Sandy Is Not Invited to the Kinus

By COLlive reporter

With just a week ago, organizers of the international convention of Chabad Shluchim are waiting to see how the now downgraded to post-tropical superstorm will affect the annual gathering.

Floods, fires and high winds were widely spread in the east coast in the past 24 hours, leaving around 6.5 million without electricity in one of the biggest storms to ever hit the United States.

Nearly 14,000 flights have been cancelled, subways and buses halted in major cities and the federal government shutdown in Washington.

New York City’s subway is likely to be out of service for another 4 to 5 days, Mayor Michael Bloomberg notified. Limited bus service was going to resume Tuesday and full bus service on Wednesday.

According to Con Edison, some 200 customers in Brooklyn’s Red Hook area at the Hudson River are without power and their estimated restoration time is “pending.”

The gala banquet of the Kinus Hashluchim is meant to take place there, at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, on Sunday, November 11.

While Rabbi Mendel Kotlarsky of the Vaad Hakinus organizing committee reiterated what many are thinking, that Sandy is “a pain in the neck,” he said the conference was unlikely to be affected.

“So far we have 3,000 people registered,” he told COLlive.com about the 4-day convention that is scheduled to begin next Wednesday, November 7. “That’s 250 more people than we had registered last year at this time.”

Kotlarsky said that since the banquet is being held in a warehouse to be transformed into a ballroom and not in a Manhattan hotel, “emptying out the place of water and cleaning it up should not be difficult. And we anyways operate on generators,” he said.

With Chabad rabbis and supporters expected to drive or fly in, he said people in Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch extend their prayers and wishes to all those who are in trouble that life goes back to normal – and even better.