Wed morning. We have 88 clients, many of them quite infirm. The city said they had nowhere for them to go, that the best solution would be restarting the generator. They promised they would send OEM (Office of Emergency Management) with petrol for the generator. But OEM didn't show up and we were forced to scramble to fix it ourselves. With the help of the city and staffers at other sites who had working phones, we found a company to deliver petrol. Then we discovered it wouldn't restart! So then we struggled to find a contractor to fix it. You can imagine they were scrambling as people all over the city called about failing power generators. One guy promised to come and then didn't. A second company was contacted by the city, thankfully! They didn't arrive until late Thursday and worked on it for like 6 hours, into the wee hours of the morning, until our emergency power was returned.
Just imagine having the bar set so low that you are relieved to have back-up emergency power available. That was me.
It was like my shelter building was going into multiple organ failure! The generator powered light in the hallways, but also the fire alarm and sprinkler system, sewage pumps and telephones. So we had no phone service at the shelter and cellphone service was limited. The sewage backed up, and we had to shut the toilets in the basement. The chef re-mopped the kitchen floors (prep area) as sewage leaked up the drains in the floor after they finished the post-dinner cleanup - by candle and flashlight.
With no fire alarm, lights, sprinklers or phones, I instituted "martial law" on the floors at night. One worker on each floor to keep clients from smoking or wandering around. There was no heat, so we handed out extra blankets to clients *and* staff.
No heat, no hot water, but we had working burners so were able to prep and serve meals. And luckily the meat in the freezers stayed frozen so we put milk and juice in there and every day a staff member drove me uptown to buy more bread and milk and other supplies from the grocery stores where the power had not gone out.
Public transportation was out of service for several days, so I was lending staff $$$ from my own account so they could get to work and back via taxi/car service. My agency now owes me close to $700.
And T-Rex was an angel through it all. He hung around and helped out and kept up my morale. He carried pizzas from the only shop open in the neighborhood so I could eat and treat staff. He carried the supplies we picked up from uptown and let us use his mobile at crucial moments. He made jokes. He kept me warm. He kept me informed of the news from his iPad when I had a moment to breathe. He picked up candles and located all of his own various flashlights to illuminate my flat. And he discovered a couple days in that his building still had hot water - so I got to take a hot shower! He took me out to dinner and treated, knowing how much money I'd put out to keep the shelter staffed. We even stopped in Forbidden Planet and he bought me a couple of games for us to play together! (And we were very surprised not to see bitsyrant, who works there nowadays).
He took some amazing pics of the 'hood, which I will be happy to link you to once he's posted them (tarashnat on flickr).
The power came on around 5pm Friday, but I still had no mobile phone service until late that night.
I took a few too, with my mobile, when I was able to recharge.
There is nothing quite like living in 19th century NYC. And that's certainly a bit what it felt like for nearly a week. It was wild.
Here are two pics of my neighborhood I managed to take with my iPhone, to illustrate the blackness of the city.
On the first night after the storm, we walked uptown to Grand Central Terminal on 42nd St., which is about 3 miles from the shelter, where we ate and recharged our phones. The full magnitude of the blackout had not hit us yet. But when we finished and contemplated walking back downtown, at I think 40th St. or so was the demarcation where the lights stopped working. And we looked down and it truly was like looking into an abyss. The light side and the dark side, coexisting side by side. Standing on the edge, into an endless tunnel of nothingness but for the barest outline of the nearest buildings down the road.
So . . . we took a taxi.
As for the storm itself, I'm sure many of you have heard there were record-breaking floods. The east river flooded right up to Ave C and my shelter is on E 4th between B & C! My house is also between B and C, several blocks south of my shelter. At the height of the storm, there were literally cars floating in my neighborhood. I did not see this myself, but several staff and clients told me they witnessed it.
Tuesday was mayhem, but by Thursday we had supplies and FEMA and the National Guard. This was a distribution site 2 blocks from my house:
And there were signs like these everywhere, alerting people where to go for help
But Tuesday and Wednesday, it was all up to the NYC police to keep order and limit looting. There was a bit in Brooklyn, but not much at all in total and not widespread. The NYPD really stepped it up to maintain a presence and kept order.
T-Rex and I did have one potentially scary situation, though. On Tuesday I came into work to assess things. When we walked home at night, using our flashlights, we walked to something of a blind corner into my street. There was a huge group of 20 somethings from the projects (council flats) hanging out on my corner "hootin' and hollerin'" as they say. T-Rex and I were really not sure what to make of them. We thought"uh, oh. are we gonna get jumped by a gauntlet of thugs?" One of them sensed our hesitation as we debated turning around and walking another way. He said "Don't be afraid! Come drink with us!"and made a gesture to pass me his 40oz bottle of Colt 45. So I cheered "woooooh!" and and they cheered back "wooooh!" and we kept walking. Itt was kind of awesome and affirming to see they were just hanging out enjoying the freedom of no longer being cooped up inside. But there was a moment of definitely NOT awesome as we didn't know what to expect.
In the next few days, there were swarms of people walking into the delis to get what they could that hadn't gone bad, in near pitch blackness. Water, soda, cookies, instant coffee, etc. And there were these little gas-powered mini generator charging stations EVERYWHERE. People queued up to charge their phones. Elsewhere, people huddled up to Starbucks uptown trying to get a wifi signal.
That first night T-Rex and I went uptown, we asked the restaurant hostess to seat us near a plug and we beat the crowds by about 20 minutes. Then people were eying the plugs as we recharged. When we left, I told a woman at a nearby table it was free and she squealed "I love you!"
So yeah, it was really something -
trying to get support to fix the generator
managing clients
bringing in staff
coordinating and planning for safety
and also keeping people calm
It was truly a test of my managerial and emotional skills. Clients came up to me afterward
and thanked me, telling me how glad they were that I was the director. They could see me working hard to scramble to attend to everything. It felt good to be appreciated. And I'm proud of everyone who pitched in, those on my staff who came together and put their best foot forward.
Now I'm finally finished clearing out the fridge, and catching up on rest. But I'll leave you with this photo that T-Rex took of me. Behold the refrigerator bandit! Avoiding foul smells with a single bandana. :-D
And in conclusion . . .
Be well, flist!
So what happened, you ask? Hurricane Sandy! Last year we had a hurricane in August that for me consisted mostly of rain and wind that left little damage, and a delightful few days with doctorpancakes that resulted in a Boosh claymation video. Calliope was, if you recall, largely unimpressed. This year? It felt more like
Well, lemme tell ya...
T-Rex and I did some last-minute shopping and hunkered down for a day indoors. Like last time, I hugged my breadmaker, because this is what the bread aisle in the supermarket looked like:
We'd spent the Sunday before putting together the Ikea furniture I'd picked up.
The kitties explored and approved
T-Rex looking exceptionally handsome after a day of hard labor
We took a late walk for dinner on Sunday night, then hunkered down for the storm on Monday. We watched Lexx, listened to music, ate nachos, played with the cats, tracked the storm, and then I received a phone call that the power was being turned off around the corner (at a sister program to my shelter). We wondered how far it would extend. Then the lights flickered . . . and flickered some more . . . and flickered even more. Then BLAM LIGHTS OUT!
Out came the flashlights. We foraged for candles (because I forgot to pick some up, in my hubris after the last hurricane); I had a few stashed around though. And delightfully, T-Rex had given me the "Personalize Your Own Sonic Screwdriver Kit" as a gift last month and I wound up using that for light as well! BEST GIFT IN AN EMERGENCY EVAR!
I called the shelter and it turned out we had a power outage in the whole of lower Manhattan on Monday evening. So the Super turned on the emergency generator in the shelter.
You might have seen this video of the power plant explosion in Manhattan? (First minute of the video is where it's at, as it then loops into a slo-mo replay).
Click to viewYeah, that was 16 blocks from my house . . .
So I was without electricity, heat or hot water. I figured I'd be ok. T-Rex and I could play games and read to each other. I could still cook on the stove (gas range FTW!). We'd hang out, wait it out a day or so for the power to return. In the meantime, I'd go to work and soak up the heat and working phone lines there (oh my mobile service also became nearly non-existent). We figured we'd be ok for a few days at the shelter, since the generator is meant to work for 3 days straight.
You see, 36 hours later it went down and we were without ANY power in the shelter for 2 days.
It was . . . intense.
I wanted to evacuate the shelter Wed morning. We have 88 clients, many of them quite infirm. The city said they had nowhere for them to go, that the best solution would be restarting the generator. They promised they would send OEM (Office of Emergency Management) with petrol for the generator. But OEM didn't show up and we were forced to scramble to fix it ourselves. With the help of the city and staffers at other sites who had working phones, we found a company to deliver petrol. Then we discovered it wouldn't restart! So then we struggled to find a contractor to fix it. You can imagine they were scrambling as people all over the city called about failing power generators. One guy promised to come and then didn't. A second company was contacted by the city, thankfully! They didn't arrive until late Thursday and worked on it for like 6 hours, into the wee hours of the morning, until our emergency power was returned.
Just imagine having the bar set so low that you are relieved to have back-up emergency power available. That was me.
It was like my shelter building was going into multiple organ failure! The generator powered light in the hallways, but also the fire alarm and sprinkler system, sewage pumps and telephones. So we had no phone service at the shelter and cellphone service was limited. The sewage backed up, and we had to shut the toilets in the basement. The chef re-mopped the kitchen floors (prep area) as sewage leaked up the drains in the floor after they finished the post-dinner cleanup - by candle and flashlight.
With no fire alarm, lights, sprinklers or phones, I instituted "martial law" on the floors at night. One worker on each floor to keep clients from smoking or wandering around. There was no heat, so we handed out extra blankets to clients *and* staff.
No heat, no hot water, but we had working burners so were able to prep and serve meals. And luckily the meat in the freezers stayed frozen so we put milk and juice in there and every day a staff member drove me uptown to buy more bread and milk and other supplies from the grocery stores where the power had not gone out.
Public transportation was out of service for several days, so I was lending staff $$$ from my own account so they could get to work and back via taxi/car service. My agency now owes me close to $700.
And T-Rex was an angel through it all. He hung around and helped out and kept up my morale. He carried pizzas from the only shop open in the neighborhood so I could eat and treat staff. He carried the supplies we picked up from uptown and let us use his mobile at crucial moments. He made jokes. He kept me warm. He kept me informed of the news from his iPad when I had a moment to breathe. He picked up candles and located all of his own various flashlights to illuminate my flat. And he discovered a couple days in that his building still had hot water - so I got to take a hot shower! He took me out to dinner and treated, knowing how much money I'd put out to keep the shelter staffed. We even stopped in Forbidden Planet and he bought me a couple of games for us to play together! (And we were very surprised not to see bitsyrant, who works there nowadays).
He took some amazing pics of the 'hood, which I will be happy to link you to once he's posted them (tarashnat on flickr).
The power came on around 5pm Friday, but I still had no mobile phone service until late that night.
I took a few too, with my mobile, when I was able to recharge.
There is nothing quite like living in 19th century NYC. And that's certainly a bit what it felt like for nearly a week. It was wild.
Here are two pics of my neighborhood I managed to take with my iPhone, to illustrate the blackness of the city.
On the first night after the storm, we walked uptown to Grand Central Terminal on 42nd St., which is about 3 miles from the shelter, where we ate and recharged our phones. The full magnitude of the blackout had not hit us yet. But when we finished and contemplated walking back downtown, at I think 40th St. or so was the demarcation where the lights stopped working. And we looked down and it truly was like looking into an abyss. The light side and the dark side, coexisting side by side. Standing on the edge, into an endless tunnel of nothingness but for the barest outline of the nearest buildings down the road.
So . . . we took a taxi.
As for the storm itself, I'm sure many of you have heard there were record-breaking floods. The east river flooded right up to Ave C and my shelter is on E 4th between B & C! My house is also between B and C, several blocks south of my shelter. At the height of the storm, there were literally cars floating in my neighborhood. I did not see this myself, but several staff and clients told me they witnessed it.
Tuesday was mayhem, but by Thursday we had supplies and FEMA and the National Guard. This was a distribution site 2 blocks from my house:
And there were signs like these everywhere, alerting people where to go for help
But Tuesday and Wednesday, it was all up to the NYC police to keep order and limit looting. There was a bit in Brooklyn, but not much at all in total and not widespread. The NYPD really stepped it up to maintain a presence and kept order.
T-Rex and I did have one potentially scary situation, though. On Tuesday I came into work to assess things. When we walked home at night, using our flashlights, we walked to something of a blind corner into my street. There was a huge group of 20 somethings from the projects (council flats) hanging out on my corner "hootin' and hollerin'" as they say. T-Rex and I were really not sure what to make of them. We thought"uh, oh. are we gonna get jumped by a gauntlet of thugs?" One of them sensed our hesitation as we debated turning around and walking another way. He said "Don't be afraid! Come drink with us!"and made a gesture to pass me his 40oz bottle of Colt 45. So I cheered "woooooh!" and and they cheered back "wooooh!" and we kept walking. Itt was kind of awesome and affirming to see they were just hanging out enjoying the freedom of no longer being cooped up inside. But there was a moment of definitely NOT awesome as we didn't know what to expect.
In the next few days, there were swarms of people walking into the delis to get what they could that hadn't gone bad, in near pitch blackness. Water, soda, cookies, instant coffee, etc. And there were these little gas-powered mini generator charging stations EVERYWHERE. People queued up to charge their phones. Elsewhere, people huddled up to Starbucks uptown trying to get a wifi signal.
That first night T-Rex and I went uptown, we asked the restaurant hostess to seat us near a plug and we beat the crowds by about 20 minutes. Then people were eying the plugs as we recharged. When we left, I told a woman at a nearby table it was free and she squealed "I love you!"
So yeah, it was really something -
trying to get support to fix the generator
managing clients
bringing in staff
coordinating and planning for safety
and also keeping people calm
It was truly a test of my managerial and emotional skills. Clients came up to me afterward
and thanked me, telling me how glad they were that I was the director. They could see me working hard to scramble to attend to everything. It felt good to be appreciated. And I'm proud of everyone who pitched in, those on my staff who came together and put their best foot forward.
Now I'm finally finished clearing out the fridge, and catching up on rest. But I'll leave you with this photo that T-Rex took of me. Behold the refrigerator bandit! Avoiding foul smells with a single bandana. :-D
And in conclusion . . .
Be well, flist!