Fear of Hurricane Stirs Russians In Brighton Beach

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Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach are living in fear of a hurricane threat to which the rest of New York City seems largely oblivious. Speculation that a severe storm could soon descend on Brooklyn has been rife among immigrant senior citizens, many of whom are reportedly stocking up on water and medicine in preparation for an emergency that is much less likely to happen than some of the local Russian press and broadcast outlets have reported.

“They say we should be afraid, that it’ll come any day,” one woman in Brighton Beach said while eating an ice cream cone on the boardwalk. (Like most of the local immigrants interviewed for this story, the woman spoke to The New York Sun in Russian and did not provide her full name.)

“I know one businessman who closed his business,” the editor in chief of a local paper, Russkii Bazaar, Natalia Shapiro, said. “He went back to live in Russia until the hurricane season is over.”

Employees at Pharmacy Express on Brighton Beach Avenue said that in May, senior citizens started coming in saying they were worried about a hurricane. “People read the Russian-language newspapers, and they believe every word,” a pharmacist, Tatiana Shmaian, said. Ms. Shmaian said her daughter lives in Moscow and called her to make sure she was okay after hearing about a potential hurricane on Russian television.

“They’re hearing there’s going to be a hurricane in 24 hours,” Pat Singer of the Brighton Neighborhood Association said. Ms. Singer said senior citizens have come into her office and asked what they should do if the city declares a weather-related evacuation. “They’re old, they can’t run, and they’re scared,” she said. “Katrina scared a lot of people.”

Ms. Singer, who cannot read Russian, blamed the local Russian newspapers for the speculation, saying editors are trying to scare their readers in order to boost sales. “It’s a ghetto, a Russian ghetto neighborhood. They read their own newsletters, watch their own television stations,” she said.

The scare appears to have started in March, when several Russian-language newspapers in America published a re port that said: “In the coming summer, a powerful hurricane could descend on New York with a force no less forgiving than Katrina, which emptied New Orleans last year.” That warning also was picked up by news sources in Russia. Then, at the end of last month, the New York Russian paper V Novom Svete ran a cover story citing a French scientist who said a tsunami would rip through Manhattan on May 25.

That article – which a spokesman from the city’s Office of Emergency Management, Jarrod Bernstein, called “irresponsible” – was followed a few days later by a separate story about an appearance by the director of the National Hurricane Center, Max Mayfield, before the U.S. Senate. In his remarks, picked up by many of the Russian newspapers sold in Brighton Beach, Mr. Mayfield said, “It is not a question of if a major hurricane will strike the New York area, but when.” But he also said a serious storm could hit the city “maybe this year, maybe next, maybe 100 years from now.”

One woman on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, Sonya, said she’d read in “the paper” that she should “prepare her documents” in the event of an evacuation.

Sonya, 80, also said her husband recently received a call from a health care provider telling him a hurricane could be approaching and that he should gather his family’s papers and stock up on supplies. Sonya said she laughed when her husband told her about it, but when she called back, the warnings were reiterated. The person from the company, the name of which Sonya could not remember, asked her whether she had a place to go if an evacuation was ordered.

Unlike the tsunami claims in V Novom Svete, the report about the possibility of hurricanes was taken seriously by city officials. According to Mr. Bernstein, OEM has been actively trying to disseminate information to immigrant communities like Brighton Beach about what to do in the event of a hurricane.

In the last month, the commissioner of OEM, Joseph Bruno, has appeared twice on local Russian radio and once on television. He also granted a lengthy interview to a local weekly Russian language magazine, Metro, about the storm speculation circulating in the community.

Mr. Bruno held a press conference about the hurricane threat two weeks ago, and since then several Russian newspapers have run safety information provided by OEM.

Novoye Russkoye Slovo printed a list of safety tips and a map sent from City Hall highlighting areas in New York most vulnerable to hurricanes. “We passed on their message that New York is at some risk,” an editor, Vladimir Chernomorsky, said.

“We gave absolutely objective information,” Ms. Shapiro of Russkii Bazaar said. “It was not yellow journalism.”

Mr. Bernstein said he was glad to see that communities were spreading useful information. “As long as people are getting prepared, as long as there’s not panic gripping the community, it’s a good thing.”

Like many of the elderly immigrants interviewed for this story, Sonya seemed calm and resigned about the prospect of an emergency. “Our lives are lived,” she said, a Russian expression that two other people approached by the Sun also used. “I’m not scared of anything anymore. I’ve already survived two evacuations, one out of Kiev, and one to America. What is there to be scared of now?”


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