A Queens Survival Guide!



No, I am not qualified to write the introduction. Perhaps I can be viewed as a survivor, still publishing my Queens Tribune after more than 25 years – the senior publisher in the Borough, but I am far from an expert on survival.

I’ve never been on Safari or in the Australian outback. I don’t white water raft and gave up skiing shortly after trying it. I am not a life planner and safety is one thing I’ve always taken for granted.

So when I first conceived of a “Queens Survival Guide,” I knew I could provide guidance to the editorial staff but certainly not, as I am often able to do, serve as an authority on this subject.

We needed to find some folks in the know. So Brian Rafferty, our managing editor, took the lead on this marvelous effort at providing our readers with a guide to staying alive and keeping safe. He enlisted long-time Trib police reporter Liz Goff and together with the Trib editorial staff, marched into the most dangerous topics that face us today.

When Brian indicated he was putting my column up front – meaning I must write on the guide’s theme and abandon my usual political commentary – I quickly said, “Get Ray Kelly to write the real intro.” Kelly, the NYC Police Chief, is as expert a survivor as exists in the City. In the back of my mind, I already had Council Public Safety Chair Pete Vallone Jr. and DA Dick Brown penning some sort of “Survival” statement to share this page, in case Kelly ducked. Kelly came through as he always does; thanx commish!

The whole subject of survival to us city folks really began on Sept. 11, 2001. Prior to that, disease and old age were the only perils we ever really considered.

But the world has changed since 9/11 and terrorism entered and remained in our consciousness. The Trade Center attacks gave way to the anthrax scare as biological and chemical terror were soon followed by concerns over dirty bombs.

Y2K was the start of our real awareness of techno-castrophes and significant blackouts and large growth in identity theft have occurred in the new millennium. Meltdown and nuclear accident preparedness are now a normal part of govenrment planning.

El Niño made the news — unusual weather conditions occurred around the globe as jet streams, storm tracks and monsoons started shifting. Warm currents of water in the eastern Pacific Ocean called El Niño seemed to make Mother Nature angry worldwide.

A tsunami shocked the globe.

And today, our country is still recovering from the recent effects of one of the most devastating hurricane that has ever hit us. And since Katrina’s fury, we’ve gone through the alphabet to Wilma and on to Greek letters setting a record for the greatest number of named storms in a year, since we’ve been naming them.

And we have recently witnessed a Pakistani earthquake take more than 50,000 lives. Our battle with nature continues to intensify, and with all of our advances, we don’t seem to be winning -- if the loss of human life is the yardstick we use to measure.

Each day, describing the possible spread of the Avian Flu, the news from across the world is filled with the scare word “Pandemic”: an epidemic across a wide geographic area and affecting a large proportion of the population.

Home invasions on Long Island and killer bees in South America were only in the movies when I was a kid. As a matter of fact, everything covered in this issue was likely first presented to me in sci-fi books or on Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. Things of my childhood make believe are todays reality.

Our reality has changed because it has to.

Like many of you, I am woefully unprepared for disaster.
I have no “Go bag.”

We haven’t reviewed a fire escape route in our house and I have no ladder to exit from upstairs – just in case.

While I don’t expect our ice caps to melt and have never taken a flu shot, I am going to sit down, read this issue, give it some thought and share it with friends and family. It’s time to consider being prepared.

It is with that hope, that you and your family will read this issue and give your home and future preparedness a bit of thought and perhaps a bit of action. I’ve thought and learned enough to know that I need more information and some preparation, so that my family and I are ready for tomorrow’s disaster -- even though I don’t beleive it’s coming.

Meanwhile, I gotta run. I’m on my way to pick up a carbon monoxide detector.

Oh, and I have to call mom in Florida to make sure she’s prepared for Wilma.

Stay safe.

Peace!

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.