September 04, 2005

New York City is neither prepared for a terrorist attack nor a hurricane
by Liza Sabater

(My 'puter crashed mid-post and the post was misposted. I think. This is what I meant to publish)

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Here in NYC we would be hard press to say that we are prepared for it. Read the following excerpt from an article published July 20th at a local weekly:

New York Press | THE BIG ONE by Aaron Naparstek

For a taste of what will happen to the city's infrastructure, we can look at the damage wrought by the great nor'easters of the early 1990s. During those storms, the L train had to be backed out as the 14th Street tunnel began filling with water, and the FDR highway was so badly inundated that 50 motorists had to be rescued by dive teams. In the event of a direct hit by a category-3 hurricane, surge maps show that the Holland and Battery Tunnels will be completely filled with sea water, with many subway and railroad tunnels severely flooded as well. The runways of LaGuardia and JFK airports will get flooded by 18.1 and 31.2 feet of water, respectively.

Then there are the winds. The city's two million trees will be a huge problem. "New York City's trees haven't been stressed in years except for an isolated severe thunderstorm or two," Wyllie says. They've had plenty of time to grow and wrap their roots around underground phone, electric, gas and water lines. As they are uprooted in the heavy winds, a lot of infrastructure both above and below ground is going to get wrecked.

As for skyscrapers, "The impact of catastrophic winds on high-rise buildings is still a little vague," Lee says. "We don't feel we have enough data on that." We do know that hurricane wind speeds multiply at higher altitudes. At 350 feet, the height of high-rise buildings on the Battery and the towers of the George Washington Bridge, hurricane winds will be twice as fast as they are on the ground. Newer, glass-skinned towers are not likely to do well in those conditions. Neither will human beings caught outside amidst flying debris. To give a sense of the unbelievable force of hurricane winds, Lee shows a photo from one of the four storms that struck Florida last year. It depicts a blunt piece of two-by-four driven straight through the trunk of a palm tree.

"It would be nasty," Wyllie agrees. "If you get sustained winds going 80 to 90 miles per hour in the city --whoa, you can't believe the destruction. We've never seen that. And as you go up 200, 300 feet," he considers that for a moment. "That'll be 100, 110 mph winds. Watch out."

Professor Coch, whose business card reads "forensic hurricanologist," believes that the best way to understand New York City's hurricane future is to study its past. He became New York City's leading hurricane historian virtually by accident. After the nor'easters of December 1992 and March 1993 devastated Rockaway, Coch sent a group of his coastal-geology undergrads to observe the Army Corps of Engineers replenishing beaches with sand dredged from the sea. The students reported back that "the beach was covered in garbage. Coch remembers telling them, "Get used to it. This is New York City." But they said, "No, this is funny garbage." In the dredged-up sand, Coch's students found hundreds of artifacts --plates, whiskey bottles, teapots, beer mugs, lumps of coal and, what proved to be the most telling clue of all, an old hurricane lamp. Mystified at how a treasure trove of 19th-century objects could have wound up underwater hundreds of feet off the coast of Rockaway, Coch and his students began investigating. It took them about two years to unravel the mystery of Hog Island: New York City's version of Atlantis.

And so prepared are we that the NYC has not posted the emergency management maps on their site. Nope, you have to call 311 and ask for the maps. WHAT THE FUCK!

They should send a copy to each resident of the city! Isn't it the responsibility of the government to ensure everybody is prepared in the event of a catastrophe? Why would I know that NYC is actually more vulnerable to a hurricane than a terrorist attack? Or is this just another one of those 'make government so small you can drown it in a sink' measure to save a penny or two in the government expenditures?

NYC Office of Emergency Management - Resources

Posted by Liza Sabater in Accountability, Catastrophes, Emergency Preparedness, Environment, Government, New York City, Weather
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