Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he thinks the city made the right decisions in preparing for Hurricane Irene.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the comments today when announcing he would lift the evacuation order covering 370,000 people by 3 p.m.
He said the storm inflicted significant damage, with retaining walls collapsing in some places and serious flooding across all the five boroughs.
But “whether we dodged a bullet or you look at it and said, ‘God smiled on us,’ the bottom line is, I’m happy to report, there do not appear to be any deaths attributable to the storm,” the mayor said. He added: “All in all, we are in pretty good shape because of the extensive steps we took to prepare.”
Among those steps was the shutting down of city subways, commuter rails and buses.
Jay Walder, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said damage to the various parts of the system would have to assessed before service could be restored.
Walder said the shutdown — the first time the nation’s biggest transit system suspended all service because of a natural disaster — was the right move, noting that some train yards were under water.
“I think it’s fair to say you’re going to have a tough commute in the morning,” Bloomberg said. “Tough commute tomorrow, but we have tough commutes all the time.”
Around the city, firefighters rescued dozens of people from flooded homes on Staten Island, residents removed garbage and debris from clogged sewer gates, and once-quiet roads became busier soon after a weakened Irene came ashore at Brooklyn’s Coney Island around 9 a.m. as a powerful tropical storm.
In Queens, bungalows floated down the street and emergency crews were checking to make sure no one was inside. There was heavy flooding in other parts of the city, but Manhattan was mostly spared.