By the time I ventured out of Brooklyn on Monday afternoon for the first time since arriving home on Friday night, Irene’s impact within the five boroughs of New York City had largely dissipated. A few neighborhoods are dealing with flood waters and downed trees while others are still waiting for power to be restored. But as dramatic images of flooding in upstate New York and Vermont pour in, New York City remained unscathed.
Of course, since the city emerged from the storm with only a death or two and little long-term damage, many pundits have begun to question our preparedness. Did we have to shutdown the city so completely on Saturday? Was it an overreaction to cut off subway service and shut down mass transit? Why couldn’t meteorologists better predict the weather? It’s typical Monday-morning quarterbacking but this for a natural disaster.
Outside of the city, the storm has been devastating. So far, 40 people have died from it, and that total is expected to rise. The property loss is estimated to be well over $10 billion, and even locally, the MTA announced last night that Port Jervis line will not enjoy Metro-North service for months due to “catastrophic damage” to track beds, bridges and signal system. The railroad will run shuttle buses for now, but they do not anticipate service any time soon. More details are available in a press release, and the photos are breathtaking in their starkness.
Now, even before we knew the full extent of the damage to Metro-North’s westernmost reaches, straphangers were wondering if the MTA overreacted. Why didn’t they run less frequent shorter trains during the storm? Why didn’t they wait to shut down the system until later in the day on Saturday? Why wasn’t it back up and running before yesterday morning? Eventually, these are questions that someone — the MTA, the governor’s office — will likely answer with a report in a few months, but for now, the answer is a simple one.
As the storm bore down on New York City, meteorologists simply couldn’t know that it was going to largely skip over New York City. They couldn’t know that the worst would hit to the north of us. They couldn’t know that the bands of rain would spin out for a bit at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning and that the winds would be worst to the east of us. Even as it appeared as though New York would largely be spared the worst of it, forecasters continue to warn of uncertainty, and as people from the south who are in the regular paths of hurricanes know, it’s better to prepare for the worst than be left unprepared for a big storm.
For the safety of New Yorkers, for the safety of MTA employees and for the safety and security of the subway equipment, shutting down the system was the right decision. Less than a day after the storm passed, the system was up and running with few hiccups, and we could breath easy. We dodged a bullet this time, but it won’t be the last one we face.
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