On Monday night, New York Mayor Bloomberg spelled out the situation to New Yorkers as the city braces for the worst of Hurricane Sandy: “Do not go outside — the time to leave is past, you have to stay whereever you are.”
He also asked New York residents not to call 911 “unless it’s life threatening,” explaining that normally the emergency services in Queens handle one thousand calls in 30 minutes, but tonight they have been receiving calls at a rate of ten thousand calls in the same time period.
Before turning over the press conference to energy company Con Edison CEO Kevin Burke, Bloomberg concluded with a stark warning: “Let me again say – the storm’s here. It’s going to get worse this evening. Tomorrow morning we’ll be able to look back and you’ll certainly be on the other side of that curve. Stay inside. It’s for your own safety. Conditions are going to be very dangerous outside. It’s not nasty, this is dangerous. Winds of this magnitude can pick up something in a moment’s notice and throw it right at you very hard, and it can be fatal. If you absolutely don’t need to be outside, don’t take the risk.”