Hurricane Irene: At ground zero, the hardy come out
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As Hurricane Irene barrels toward the Northeast, most New Yorkers are staying inside. But some intrepid tourists were looking to ride out one potential disaster by touring the site of another.
Even as the rain picked up early Saturday afternoon, a trickle of out-of-town visitors circulated around ground zero, the half-rebuilt site in lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers once stood. Mostly they were sturdy types accustomed to the threat of rampant flooding and gale-force winds.
‘We’re from South Florida, so this doesn’t really faze us,’ said Jimmy Thate, who had come from Palm Beach with his friend, Andrew Wilcox.
Along with two other visitors, the pair were snapping photos near the site -- with its half-completed skyscrapers, its hulking (and vulnerable-looking) cranes and recently completed memorials -- as they discussed the site’s progress in the nearly 10 years since Sept. 11, 2001.
When would the weather get bleak enough for them to return to their Times Square hotel? ‘When it’s a Category 4?’ Wilcox offered dryly.
Up the street, Andrew New, 27, was observing the site with his girlfriend, Angela Caples, 25. The couple were visiting the U.S. from Australia this summer, and said they were out and about because the impending storm didn’t really alarm them. ‘We have floods in Australia all the time, so we’re not too worried just yet,’ New said.
The pair had just missed the East Coast earthquake earlier in the week on their flight in from Chicago. ‘Now that would have been a little scary,’ Caples added.
The group of visitors around Ground Zero highlighted how, in an international destination like New York, Irene tended to elicit a wider range of reactions than in smaller, more monolithic cities and communities.
Residents of nearby Battery Park City, which sits on the water and is considered an evacuation zone, had nearly all cleared out, creating something of a ghost town Saturday; only the occasional jogger could be seen moving along what is usually a crowded waterfront promenade.
But the out-of-town visitors were maintaining their joie de vivre at ground zero. Claire, a grandmother from Newcastle in Great Britain who had just arrived in New York with her two daughters and two granddaughters, popped out of a cab right next to the site and waved off -- in a genteel way -- any concerns about the weather. ‘Oh, we’re used to a little rain in England,’ she said.
The site also was attracting visitors because it was comparatively easy to walk or taxi to -- essential given that all subway and bus service had been suspended -- and because many other attractions were also closed.
Jim and Jan Steiner, a 40-something married couple from Atlanta, came because their weekend entertainment plans were washed out (a performance of ‘Jersey Boys,’ among other events).
Others at ground zero, however, weren’t giving up on some live entertainment this weekend.
‘It will be a lot easier to get tickets for ‘Letterman’ on Monday, won’t it?’ asked New. ‘We really want to see him.’
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--Steven Zeitchik in New York
