Storm Day: Relatively Normal for Some

Maureen Cullen went to work yesterday afternoon and Erin Ficociello napped while a tropical storm hit the city with torrents of rain and wild winds.

But Irene—she of the hurricane and tropical storm it begat—seems to have minded her manners when she blustered through the city.

Cullen drove down Washington Street to Salem Street to get to . The front desk attendant at the retirement community was a little concerned, she said last evening, that part of Salem Street might be flooded. Not when she passed. Other employees at New Horizons didn’t have problems getting to work either, she said, as far as she knew. By four o’clock in the afternoon, Cullen had the sense, she said, that things were OK in Irene’s wake.

Ficociello got closer to another one of Irene’s projected targets. She, her two daughters, ages 12 and 9 and her mother, Rainie Kelley, also from Woburn, went this weekend to see “Wicked” in New York City, in Manhattan.  Ficociello drove the quartet down Friday morning.

With the hurricane forecast, she called the theater this past Wednesday and Friday, she said in a phone interview last night, to verify that the curtain would go up on “Wicked” last night.  A man at the theater actually told her, she said, that “The show must go on.”

But just as they got into the city, a friend texted her, she recounted, that all theaters in the city would close on Sunday because of the storm.  Asked where she was, she said she texted back, “Outside your building.”

Ficociello and her passengers did see “Wicked.” They were able to get tickets for the Friday night show. After the show, they walked around Times Square, bought tee shirts from a sidewalk vendor.

She asked a hot dog seller if he would be there the next day, Saturday. Nope. She started to notice signs in store windows that said, “See you after the hurricane.”  They got the feeling that the city that never sleeps was going to take a nap.

When the hotel where they were staying notified guests about a shelter in Queens in case the power at the hotel went out,  “We said, ‘Outta here,’” Ficociello said.

After about four hours of sleep, she got up early Saturday morning, around 4 a.m., and decided to head home then. With no traffic, she said, they got back around 9 a.m. 

Her mother lost a tree in her yard in the storm. It landed “benignly,” Ficociello said.

They didn’t lose power, she said, although, a neighbor said her power flickered.

The only thing they didn’t do during their abbreviated stay in New York City, Ficociello said, was shop. They’ll do that, she concluded, much closer to home today.

To see how the rest of the city coped, check out and our which features our "scary" little "tiger" pictured above!