Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Battery Park City Residents Get Ready for Evacuation

By DNAinfo Staff on August 26, 2011 4:55pm  | Updated on August 26, 2011 8:20pm

By Andrea Swalec and Amy Zimmer

DNAinfo Staff

BATTERY PARK CITY — Many residents were already packing up to leave their low-lying neighborhood on Friday — some willingly, several begrudgingly — in advance of the city's mandatory evacuation of Battery Park City by 5 p.m. Saturday.

City officials urged residents in the area — which lies in Zone A, the most at-risk for storm surge flooding — to stay with friends or relatives outside of the high risk zones or head to the nearest evacuation center. For Downtown residents, that's at Seward Park High School at 350 Grand St., between Ludlow and Broome streets.

"We brought everything in from the terrace," said Catherine Smith, 31, who lives on the 24th floor of a 30-story tower on West Street. "Hopefully, everything will be OK."

She was planning to take her 10-week-old baby girl and head up to her in-laws in Westchester as soon as her husband came home from work.

"It's unbelievable," said Smith, an environmental insurance broker.

"So far, she will have been through an earthquake and a hurricane," Smith said of her newborn.

On Friday night, Battery Park City Authority officials announced that all public facilities in the neighborhood will be closed as of 8 a.m. Saturday.

Nash Demirtas, the manager of Cucina Liberta, a deli on Battery Place, said he had no choice but to close on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. since his building would be shutting off the power.

"With the power off, I'll have a full fridge, freezer and storage room where all my food will go bad," said Demirtas, 29. 

Staffers at the 3LD Art + Technology Center were prepping the theater at 80 Greenwich St., getting lights and electrical equipment off the floor and shutting down the power system.

Despite taking these precautions, the center's artistic director Kevin Cunningham wasn't too worried. He said he's lived through 10 hurricanes — including Category 3 strength ones — in Houston and Galveston, Texas, and in the Florida panhandle.

With a Category 1 — the expected strength of Hurricane Irene is predicted when she hits New York — "you usually go out in the street and have a party," he said.

Still, he was putting sandbags under the doors and cancelled rehearsals for the weekend.

Photographer Chris Penler, 35, was waiting with his 3-year-old French bull dog, Sullivan, their bags packed and ready to head up to Buffalo with his girlfriend because she insisted they go to her family upstate.

"I would have stayed," said Penler, who lives on the 19th floor of a building on Gold Street. "I don't think it's going to be that bad, but I could be wrong."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg advised people to leave earlier than the 5 p.m. Saturday deadline, especially as the officials took the unprecedented step of announcing a systemwide shutdown of its transit system — affecting subways, buses, the Long Island Railroad, Metro-North Railroad and Access-a-Ride — beginning at noon Saturday.  

"Waiting until the last minute is not a smart thing to do," Bloomberg said. "This is life threatening."

He stressed there could be problems with many roadways, including the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, which could potentially flood.
Kyle, a 32-year-old trader who was in the U.S. armed forces and declined to give his last name, was angry that his luxury building at 1 West St. was kicking him out based on the city's orders.

"I spent a year in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "I know how to take care of myself. I don't need Bloomberg telling me what I need to do for my safety."

Though he was leaving the neighborhood, he said he didn't know where he would go.