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Hurricane Preparations on Wall St., Social Media Edition

The streets of lower Manhattan were deserted on Monday as Wall Street workers took shelter from Hurricane Sandy.

But as with any big event in the city, social media sites were buzzing with photographs and other updates about the approaching storm. Manhattan's financial district, located in a designated evacuation zone, looked like a ghost town.

Hurricane Sandy Multimedia

In photos passed around Twitter, the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange was shown lined with sandbags. The exchange is closed for trading on Monday, the first time it has gone dark because of the weather in nearly three decades.

Sandbags and wooden boards also lined subway entrances at Bowling Green. With the city's subways closed, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority posted pictures on Flickr that showed Grand Central Terminal and the station at Times Square eerily empty.

Financial firms,including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, told em ployees to work from home on Monday, but apparently not everyone on Wall Street got the memo. Twitter user Dutch Book, who blogs for Stone Street Advisors, wrote: “Boss sent me a ‘feel free to work from home today' email after I was already at my desk. #helpful”

John Carney of CNBC weighed in:

But most people seemed to have left the financial district by Monday morning.

A live video of the Wall Street bull was passed around Twitter, showing flashing emergency lights illuminating the bronze statue. The video also showed that tourists were apparently still roaming the streets.

Big retail banks announced plans to waive certain fees and to close some branches in preparation for the storm. Chase took to Twitter to give updates. The tone was predictably cheerful:

Weather reporters provided information about the storm. Eric Holthaus of The Wall Street Journal tweeted:

Hurricane Sandy also inspired its share of jokes. A parody account gave the hurricane a voice.

Some questio ned the disaster prevention efforts. Henry Blodget of Business Insider tweeted:

And Felix Salmon of Reuters wrote:

With the news changing by the hour, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal opened access to their sites, and the Times set up a camera on the roof of its building. Having access to news was considered critical: