Hurricane Ekaterina? Or, Katrina The Great Freaks Out Brighton Beach

The Russian-language press is stirring up fears of a catastrophic hurricane hitting Brighton Beach:

Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach are living in fear of a hurricane threat to which the rest of New York City seems largely oblivious. Speculation that a severe storm could soon descend on Brooklyn has been rife among immigrant senior citizens, many of whom are reportedly stocking up on water and medicine in preparation for an emergency that is much less likely to happen than some of the local Russian press and broadcast outlets have reported.

. . .

“I know one businessman who closed his business,” the editor in chief of a local paper, Russkii Bazaar, Natalia Shapiro, said. “He went back to live in Russia until the hurricane season is over.”

Employees at Pharmacy Express on Brighton Beach Avenue said that in May, senior citizens started coming in saying they were worried about a hurricane. “People read the Russian-language newspapers, and they believe every word,” a pharmacist, Tatiana Shmaian, said. Ms. Shmaian said her daughter lives in Moscow and called her to make sure she was okay after hearing about a potential hurricane on Russian television.

“They’re hearing there’s going to be a hurricane in 24 hours,” Pat Singer of the Brighton Neighborhood Association said. Ms. Singer said senior citizens have come into her office and asked what they should do if the city declares a weather-related evacuation. “They’re old, they can’t run, and they’re scared,” she said. “Katrina scared a lot of people.”

Ms. Singer, who cannot read Russian, blamed the local Russian newspapers for the speculation, saying editors are trying to scare their readers in order to boost sales. “It’s a ghetto, a Russian ghetto neighborhood. They read their own newsletters, watch their own television stations,” she said.

The scare appears to have started in March, when several Russian-language newspapers in America published a re port that said: “In the coming summer, a powerful hurricane could descend on New York with a force no less forgiving than Katrina, which emptied New Orleans last year.” That warning also was picked up by news sources in Russia. Then, at the end of last month, the New York Russian paper V Novom Svete ran a cover story citing a French scientist who said a tsunami would rip through Manhattan on May 25.

Then again, the prospect of a hurricane hitting New York does seem pretty frightening . . .