Yep. I'm the ARES EC for Queens, and one of the staff of NYC RACES - we go to hurricane refreshers at least 1x/year. If a BIG storm hits NYC (say Cat3, which is BIG this far north) we have more problems than we know what to do with. NO has a population of about 500k - and are "used to" hurricanes. Folks down there KNOW what a big storm is. NYC alone (Lets NOT count Nassau as Sufolk yet) has a population of 8 million, and in a Cat3, 1+ MILLION of those folks have to get out of low lying areas - figure about another 750K from Nassau and Suffok, plus whatever in NJ - and you figure yoou have to move 2 Million people

Now to make it worse, the average person in NYC/LI says "a Hurricane? Big ones never happen here - Bob (last one that hit here) was no big deal" - Bob was just barely a Cat1 when it hit - in fact MIGHT have actually dropped to TS levels just before it hit

I try and tell as many folks as I can what a Cat3 will do, simply by showing/telling them what happened in the "storm of 38" (aka "The Long Island Express"). Let me tell you, there are a LOT of folks with their head in the sand on this one. I know when I bought my house 4 years ago, I looked at the flood maps FIRST, and would only buy in an area that is so unlikely to flood, that is it does, we have bigger problems than my house (I'm 110 ft above sea level - if I get storm surge, we have BIG problems)