NYC pols outraged over lack of preparedness by de Blasio, MTA for deadly storm
They can’t say they weren’t warned.
The National Weather Service forecast “life-threatening flash flooding” more than five hours before the remnants of Hurricane Ida began lashing the city — and neither Mayor Bill de Blasio nor the MTA had a good explanation Thursday for getting caught unprepared by the deluge.
The storm barreled through the Big Apple and surrounding regions Wednesday night, dumping torrents of rain that killed at least 13 people in the city — including eight who drowned in their basement apartments — as well as causing untold millions of dollars in damages.
But at 3:23 p.m. Wednesday, the NWS Weather Prediction Center tweeted a color-coded map showing that New York City was in the area facing the “greatest flash flood threat over the next several hours” from the expected downpour.
“SIGNIFICANT AND LOCALLY LIFE-THREATENING FLASH FLOODING IS EXPECTED GOING INTO THE EVENING HOURS,” a message in bright purple letters atop the image warned.
A star marked “LGA” — for LaGuardia Airport — also highlighted the danger facing the city.
But instead of focusing exclusively on the looming disaster, de Blasio made an appearance around 7:30 p.m. on the NBC streaming service “Peacock.”
Hizzoner used the time to tout his efforts to get New Yorkers vaccinated against COVID-19 and to bash his former political nemesis, disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — without a word about the torrential rain bearing down on the Big Apple.
In a prepared statement Thursday, Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams all but blamed Wednesday’s “widespread loss of life and property” on the lame-duck incumbent and called for the creation of “citywide, interagency, and multi-governmental strategy” going forward.
“This is not the last catastrophic storm our city will face — far from it,” he said.
“But smart policy and planning can ensure we’re not caught flat-footed when the next one arrives.”
The outgoing Brooklyn borough president also tweeted a photo of a storm drain with grass growing through its grate that he spotted while out surveying flood damage and speaking with residents.
“We’re not doing the preventive things we should be doing to get water off our streets,” he told MSNBC.
The city Department of Environmental Protection said that “the catch basins at hundreds of flood-prone locations” were checked on Tuesday and Wednesday after the city’s “Flash Flood Emergency plan” was activated.
City Councilman Francisco Moya (D-Queens) said, “It is unacceptable that we did not prepare for Ida with the same rigor that we did for Henri, and that is a failure on the city’s part.”
Councilman Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Committee on Resiliency and Waterfronts, said storm preparation required “sweating the small stuff — something that this administration has never been interested in.”
“Right now, it feels like our city is built only for when things go right,” he said.
“When things go wrong, we’re lost at sea. Literally and figuratively.”
State Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island) said, “We don’t seem to be getting what we paid for from the folks who have been running our city for a long time.”
“There was a lot of rain in a short period of time. Clearly, the city did not anticipate that and was not expecting that and not prepared,” he said.
“We have models, we have science, we have meteorologist forecasts, and you want to have a broader conversation about infrastructure in the city?…It’s a joke.”
During a news conference with other officials in hard-hit Queens, de Blasio called the devastating weather — which dumped a record 3.15 inches of rain on Central Park between 8:51 p.m. and 9:51 p.m. — “the biggest wakeup call we could possibly get.”
“We saw a horrifying storm last night, unlike anything we have seen before. And this is a reality we have to face,” he said.
But pressed by a reporter on the fact that it one in a series of recent, extreme weather events — including rainfall that set an earlier, one-hour record of 1.94 inches on Aug. 21 — de Blasio responded by blaming the forecasters.
“Yesterday morning, the report was three to six inches over the course of the whole day, which was not a particularly problematic amount that turned into the biggest single hour of rainfall in New York City history with almost no warning,” he said.
Acting MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber also suggested there was no way to have anticipated the storm’s devastating impact.
“This was a historic event,” he told NY1.
“We were running a pretty normal commute right up until that 9 to 10 p.m. hour when that historic rainfall that broke records took place.”
A National Weather Service spokesperson said there was “aggressive public messaging about the rain and flash floods ahead of time,” including three emergency warnings about flash floods issued by its forecast office in Upton, Long Island.
Gov. Kathy Hochul — on her just 10th day in office since Cuomo resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal — vowed to uncover any “intelligence failures” before the storm struck, then “share them with the public.”
“Did we have enough warning? Did we let people know? Should we shut down subways earlier? Was there a breakdown in communication with the weather systems? Were we prepared enough?” she said.
Councilman Barry Grodenchik (D-Queens) said, “There was no question the weather forecast was spot-on.”
“Clearly we’re still dealing with resiliency,” he said.
“It takes forever. Until we reform the contracting process both for the city and the state I don’t think you’re going to make significant progress.”
In 2019, Comptroller Scott Stringer called on de Blasio to speed up spending on resiliency infrastructure when he released an audit showing that the city had failed to spend $8.1 billion in federal funds to recover from 2012’s Superstorm Sandy.
At the time, City Hall claimed that it was “spending our federal recovery funds faster than the national average.”
Stringer’s office didn’t respond Thursday to request for an update on the 2019 audit, but he tweeted, “We’re not remotely prepared to deal with a rapidly changing climate.”
“Last night was proof,” Stringer wrote.
“We need an all hands on deck effort to overhaul our sewers, streets, and shorelines to deal with a warming world.”
A July report from the US Department of Transportation said that just $4.3 billion had been spent out of the $10 billion in Sandy recovery funds it gave agencies including the MTA and the Port Authority of New York in New Jersey.
In 2019, the MTA said it had installed “flex-gates” to prevent flooding at 68 of the city’s 472 subway stations, with the work concentrated on areas in low-lying floodplains near the coastlines.
The agency said Thursday that it “achieved our objectives” to protect against coastal flooding by installing the 68 gates and blamed Wednesday night’s flooding in the subway system on “street level city drainage capacity.”
John Kaehny, executive director of the good-government group Reinvent Albany, said, “It’s as if the lessons of Superstorm Sandy were forgotten.”
“These giant rain events keep happening and we keep having flooded subways,” he said.
“The MTA has lost its way, broadly, because it’s been politicized under Cuomo. They’ve had a brain drain of people, professionals, who left because they didn’t want to deal with it. Everybody who can go get a good job and work in the private sector, does.”
But research scientist Klaus Jacob, a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said all the post-Sandy resiliency projects were designed to prevent coastal flooding from rising tides — not the ravages of Ida.
“This storm came from the sky,” he said.
“It’s a city problem. Our drainage system doesn’t have enough capacity.”
