A mayor who is hyperactive on Twitter, empty supermarket shelves, fire trucks speeding across Manhattan, a closed transport system and surfers who defy logic: when a hurricane like Irene and a city like New York meet, the result may well sound like Hollywood material.
"People usually run away from the hurricane - surfers run toward the hurricane," Brooklyn surfer Seth Birch, 28, was quoted as saying in the New York Daily News.
As time went by, waves rose higher and higher on Rockaway Beach, in Queens, one of the five boroughs of New York. But Birch and his friends will no longer be able to run towards Irene, because New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered the evacuation of 370,000 people, particularly those in low-lying areas or places close to the water, including Rockaway Beach, the humble Coney Island and the affluent Battery Park, in Manhattan.
It is a weekend to remember, with a powerful hurricane reaching New York City - a most unusual phenomenon for the 15 million people living in the metropolitan area. Experts note that up to 700,000 people could suffer blackouts lasting days and even weeks. Internet and mobile phone connections could also crash, they note.
That is why Bloomberg, who was slammed for his slow reaction to the December 2010 blizzard, seems determined to do better this time around. The official, the founder of a news agency after all, applied a policy of "hypercommunication" and posted 41 tweets Friday to give the citizenry as many details as possible on the situation.
"They are exaggerating. I have already seen this in my homeland, where hurricanes are a serious business," said Rosa, a Puerto Rican hotel receptionist who felt overwhelmed in the face of the long series of warnings that were issued Friday.
Exaggeration or not, the truth is that New Yorkers will hardly be able to complain that their local government did not keep them adequately informed of Irene's progress.
"We are all preparing for the worst, while hoping for the best. It is the only way to prepare for these rare events," Bloomberg tweeted Friday. "Know your zone. Have a plan," he said in a different, more direct tweet, to which he attached a link to evacuation plans and maps.
US President Barack Obama appeared to be on the same wavelength, as he returned to Washington early from a holiday in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He clearly does not want to see his mandate stained by a disaster-turned-scandal, such as Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans under president George W Bush.
"I cannot stress this highly enough: If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, take precautions now," Obama said Friday. "Don't wait. Don't delay," he said. The New York Times provided free access to its online edition to fulfil its duty of "public service." And Bloomberg and Obama found plenty of lookalikes on the radio and on television.
So much insistence generated a certain unhealthy frenzy among a portion of the population. But only among a portion, because many thousands of people still opted to spend Friday night out on the streets, and in New York's restaurants and bars.
There were fire trucks coming and going, and many people were seen carrying water and other provisions in anticipation of the hurricane's arrival, but central Manhattan hardly looked like a disaster was imminent.
To see such a thing, one needed to get closer to the shore, or just to watch the non-stop cable television coverage of the impending disaster.
"Surviving Hurricane Irene," CNN highlighted all day. The TV channel's reports featured the recommendation to "stockpile food, water, emergency kits."
The situation was indeed unusual in the late New York summer. Ten years ago, in the days before the tragic September 11 attacks, things were so calm that Time magazine devoted an issue to the "Summer of the Shark," following a series of shark attacks in US beaches. Something similar happened this week, because before Irene took on disastrous potential, many in Manhattan were busy talking about huge rats found in parts of the island.
Despite impressive photos of the rats in question, that hype has now died down and everything is focused on Irene. Life in the city has largely come to a standstill, and it remains to be seen who is the stronger of the two: Is it Irene? Is it New York?
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