The death toll in New York City, which exceeds the number of deaths recorded throughout Louisiana so far, is a reminder smile that climate change is mixing all our assumptions about climate, resilience, and emergency preparedness. Most of New York’s victims drowned in basements that were suddenly filled with water. More than 7 inches of rain fell in Central Park over a 12-hour period, with 3.15 inches of it in a single hour, setting a new record that was only broken during Hurricane Henri last month.
City leaders were caught completely unawares.
“What we have to acknowledge is the sudden, the brutality of the storms now, it’s different,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a post-storm press conference. “A record set two weeks ago, another record now, rainfall like we’ve never seen before. This is the biggest wake-up call we could receive.”
Well, yes and no. New York, like other big cities, has leaders who, in the long run, know the language of how to fight climate change. De Blasio has introduced a number of strategies to reduce carbon production, including tough local law requiring skyscrapers and other large buildings to drastically reduce carbon emissions by 2050. He has also championed a $ 10 billion plan. to extend the coast of lower Manhattan act as a protective pier.
But in the critical hours before the Ida attack, New Yorkers needed a mayor focused less on the big picture and more on the immediate crisis with issues like communications, contingency plans and basic preparation.
Before getting Ida, de Blasio and other officials did not hold a press conference dedicated to storm preparedness, a precaution the city normally takes before snowstorms, hurricanes and other weather events. Beyond a credible mention of the forecast of 3 to 6 inches of rain at his daily briefing on Wednesday morning, the mayor did not do enough to sound the alarm and get the news about the dangers of ‘heavy rain and flooding. There were no emergency plans to stop the subway system, a decision that left hundreds of passengers trapped underground as the storm wiped out most of the train lines.
The mayor blamed her for the meteorologists’ forecasts. “We get from the best experts, projections that are then mocked in a matter of minutes,” he said. “Yesterday morning, the report was three to six inches throughout the day, which was not a particularly problematic amount. This became the largest rainy hour in the history of the city of Nova. York with almost no warning. ”
Not exactly. The National Weather Service (NWS) warned Monday that there could be “heavy rains and flooding” in New York on Wednesday. The NWS too
he tweeted on Tuesday evening up to 8 inches of rain was possible, with a warning that “considerable or potentially life-threatening instantaneous flooding is expected.”
Even on normal days, it is an important task to keep the New York subway system dry. Trains run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through a maze of tunnels that meander below sea level, under rivers and through natural springs and groundwater. The metro has 300 underground pump rooms that collectively draw 14 million liters of water from the system every day.
On days of heavy rain, the bombs overwhelmed. And when a major storm like the rest of Ida arrives, rivers of rainwater gush into the subway. So, if the 8-inch rain forecast fell for two hours or 10, de Blasio should have known it could present a major problem for New York.
It is indisputably true that global warming is the root of the problem. “Hurricanes get the strength from the water that passes through, from all the heat and energy that is in the water,” Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told me. “And the more hot water passes, the more fuel it has to reinforce. That’s why we see hurricanes intensify when stretches of abnormally warm water like we had in the Gulf of Mexico just before the storm hits.”
Dahl says warming is responsible for the phenomenon of rapid intensification, like when Ida jumped from category 1 to category 4 just before it hit the ground, which she says now happens three times more frequently than in the 1980s.
Faced with this knowledge, local officials have a duty not only to strengthen our infrastructure and make long-term changes, but also to protect citizens, activate contingency plans and warn us of the risks of impending weather events, knowing that the effects of climate change are already in full force.
“I want to have a post-action report,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “What did we know and when did we know what we had, what information did we have? Are there flaws in our intelligence in terms of our preparation?”
Hochul continued to put his finger on the main issue that governors and mayors must address in all 50 states.
“Anyone who says it’s once a century, once every 500 years, I don’t buy it. That should be considered the normal course of business. So we need to take steps to prepare it,” he said. “Is our communication system adequate to let people at home and on the subway know that this is dangerous? Are there alerts on people’s cell phones? How do we communicate? And are we doing a good enough job? Be here and I guarantee it won’t happen again tomorrow. I don’t know, but I know we need to do a lot more in our resilience, to deal with climate change. “
This is the new normal: prepare for hurricanes that can cause wind damage and storm surges in the Gulf and bring enough strength and rainfall to wreak havoc days later and more than 1,000 miles away. It’s not the job Northeast officials expected, but they can no longer avoid it.
.Source
Related
