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August 28, 2011

Zero-Tolerance

By Michael Shaw

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Being on the East Coast (and having been stranded in Maine the past few days), I’m a lot more connected to this story than if I’d been in L.A.  Anyway, this is one of the more interesting photos I’ve seen from Irene-aggedon, Grand Central a zero-tolerance ghost town.  The question the photo raises is whether preparations for Irene could have been handled on a more limited basis, or if (and we could be talking about Obama and Afghanistan, or Bloomberg post-snowpocalypse) politicians are so unwilling to take calculated risks these days that we’re in for automatic and massive security investments at the first whiff of either high-profile natural or man-made threats. (Hence, the significance of Old Glory.)

(photo: MTA)

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  • marc sobel

    Evacuation for a Cat 1 is perfectly reasonable.

    Soft spoken Amanda 
    http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/did_bloomberg_overreact#When:15:26:42Z  talks about how the wingers are pushing government over reaction. 

    “Here are the facts: Last night, when I went to bed around 1AM, the storm was actually picking up steam and was still a Category 1 hurricane, and the eye was headed straight for New York City.  It downgraded to a tropical storm, minimizing the damage, and that’s a good thing. (Though, don’t get cocky. Many parts of the city are out of electricity and many parts are flooded.)  But it was a matter of luck.  There was a strong fucking chance that it could have been much worse. Don’t mistake a lucky break for a certain outcome. “

  • glenn

    It would make senses that both subways and trains should be shut down even for only a Cat 1 storm – the subways have been slammed by far less fierce storms before. So, if that’s the case, why not shut Grand Central – much as I love the Oyster Bar – there’s no reason for it to remain open.

    And regarding the golf-cart in the pic – I would not doubt that this golf-cart transport for security personnel is probably in use during late night hours on a regular basis, in all kinds of weather. It’s a damned big place. So it is probably not some unique Irene-related thing.

  • http://profiles.google.com/thomasgokey Thomas Gokey

    The questions you ask are important ones, but I’m not sure that they are questions the image forces us to ask (and I agree with the other commenters that in this case the response was entirely reasonable).

    Instead this image is so interesting because it is uncanny. They remind me of some of Catherine Opie’s photographs of deserted city blocks from LA. How could a place that we think of as being so crazy busy be abandoned? It’s like a weird sci-fi apocalyptic movie.

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