Queens, NY – Despite well-publicized warnings that the Rockaway peninsula in Queens was under a mandatory evacuation alert, many residents defied the order on Saturday and insisted upon riding out the storm at home.
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“I’m not taking this lightly, but a flood can only do so much,” said Laquan Bostick, 22, who lives in a ninth floor apartment in the Beach 41st Street Houses, a public housing complex, with his mother.
“I feel comfortable staying here,” he said. “It’s better than being put in some school turned into a shelter.”
All along the highly vulnerable peninsula, which is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay in southern Queens, residents resolved to stay put, even though public transportation was shut down at midday on Saturday, and the city might close the two bridges to the peninsula in the event of high winds.
People in other low-lying neighborhoods across New York City, especially in public housing, expressed similar skepticism about the need to leave.
Their determination alarmed some officials, who issued increasingly strident statements all day long about the risks of staying. In some housing complexes on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the city sent buses to transport people, but they sat empty, even though officials had announced that elevators would be turned off in the evening.
But Five Towns fire chief said that any residents that choose to ignore the call to evacuate are on their own, said the chief of the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department.
Unfortunately, there is a general breakdown of respect for public authority on a wide range of issues, in part because of so many “false alarms” over the years. Also, anyone who has watched conditions at public shelters on TV news (e.g. post-Katrina) has to believe they might be better off at home and taking their chances.
there is nothing worse than a city shelter. its better to sleep on the boardwalk tonite than in a room full of strangers and weirdos with absolutely nothing to do but huddle on your blanket
People who do not live here are not aware that by the time they told us to evacuate we would surely have been michalel shabbos. The evacuation route gets clogged by traffic on a regular day, it would just take too long to leave. So far there has been nothing more than heavy rain, I would not say that it is more dangerous here than in NYC, our mayor who is shomer shabbos himself is here, as are lots of people. The call for mandatory evacuation came to our house at 7:18 pm on Friday. I truly think this is totally overblown, let’s hope I am proven right tomorrow.
We have rabbonim here, thank you very much, ALL of whom said not to leave, and we listened to them. I think my tuition was very well spent. The rabbis were here too and we have no damage at all. We didn’t even lose power, which is common around here for much lesser storms.
We can all agree to disagree agreeably. Why the personal attacks, the name calling and the labeling?! We just marked Tisha B’av!