SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
levels will only worsen the hazards. In a 2011 report for the state,
Klaus Jacob, a disaster expert at
Columbia University, warned that
even without climate change, almost all of New York city’s major
subway tunnels would be flooded
as a result of a Category 1 storm —
a prediction that came to pass.
Over the last decade, engineers
started to seriously consider for
the first time how New York City
might react to the challenges
posed by storm surges. In 2008,
researchers at Stony Brook University’s Storm Surge Research Group
recommended that a massive barrier in lower New York Harbor be
built to protect residents and businesses against hurricanes.
At a 2009 seminar attended by
Joshua Friedman, a hazard impact
modeler in the city’s Office of Emergency Management, participants
reviewed the wide variet 䁽