Add to that the surrounding metropolitan area that includes northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson River valley, Long Island, and southwester Connecticut ... and you've got another 10-15 million people and a disaster in the making. There simply isn't any effective way to do disaster preparation for that many people in an urban area, especially when you consider that the single most popular disaster preparation measure most people in this region took -- namely, the purchase of portable generators in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene last year -- is losing its effectiveness as fuel becomes scarce.
Personally, I think this is the flaw in any urban environment where constraints on space and the tendency to take things for granted really erode a lot of the survival instincts that humans should have.
Yes, sandy affected a much bigger population area. For 90% of them sandy was a stormy night. For 9.9% it was a Multi day inconvenience. For only about 0.1% was it traumatic and life changing.
A year after Katrina I saw a black woman in the grocery store. The front of her t shirt said “where’d you go? “ The back side said “how’d you make out? “ Everyone within a hundred miles would have understood.
If you’re saying that many of the preps taken for sandy were ill considered or hopelessly inadequate, I agree. Urban life does seem to attenuate survival skills.