SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
risks hurricanes pose to New York
City. Though big storms are rare,
they tend to be larger than southern hurricanes, and attack on a
straight line coming in from the
east. As happened with Sandy,
storm water gets pushed into New
York harbor and is then boxed in,
with nowhere else to go but onshore, into the flood zones.
One 2010 study by geologist
Alan Benimoff found that Staten
Island sat in the “bull’s eye” for a
storm surge in New York harbor.
Development had intensified that
threat, as landscapes that once
served as natural storm buffers
were paved over and populated.
Development on Staten Island
slowed in the past decade, but
only due to local and national economic conditions, experts said.
Between 2001 and 2008, nearly
700 new structures went up in
a high-risk storm surge zone on
Staten Island, according to Benimoff’s study.
Peters, the College of Staten
Island professor, said a succession
of city administrations, including
Bloomberg’s, had taken a laissezfaire attitude to coastal development on the island. The city
should have rezoned these areas to
forbid new construction, and re-
HUFFINGTON
12.02.12
quired existing buildings to meet
basic storm-resistant standards or
be condemned, Peters said.
In Oakwood, one of those coastal neighborhoods, a student in Peters’ department, John Filipowicz
Jr., drowned with his father when
the storm surge filled their home.
“THE OCEAN WANTS
TO EAT SOMETHING.
WE’D RATHER IT EAT
THE BEACH BEFORE
IT EATS HOMES.”
The two were found clinging to
each other.
“The developers are just going
to do what they do,” Peters said.
“You have to manage them.”
Development along Staten Island’s south shore has been rapid
since 1980, but was done largely
in piecemeal fashion, as local
builders tore down vacation bungalows and subdivided existing
lots to make room for more densely-packed year-round homes. The
most recent large-scale construction on the south shore occurred
in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
when the city cleared developers to build hundreds of closelypacked condominiums and master-planned communities just feet