Many of the investments the city made after Hurricane Sandy - like constructing floodwalls, berms and levees - are geared to managing coastal flooding and sea level rise, not extreme precipitation. This flash-flooding incident and Hurricane Ida have added new concern, Yeung said in an interview. Progress has been “plodding,” the report said. Most of the city’s own capital contributions to resilience projects had gone unused. Louise Yeung, chief climate officer of the New York City Comptroller's officeĪ report from the comptroller’s office found that the city had spent only 73% of the $15 billion in federal grant funding given to the city after Hurricane Sandy as of June 2022. Heavy rainstorms like the one we are seeing today are becoming our new normal as climate change intensifies. The storm caused about $19 billion in damage to New York City. Nearly 70,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed. The storm cut power to 2 million New Yorkers and killed 43 city residents, according to the city comptroller’s office. Sandy made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone near Atlantic City, and caused a catastrophic storm surge along the coast of New York and New Jersey. Hurricane Sandy, in October 2012, was supposed to have been a wake-up call to New York officials about climate and weather risks. Zachary Iscol, New York City’s emergency management commissioner, said that Friday was the city’s wettest day since Hurricane Ida. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who also issued a separate state of emergency, faced backlash for being slow to address the public and for not doing enough early on to warn residents about the seriousness of the situation. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency for New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley, calling the storm a “life-threatening rainfall event.” and frankly in many, many parts of the world that is just simply not capable of withstanding the climate that we’re seeing today and certainly not the climate that is yet to come in the future,” Bowen said.Īround 23 million people across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were under flood watches on Friday. “The bottom line is that we have infrastructure in New York, infrastructure all across the U.S. Steve Bowen, chief science officer for Gallagher Re, a global reinsurance broker, said extreme weather events like this are exposing how quickly risks are shifting in cities like New York as climate change intensifies rainfall and existing infrastructure gives out.Ī warmer atmosphere can hold - and deliver - more moisture, which can make storms more intense, Bowen said. “The reality staring city leaders in the face, including in places like New York, is that the climate is getting more extreme, more unpredictable and requiring more investment,” said Joseph Kane, a fellow who focuses on infrastructure at the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit think tank. Subways, regional rail lines and air travel was suspended or severely delayed, and at least one school in Brooklyn was evacuated during the storm. A number of roads were closed, cars were submerged and several city buses were trapped as a result of flash flooding. Heavy rainfall of up to 2.5 inches per hour were reported in some of the hardest-hit places.
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