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NEW YORK (AP) – New York City plans to hire a private weather forecaster, install more drainage features, and issue earlier and more aggressive warnings to local residents as part of a new plan to guard against heavy rains like the deadly Flood that struck the city from Hurricane Ida fell to respond earlier this month.
At least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut, including 13 in New York City, died this month when the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded the northeast. Rainwater dammed hundreds of cars on sunken waterways, flooded subway stations, blocked trains and flooded basement apartments, turning them into deadly traps.
At its strongest, the storm dropped eight inches of rain over New York City in an hour, overwhelming an aging sewer system that could handle roughly half of it.
“We learned from Ida that we have to do completely different things,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday at a virtual press conference. “This is a brand new world.”
The city will hire a private weather forecasting service to provide the city with a “second opinion” that complements the National Weather Service’s forecasts and creates district-specific storm forecasts based on the Democratic Mayor’s plan.
De Blasio said the National Meteorological Service was doing “a good and important job” but often its reports were “too vague or too late and we need something more urgent”.
He compared it to the city that fell after the terrorist attacks of 11. After the storm, de Blasio said he had received a prediction that the city would see between 3 and 6 inches (7.5 to 15 cm) of rain for the day – not 3 inches within an hour.
The National Weather Service said in a statement it welcomed the New York City plan and called it “a positive step by adding additional expertise and capacity that can better understand local nuances and build on the support of NWS”.
“We support all coordinated efforts by organizations, companies or governments to improve local preparation for extreme weather and water events,” said the agency.
The plan calls for a preventive state of emergency and mandatory evacuation orders for basement apartments hours before heavy rainfall is forecast, along with travel bans to keep people off streets and subways if a deluge is predicted.
The city will also work with community groups to knock on the doors of basement apartment residents to warn them of flood hazards and identify safe evacuation rooms in their neighborhood. Of the 13 people in the city who were killed in the storm, at least 11 were in flooded basement apartments, according to police.
The report envisages a number of measures that the city intends to implement relatively quickly, such as putting up signs of flood potential on carriageways, creating more green areas and drainage facilities in playgrounds, and expanding a program to lay aerated concrete ceilings in some areas in the city region, where small holes let water seep in instead of running into the streets.
But the report also highlights longer-term challenges, such as the $ 100 billion cost of modernizing the city’s centuries-old drainage system, much of which would have to be paid for with federal government funds, or the costly conversion of some 50,000 illegal basement apartments into safer homes .
The city has estimated that around 100,000 people live in the apartments, which are concentrated in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and provide much-needed affordable housing. But the homes can be dangerous with low ceilings and limited exits, light and ventilation. The city wants to try to develop a pilot program to convert the apartments into safe and legal spaces and to set up a working group to investigate the issue further.
De Blasio issued the report on Monday as he enters his final months in office. Democrat Eric Adams, who is widely expected to win the November mayoral election, released his own report on the resilience last week. There are similar recommendations for an early warning system and plans to inform residents of basement apartments.
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