SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
of the surge when it arrived.
“It kind of helps if you have
someone who can explain to you
how a storm surge and flooding is
going to affect you directly,” said
Thurman. “If they had said this is
going to be somewhat similar to
New Orleans and Katrina, people
would have got up and moved.”
Instead, she said, “we did the
same exact thing New Orleans did:
we waited.”
SOUNDING THE ALARM
In 1992, an environmentalist named Suzanne Mattei was
working on a report for the New
York City comptroller about
whether building garbage incinerators would contribute to
greenhouse emissions.
That answer was relatively clear
— yes — but when Mattei looked
further into the then-young science of climate change, she was
shocked to discover what it might
do to New York City’s coastline.
She discovered that the unique
geography of the New York Bight
— the right angle made by New
Jersey and Long Island, with the
city its sharp tip — would greatly
magnify the effects of a hurricane.
Were a strong storm to whip up
the coast, its surge would have
HUFFINGTON
12.02.12
nowhere else to go other than
straight into the city.
Alarmed that few had taken the
issue seriously, Mattei inserted
a section into the report about
the damage rising sea levels could
inflict. The biggest concern: the
nightmare scenario of a “combined
sea level rise/storm surge event.”
“Significant areas” would be
flooded in Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan would be “vulnerable” and
the surge would “endanger the
underground subway system,” the
report noted. All of this, of course,
is exactly what happened when
Sandy slammed into the coast.
Even as the city continued to
reorient its residential development toward the waterfront, others sounded alarms about dangers
from the sea.
In 1995, a joint study by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management warned of
fast-rising storm surges that could
easily flood subway tunnels.
“Coastal storms that would
present moderate hazards in other
regions of the country could result
in heavy loss of life and disastrous
disruptions to communication
and travel in the Metro New York
Area,” the report concluded.
More recent studies have factored in the impacts of climate
change, arguing that rising sea