Would the Last Person Out of New York City Please Turn Off Mayor Bloomberg's Light. Thank You.

Let's Review:

On Friday, city officials issued what they called an unprecedented order for the evacuation of about 370,000 residents of low-lying areas, warning that Hurricane Irene was such a threat that people living there simply had to get out. Officials also made what they said was another first-of-its-kind decision, announcing plans to shut down the city’s entire transit system Saturday — all 468 subway stations and 840 miles of tracks, and the rest of the nation’s largest mass transit network: thousands of buses in the city, as well as the buses and commuter trains that reach from Midtown Manhattan to the suburbs. -- Evacuations Ordered in New York as Hurricane Irene Nears - NYTimes.com

I think we can assume that "officials" all have personal and/or taxpayer paid for transport and some, like Bloomberg, have private planes and helicopters. For "all the little people" exactly how you all "get out" of New York City without a public transportation system is likely to be.... uh.... somewhat problematic.

I lived in Brooklyn Heights directly across the river from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and for the months that unfolded after it. One thing that was exceedingly difficult on that day and for days after was, well, getting out of New York. Rental cars were quickly impossible to get. Some friends, who really needed to get back to their home in Florida, actually bought a used car in Queens for the trip.

Another item that was passed over in all the reporting after that day was that the one sector of the economy that had a bump up in sales in the New York area were motorcycles. People, it seems, had figured out that if everybody who had a car wanted to leave New York at the same time the roads would quickly become impassable to anyone not on a motorcycle (preferably with a rider armed with a pistol).

New York, whenever lots of people need to exit at once, becomes a roach motel. You check in but you can't check out.

Case in point:

82-year-old Abe Feinstein, who has lived since the early 1960s on the eighth floor of a building that overlooks the famed boardwalk of Coney Island, which is in the evacuation zone and was alive with residents and visitors Friday. "How can I get out of Coney Island? What am I going to do? Run with this walker?" he said. -- News

He's not the only one. A fact of which it would seem the death-dwarf that poses as Mayor of New York seems vaguely aware:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged those who needed to leave to do so right away Saturday morning. The city doesn't have enough resources to evacuate everyone after the weather worsens, he said about 2 ½ hours before the transit system was to shut down.

With this one move, Bloomberg has rewritten the classic headline. Now it's MAYOR TO CITY: DROP DEAD.

Posted by Vanderleun at August 27, 2011 1:35 PM