Is this hurricane about to hit New York?

Top developments:

Landfall expected around 9 a.m. ET at near Cape Lookout on N.C.'s Outer Banks
2.5 million under evacuation orders; 550,000 are in NYC, Long Island
NYC, N.J., Philadelphia to suspend mass transit service during part of weekend
Hard rain falls on North Carolina's Outer Banks
Irene could weaken to Category 1 storm by Saturday, but still dangerous

jf1acai wrote: I'm wondering how those in NYC without vehicles are supposed to evacuate, with mass transportation shut down at noon tomorrow.

www.alternet.org/story/152184/as_hurrica..._hurricane_katrina_/
As Hurricane Irene Approaches Land, What Lessons Have We Forgotten From Hurricane Katrina?
Hurricane Katrina hit nearly 6 years ago. As the Northeast readies for a major storm, who's being left out of the disaster preparation?
August 26, 2011

But now it's six years on and I live in another big city with a population that doesn't have cars ( 55 percent of New Yorkers, as opposed to 27 percent of New Orleanians ). Evacuation isn't easy even if our billionaire mayor declares it mandatory, and with a citywide shutdown in public transit, New York will grind to a halt.

New Orleans, Palast reported, had no such plan before Katrina. “Long after 2,000 drowned, I found the "plan": no provision at all for the 27,000 residents without cars. That's not surprising: the hurricane evacuation contractor had zero experience in hurricane evacuation.

Mayor Bloomberg wants New Yorkers to know this is serious—so his office has taken to tweeting admonishments to citizens like “If you are in Zone A, prepare to evacuate asap. But in all the press announcements of mandatory evacuation, nowhere were there instructions on how to evacuate without transport. The city's evacuation brochure lists helpful things like what you should pack, but not how you should get there. FEMA may have learned something from Katrina at least, tweeting “#Hurricane #Irene: Text SHELTER + ZIP code to 43362 (4FEMA) to find nearest shelter in ur area (example: shelter 12345).”

Nona Willis Aronowitz makes the point, though, that:
“. . . in a place like New York, where hurricanes happen approximately never, your safety depends on your access to information. People in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida know to keep their ears to the ground, but how do you get the word out in a place where the last serious hurricane happened in 1938? I live in a pretty low-income building in a low-income area, and I'm willing to bet that many of my neighbors don't have Internet access. If they choose not to turn on the news that day, they might be **** out of luck when their power goes off.”