It's Better Sometimes to be Lucky than Good

I'm back in the office like a normal Monday morning. Thankfully, my house never lost power and there was no flooding in my area. The most damage we had was the wind had blown out a window pane in the basement and I was able to glue it back. Saturday night I had made sure all the windows were shut along with every door in the house, all loose items outside secured in the garage, and we slept on an air mattress in the middle of the living room. Actually, my wife and son slept on the air mattress while I slept on the couch.

We were calm, but once I saw the potential for a tornado warning on the news around 11 pm I admittedly got nervous. After my wife and son fell asleep I packed us an extra set of clothes, got my home and car insurance policy together, home info, as well as my portable hardrive (hey, I had to save my writing), and put it at the entrance to the basement. The fridge was nearby for a quick grab of the gallons of water we had.

We have an old house and it can withstand rain and wind, but a tornado? Uhm, no. So I made sure I had everything nearby just in case we had to make a quick run to the basement. Thankfully, by the morning the tornado warning had been lifted.

NYC got lucky because Irene hit us straight on, but it had lingered up the coast for so long that it had weakened and only packed 60 mph winds by the time it made landfall on Coney Island. If we had been hit witha Cat 1 or Cat 2 like what happened down south, NYC and upstate would have been in a world of hurt. There's a tremendous amount of flooding upstate already. It could have been far worse.

Mayor Bloomberg is taking some media hits for being "overprepared" and "hyping the storm" based on the notion that he had overreacted because of his administration's incompetent response to the Christmas Blizzard. Such criticism is moronic. What was the alternative? Downplaying it and being undone by a catestrophic storm? NYC got lucky. The storm didn't turn. It came straight on. Only nature saved us. As the saying goes, it's better sometimes to be lucky than good.