How To Prepare For Hurricane Sandy
By Leila Sales
People seem to be concerned about the impending storm. I have gathered this from the eighty emails I have received from my elected officials, not to mention a few from CVS, who has seized upon this as a golden opportunity to sell off their back stock of batteries. Also from the multiple phone calls I have received from my parents, in which they’ve said things like, “Fill up your bathtub with water,” and, “Don’t die.”
The last time New York City (and my parents) flew into such a panic was right before Hurricane Irene, in August 2011. I prepared for Irene. I bought the shit out of some batteries. So I’d like to now pass on the wisdom that I gained last time my city went through this sort of a natural crisis, so that we can all benefit from my experiences.
1. Close your windows and remove all items from your windowsills.
2. Move all furniture into the center of the room, so that, when the wind inevitably blasts open your windows and the rain starts pour into your living room, it will not quite be able to reach your ottoman.
3. Hide your laptop, jewelry, and baby blankie so that, when the looters crawl through the busted-open windows of your fourth-floor walk-up, the only things they’ll be able to find and steal are your collection of disposable chopsticks and some melted ice cream (see below).
4. Stockpile $250 in cash so that if New York’s streets flood and the only escape is on some resourceful stranger’s raft, you will be able to buy yourself a spot on said raft, while your foolish neighbors, who have only credit cards and checkbooks, will be left behind to drown.
5. Pack a “go-bag” containing everything you might need for a week trapped inside whatever might be Brooklyn’s equivalent to the Superdome (presumably the Barclay’s Center), including but not limited to: your passport, five pairs of clean underwear, one or two pairs of dirty underwear, a box of granola bars, two rolls of toilet paper, marijuana, a toothbrush, a notebook for chronicling any humanitarian horrors that might go down, and, as previously mentioned, $250 in cash.
6. Buy two gallons of ice cream. If the power goes out, eat it quickly, before it melts.
7. Fill up your car with gas, just in case you need to make a quick getaway.
8. Keep your bicycle handy, so that if vagrants start siphoning off gasoline from automobiles and we suddenly find ourselves in a new economy where we have to abandon cars along the side of the road, you can still make a quick getaway, only this time by bike. If you don’t own a bicycle, go buy one. Then keep it handy.
9. This tip courtesy of my parents: Fill up your bathtub with water and save it. I would add: Maybe take a shower beforehand?
Clearly, these are stressful times. But hopefully, by pooling our collective wisdom and survival tips, we will all be able to make it through. Assuming, that is, that there are enough rafts. If there’s only one, I call dibs.