When Superstorm Sandy hit, many people turned to social media for news. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Superstorm Sandy surged. Saltwater suffocated the Brooklyn Battery tunnel. Downtown subway entrances choked with storm water. Entire blocks of the waterfront in Queens burned. After an explosion at a ConEdison facility on 14
th Street, Lower Manhattan sat in the dark. Abraham, a tech writer lay in his apartment in Chinatown, following the news about the storm on Twitter. The glare from his screen and a few flashlights provided the only sources of light in the room. At 8:10 pm on October 28
th, the @MikeBloomberg Twitter account announced, “Our primary concerns are storm surge, prolonged wind, and possible power outages.” Twenty-five minutes later the @MikeBloomberg account tweeted “Our 65 shelters will be open as of 9 AM Sunday. They provide a safe place to sleep, they provide meals, and they have space for pets.
#Sandy.” As the hurricane passed over the city, people with internet-access tweeted photos of fallen trees and submerged cars. More than one million people tweeted about the storm. Thousands of people re-tweeted and shared Mayor Bloomberg’s twitter announcements.
Other people spent the storm alone in the darkness.
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@MikeBloomberg: Monday October 29, 1:20 pm: Remain in your homes while the storm is in progress. Stay away from windows
@MikeBloomberg: Monday October 28, 6:42 pm: The time for evacuation is over. Conditions are dangerous and will get worse. Please stay where you are
#Sandy #NYC http://bit.ly/WRCnd3
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While Bloomberg’s account broadcast #Sandy #NYC messages and Abraham sat in his apartment, scanning Twitter for news, 39 year old Staten Island resident Glenda Moore left her flooded home and tried to drive towards her sister’s house in Brooklyn. The rising water rendered her car immobile. She took her toddler sons to a nearby house to ask for help.
“I don’t know you. I’m not going to help you,” the voice behind the door said. Moore carried her sons though the churning water towards a house with lights on. As she approached, the light turned off. She lost grip of her children. The current pulled the boys away. Glenda searched for her sons, screaming. She passed the night outside in the wind and rain. Police found her sons’ bodies two days later under a pile of storm debris in a nearby marsh.
Statistics: One million people in New York City lost power. 80 homes in Breezy Point burned down. 43 Million gallons of water poured into the Brooklyn Battery tunnel. Property damage totaled $20 billion.
Netflix traffic increased 20 percent during the storm.
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On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the mid afternoon, one young couple strolled through the mist. Gusts of wind ripped leaves off the trees in front of the sturdy brownstone buildings. Yellow caution tape blocked off the entrances to Riverside Park. A muscular thirty-something man with an MP3 player strapped to his arm sprinted up 78th Street, far uphill from the rising water of the Hudson River, which sloshed against the wall next to the bike path, down below the park. Inside the pizzeria on 84th Street, the television flickered, broadcasting an image of the exposed skeleton of a broken crane being battered by the wind.
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Half a block away, a twenty-eight year old graduate student looked at photos posted to Facebook that showed flooding in Red Hook Brooklyn and the East Village. His afternoon passed in segments. Netflix movie. Snack break. Only once did a loud gust of wind distract his attention from the screen. At 2:01 pm @ColumbiaSpec, the Twitter Account for Columbia Universitiy’s undergraduate newspaper, announced “Breaking:
@Columbia cancels all Tuesday classes & events.” Hurricane Sandy also forced professors to push back midterms that had been scheduled for October 30
th and 31
st.
At 7:04 pm, the New York 1 news channel’s Twitter account announced “Facade Ripped Off Four-Story Building In Chelsea, No Injuries Reported.” Photos showed that the entire front of the building had fallen down, leaving apartments and their residents exposed to the storm. At 8:38 pm, the New York 1 account tweeted “Sandy Brings Record Surge, Flooding To Low-Laying Areas Of City.”
Inside the apartment on 84th Street, at 11 p.m., an iPhone, which had been charging at an outlet near the bed, rang. “We are having drinks, come over if you want to,” the caller said. Outside, the wind howled. The laptop rested on top of the bedspread. On the screen, Liam Neeson fought his way through a barren artic landscape, battered by the weather. The heat from the laptop, resting on top of a quilt, warmed the bed. On the screen, as the movie ended, Neeson prepared for one final battle. “Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day,” he said readying himself to fight and probably be killed by a pack of wolves. The movie ended. The part of the bed where the laptop had been was still warm. Outside, the weather worsened. Lights in the apartments on the street turned out as residents went to sleep. Nobody left the building to venture out into the storm.
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On Tuesday evening, as the wind died down, students gathered inside a bar on 117th Street near Columbia’s School for International and Public Affairs. “I’d go to Central America or Mexico to do a story, because it’s worth it. I thought about going downtown to Wall Street, to Ground Zero to take photos, but this isn’t my story,” a graduate student in a green rain jacket said.
“It’s just a storm,” another student agreed. Outside, a few minutes later, two students smoked cigarettes. It was the first night people gathered together after waiting out the storm. “I just needed to see people. I needed contact with people,” a girl said, squeezing one of the smoker’s arms.
The students exhaled and reflected on the storm and the school year. “This year I’ve been too busy,” one said. “I’ve gotta get out and have drinks with people during the week, that’s where the value is,” he added.
Inside the bar, a crowd gathered around the bright lights of the pool table. A basketball game ended. The TV on the wall flashed replay footage as sports commentators discussed the game. Several people filed out the door. At a table, one student showed another a photo he’d shared on Instagram and tweeted of one of the gourmet meals he’d cooked during the storm. “How do you get people to follow you on Instagram?” he asked. “Just share photos and follow people,” the other young man said.
“Cheers, cheers,” two smiling students at a nearby table said, their beer glasses clanking together.
“My friend, you’ll have to meet her,” one female graduate student said to classmate she had just met. “She’s covering the drug war in Tijuana, she’s a conflict reporter.”
“I’ve covered the drug war, but always indirectly,” the other student said. “I’ve never gone out with the local photographers to the crime scenes, but that’s something I’d like to do in the future,” he said.
