MNN - Mother Nature Network

Greetings from New York City hurricane evacuation zone B!

 

After deciding it probably wouldn’t be all that much fun to be marooned in his apartment for an unknown amount of time without heat or electricity, yours truly evacuated last night from MNN home and garden HQ located in the very zone A-worthy waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. From what I’ve seen — my neighbor a few blocks away, Nick Cope of Green Painting, snapped a photo that’s been making the rounds — Red Hook has already been overcome by storm surge du Sandy and she's yet to even really arrive. Also, my new-ish roommate, who decided not to evacuate, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal earlier today. Good for him!

 

For now, I’m safely hunkered down with a friend just a couple of miles away in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. I'm thinking we have enough pumpkin donut holes and apple cider in ride out this blustery Frankennor'pocalypse or whatever the hell Sandy is. Also, we have the "Evil Dead" on DVD (still have to celebrate Halloween somehow, right?).

 

However, just a couple of blocks from where I’m staying is the 1.8-mile-long Gowanus Canal, an infamously foul EPA Superfund site — and hipster houseboat enclave — that’s already starting to flood into the streets and surrounding properties. Earlier today, I joined dozens of other curious area residents on the Carroll, Union, and Third St. bridges to see how "one of the nation’s most extensively contaminated water bodies" — a waterway filled with garbage, sewer overflow, industrial pollutants, and every type of savory discharge known to man — is faring during low tide. Not too well, apparently … and we’ve got a long night ahead. Also, why is the water that color?