While most people took Hurricane Irene seriously, there were plenty who didn't. Now they're sounding off, excitedly boasting about how their gamble to stay in places that were ordered to evacuate paid off.
Marisa DeMateo, a 33-year-old lawyer who lives on the 14th floor of a lower Manhattan high-rise said that the storm was no big deal. "We slept through it," she told the Post. "If we'd gone to Long Island or New Jersey, we'd have no power. It was really smart to stay where we were." A Battery Park woman said that she and her husband didn't leave because they knew more than apparently every meteorologist in the United States. "We thought it was overblown — and it totally was," she said. "There was nothing — I slept like a baby." One Rockaway couple even succinctly said, "There is no way in hell we're moving out of our home."
Staying behind and ignoring authorities was certainly a bold tactic. And it was one that didn't seem to pan out for a guy who was killed by the storm, or the New Jersey woman who was swept away in her car and killed by flood waters, or over 60 Staten Island residents. But obviously the people who didn't heed the warnings knew more than those people did.
