LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
unheeded warnings — from evacuation orders to climate change
— and reckless real estate development: In Staten Island, where
Sandy claimed 21 lives, more than
2,700 mostly residential structures were built between 1980 and
2008 in coastal areas at extreme
risk of storm surge flooding.
“People love a view of the ocean
but don’t understand what every
geologist knows,” says Nicholas
Coch, a coastal geography professor at Queens College.
So what did geologists know,
and what did they try to communicate to those in government and
real estate? The answer to both
questions is: a lot. There’s the
2010 study that placed Staten Island in the “bull’s eye” for a storm
surge in New York harbor. There
are the never-pursued suggestions for higher sea walls and a
harbor barrier to protect New York
City against storm surges. Blunt
warnings from New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection about the lethal combination
of hurricane risk and population
growth along the coast. As Suzanne Mattei, former chief of the
New York State Department of
HUFFINGTON
12.02.12
Environmental Conservation’s New
York City regional office, puts it,
“It’s just horrendous that there’s
been all this research and all this
analysis and so little action.”
And then there are the unforgettable images: Vinny Baccale,
who glanced out his
window in Staten Island to see his neighSo what
bor drowning in the
did geologists
street; night nurses at know, and
a nursing home in the
what did
Rockaways, kneeling
they try to
together in prayer as
communicate
waves pounded the
to those in
building’s walls; Gov.
government
Chris Christie flying
and real
in a helicopter above
estate? The
the Jersey Shore,
answer to
calling the damage
both questions
“unthinkable.” But
is: a lot.
as Rudolf, Hallman,
Kirkham, Knafo and
Sledge write of those who have
studied climate change and its effects, “for them, the catastrophe
Christie was flying over
was far from unthinkable.”
ARIANNA