Thread: NY mostly ignored reports warning of superstorms, climate change, rising sea level

NY mostly ignored reports warning of superstorm

By By MICHAEL GORMLEY, Associated Press–2 hours ago

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — More than three decades before Superstorm Sandy, a state law and a series of legislative reports began warning New York politicians to prepare for a storm of historic proportions, spelling out scenarios eerily similar to what actually happened: a towering storm surge; overwhelming flooding; swamped subway lines; widespread power outages. The Rockaway peninsula was deemed among the "most at risk."

But most of the warnings and a requirement in a 1978 law to create a regularly updated plan for the restoration of "vital services" after a storm went mostly unheeded, either because of tight budgets or the lack of political will to prepare for a hypothetical storm that may never hit.

Some of the thorniest problems after Sandy, including a gasoline shortage, the lack of temporary housing and the flooding of commuter tunnels, ended up being dealt with largely on the fly.

"I don't know that anyone believed," acknowledged Gov. Andrew Cuomo this past week. "We had never seen a storm like this. So it is very hard to anticipate something that you have never experienced."

Asked how well prepared state officials were for Sandy, Cuomo said, "not well enough."

It wasn't as if the legislative actions over the years were subtle. They all had a common, emphatic theme: Act immediately before it's too late.

The 1978 executive law required a standing state Disaster Preparedness Commission to meet at least twice a year to create and update disaster plans. It mandated the state to address temporary housing needs after a disaster, create a detailed plan to restore services, maintain sewage treatment, prevent fires, assure generators "sufficient to supply" nursing homes and other health facilities, and "protect and assure uninterrupted delivery of services, medicines, water, food, energy and fuel."

Reports in 2005, 2006 and 2010 added urgency. "It's not a question of whether a strong hurricane will hit New York City," the 2006 Assembly report warned. "It's just a question of when."

A 2010 task force report to the Legislature concluded: "The combination of rising sea level, continuing climate change, and more development in high-risk areas has raised the level of New York's vulnerability to coast storms. ... The challenge is real, and sea level rise will progress regardless of New York's response."

The Disaster Preparedness Commission met biannually some years, but there are gaps in which there is no record of a meeting. However, some administrations, including Cuomo's, convened many of the same agency heads to discuss emergency management. But even under Cuomo, who has taken a much greater interest in emergency management after three violent storms in his first two years in office, there are still three vacancies on the commission.

Richard Brodsky, a former New York Democratic assemblyman who was chairman of the committee that created the 2006 report, credits administrations with making some improvements to the plan in recent years, such as requiring a specific plan to protect and evacuate the infirmed and to save pets.

"But on two issues related to Sandy — prevention and recovery — they did almost nothing," Brodsky said. "If Goldman Sachs was smart enough to sandbag its building, why wasn't the MTA smart enough to sandbag the Battery Tunnel?"

Sandy flooded both tubes of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, now called the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, which was one of the major and longest transportation disruptions of the storm. It also ravaged the Rockaways in Queens, particularly the waterfront community of Breezy Point, where roughly 100 homes burned to the ground in a massive wind-swept fire.

Among the other crises Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced on a daily basis during Sandy were the shortage of temporary housing, which continues, the long disruption of electricity and gasoline, generators in health care facilities swamped by floodwaters, restoring power from swamped electrical infrastructure and repairing commuter rail lines.

The warnings touched on many of these areas, but mostly in a broad way with few specific directions for action. Some areas, such as a shortage of shelters in New York City and repairing commuter rail lines quickly, have improved in recent years to some degree, but other areas such as making sure health facility generators are on upper floors are newly realized problems forced by Sandy, according to the former legislators.

"What you've got here is a great number of consequences that were foreseeable, but unforeseen," Brodsky said. "Prevention is politically less sexy than disaster response."

There was another obstacle to enacting calls for more preparation: funding. The state and city were each facing $1 billion deficits from a slow economic recovery before Sandy hit.

"As your budget shrinks, the first thing that goes out the door is emergency management, the first thing," said Michael Balboni, New York's disaster preparedness point man in the Republican-led Senate and in the Democratic Spitzer and Paterson administrations from 2001 to 2009.

"To take the 1978 law and really enable it, you need to put a ton of money behind it and there was no political will to do it," said Balboni, who now heads an emergency management firm in Manhattan.

Cuomo is now asking the federal government for more than $32 billion to cover the immediate costs triggered by Sandy, and an additional $9 billion for preventive measures to better protect the area for the next big storm.

The Cuomo administration insists that it has had robust emergency planning and clearly made important changes after tropical storms Irene and Lee slammed much of upstate and threw a scare into New York City in 2011. The administration created three regional disaster logistics centers and conducted training and exercises and, before Sandy, took extensive preparatory steps learned from Irene to "preposition" equipment and top staff and National Guard troops around the state.

"These initiatives were intended to strengthen the existing emergency response infrastructure which had not previously been a priority for the state before Gov. Cuomo took office," the administration told the AP in a statement.
Spokesmen for previous administrations and for Bloomberg didn't respond to requests for comment.

Like the state, the city has talked up storm preparedness in a series of hurricane and climate change plans since 2000. And it has taken some concrete steps, such as requiring some new developments in flood zones to be elevated, eliminating roadblocks to putting boilers and electrical equipment above the ground and restoring wetlands as natural storm-surge barriers.

Still, the city wasn't expecting Sandy, Bloomberg said in a speech this past week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had figured there was only a 1 percent chance that the Battery in lower Manhattan would see the 14 feet of water Sandy sent in, he said; the previous record, set in 1960, was 11 feet.

Bloomberg said the city would reassess building codes and evacuation zone borders, look at ways to flood-proof power and transportation networks, make sure hospitals are better prepared and do an engineering analysis of whether to build levees, dunes or other structures to protect the coast.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gxy8ep0FJo_WpUGKn48xWd5UCZvg?docId=1a009bb90 ac8449983b52e0575287374

FEMA likely to expand flood zones along NJ coast

RICHARD DEGENE, Associated Press
By RICHARD DEGENER, The Press of Atlantic City
Updated 9:37 a.m., Saturday, December 8, 2012

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The federal government is poised to expand flood zones and push for increases in building elevations along the New Jersey coast in the wake of flooding from Hurricane Sandy.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was planning to revise flood-elevation rules in coastal zones sometime next year, but due to the extensive damage caused by the storm it will issue stricter advisory recommendations as early as next week.

The rules, expected to result in construction at much higher elevations along the New Jersey shore, will be pushed earlier than expected to make sure rebuilding from Sandy will follow stricter codes. The concern was that people would rebuild to today's requirements and that new construction already would be obsolete sometime next year.

"In all likelihood, they will change the building heights. Next week we'll have a better idea of what's actually going to happen when these advisories come out," Neil Byrne, the construction official and certified flood plain manager for Sea Isle City, told The Press of Atlantic City

(FEMA likely to expand flood zones, raise height requirements at shore in wake of Hurricane Sandy - pressofAtlanticCity.com: Atlantic County News

FEMA will issue "Advisory Base Flood Elevations," dubbed Advisory BFEs, for New Jersey's coastal counties next week and follow that the week of Dec. 17 with Advisory BFEs for New York coastal areas. The Advisory BFEs will be estimates of areas that have a 1 percent chance of being flooded each year, the so-called 100-year storm, and will be expanded from current mapping.

Byrne was one of the flood managers who participated in a recent online seminar with FEMA that has created a buzz along the shore that the agency would extend to other areas the strict rules that apply to V-zones along the shore. The V-zones are high-velocity wave zones along the beach that have the strictest elevation and other building requirements.

Shore towns typically have a V-zone along the beach and different A-zones behind it. Sometimes the highest ground, with no real flood concerns, can be a different zone, often called an X-zone.

Each town has its own zones and heights that affect FEMA ratings and flood insurance costs. In Sea Isle City, which has one of the better FEMA ratings along the shore, construction must be at 14 feet above base flood elevation in the strictest V-zone.

Besides the V-14 zone, Sea Isle also has a V-12 zone calling for 12-foot heights, along with A-10 and A-11 zones. Sea Isle requires an additional foot to all zones for what is known as "freeboard" underneath a structure. That means, for example, that floor joists on the first floor of structures in the V-14 really must be 15 feet above base flood elevation. Adding freeboard can improve FEMA ratings.

Some towns add two feet of freeboard in each zone and get better FEMA ratings.

Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini said there is a lot of speculation about what the new regulations could include.

On Friday afternoon, the township held its regular Board of Commissioners meeting, which usually lasts for about 20 minutes during the winter months but went on for about an hour with discussion of the flood maps.

"Everyone is concerned about what's coming out. I've told everyone, 'Relax. We'll see what it is, and we're going to have to conform to whatever it is,'" Mancini said.

When it comes to discussion about extending the V-zone back toward the street, that would address issues of wind and water impact in the township's Village Harbor section that Mancini said took a beating when 4-foot waves were hitting homes.

Bryne said many properties in town suffered substantial damage from Sandy and should be rebuilt to the new standards, but he noted it still isn't clear what they will be. It's also unclear if they will be stricter than what would have been required next year if Sandy had not hit.

The FEMA spokesman for New Jersey did not return phone calls Thursday and Friday. A spokesman for FEMA in Washington also did not supply requested information on Advisory BFEs.

"It all depends on how high they raise the BFEs," Byrne said. "They could come up with a zone called a Coastal A, which would be an area of limited wave action, waves of less than 3 feet, behind the V-zones, where building is to the same standards as the V-zone."

North Wildwood Mayor William Henfey was concerned. He said new construction could dwarf existing homes built at ground level.

"The shore towns are already built up," argued Henfey. "There's got to be a better way. Let's just not go overboard."

Cape May Point Deputy Mayor Anita van Heeswyk said new mapping by FEMA in 1995 put her Central Avenue home in a flood zone even though water has never been on the property. Van Heeswyk participated in the online seminar and said one thing she got from it is FEMA is pushing for more freeboard under homes and the new maps will come with higher flood insurance premiums.

Paperwork van Heeswyk received from FEMA said the Advisory BFEs will reflect higher elevations than on current flood insurance-rate maps. It said coastal flood zones may extend further inland. FEMA also predicted higher initial costs but lower long-term costs due to less flood damage.

Whatever height requirements emerge, Byrne said they will apply only to new construction or restoration work under the damage rules.

The FEMA recommendations are also not law. Towns still must put any new height or building requirements into local ordinances. Byrne said there would be public hearings before anything is enacted.

Failure to follow FEMA guidelines, however, can affect the agency's ratings for the town along with the price and availability of federal flood insurance. Following what FEMA wants can lower premiums and possibly even result in more storm-reconstruction money. Homeowners in towns that conform to FEMA rules can get as much as $30,000 for flood-proofing, elevation, relocation or demolition of a house in a high-risk area.

Older towns with ground-level construction could face the most aesthetic problems. In Cape May, a town full of 19th-century homes, most are built at ground level.

"The problem is you'll be able to build less and everything will be up on piling," said Construction Official Bill Callahan, who also serves as flood plain manager.
Prior to Sandy, FEMA had been expected to unveil new flood maps next August.

FEMA is now expected to issue Advisory BFEs for 10 counties in New Jersey and eight in New York.

Coastal homeowners already were facing higher flood-insurance costs before Sandy hit. A federal law approved in July re-authorized the National Flood Insurance Program for five years but eliminated a lot of discounts and subsidies, including those for secondary homes, many businesses and properties that suffer repeated flood damage.
___
Information from: The Press of Atlantic City (N.J.), http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com

FEMA likely to expand flood zones along NJ coast - seattlepi.com

Sandy-struck Breezy Point facing 'greatest historical challenge'

John Makely / NBC News
The Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens, where more than 100 homes burned when Superstorm Sandy hit.
Scroll to bottom of story to see a 360 degree panorama of the fire zone.

By Miranda Leitsinger, NBC News

BREEZY POINT, N.Y. -- This private community, which has fended off previous existential threats, is now facing its “greatest historical challenge” as a result of Superstorm Sandy, with some residents questioning whether they can afford to rebuild and others wondering if the resurrected beachside community will bear any resemblance to its bucolic former self.

A halting first step on what figures to be a long road back took place Thursday evening, when the Breezy Point Cooperative Inc. Board held its first post-Sandy shareholders meeting at a Catholic high school in Brooklyn.

---

More than 1,000 residents of the community founded by Irish immigrants around the turn of the 20^th century packed the meeting, which was closed to the media and members of the general public.

According to residents who attended, the board discussed applications for emergency Small Business Administration loans, the status of efforts to restore various utilities, demolitions and a disaster recovery fund, planned infrastructure improvements and other topics.

But some of those interviewed as they left said that their biggest concerns weren’t addressed.

“In the long run, it seems like things are going to take a lot of time,” said Rob Moran, a 38-year-old construction worker who attended with his wife, Carinne Bach. “A lot of questions are still up in the air right now.”

Bob Esposito, a former police officer whose home sustained water damage, said he was pleased to hear about infrastructure improvements, but wished the board had at least touched on the bigger issues that are weighing on residents’ minds.

“They were prepared to give a lot of information out, which we all needed to hear, but I think they are very reluctant on answering the hard-core questions,” he said.

Sandy smacked into the village on the southeastern tip of the city’sRockaway peninsula the night of Oct. 29, unleashing floodwaters that surged through the bungalows and bigger, newer homes, tearing some of the former off their foundations. The flooding also may have sparked a fire that burned down more than 100 of the 2,800 homes in Breezy Point.

John Makely / NBC News
Heavily damaged homes along Oceanside Drive in Breezy Point, N.Y.

The tight-knit community, home to many generations of numerous families, is only beginning to grapple with the wide-ranging consequences. Debris is slowly being cleared and power restored, but the water system is still shut down and demolition of the roughly 200 homes that sustained the worst damage -- including what remains of those in the fire zone -- has yet to begin.

Breezy Point, which was largely self-sufficient before the storm, is receiving assistance from the city as it attempts to jump-start its recovery. But officials and residents acknowledge that they have only begun to regroup.

Cooperative board Chairman Joseph Lynch declined an interview request from NBC News to discuss the current situation, but in an online statement to shareholders posted Nov. 16 he wrote, “This storm and its destruction have presented our Cooperative its greatest historical challenge, which will take time to overcome.”
In a later message posted just before Thanksgiving, he said that “the economic challenge for some in this regard will be a true test and hardship,” before ending on an optimistic note:
“In spite of this very serious setback I am confident that our Cooperative will also continue to grow, evolve, and prosper as it has over the past fifty-two years,” he said. “We also have no other choice.”
But other community members, including at least one co-op board member, are less sanguine about the prospects of the largely middle-class neighborhood, home to many firefighters, police officers and sanitation workers.
“Unfortunately, I’m afraid it may cause some people to leave the community,” said Marty Ingram, fire chief of the Point Breeze volunteer firefighters and a member of the co-op board, though stressing that he was speaking only for himself. “I hope it doesn’t. But it’s going to have an impact.”
Ingram said the community would pull together and he believed would offer some “quiet” financial aid to help people who can’t otherwise afford to rebuild.
Mary Elizabeth Smith, a lifelong resident and author of “A History of Breezy Point,” noted that the community, which started out as more of a summer getaway spot for working-class families and slowly morphed into a charming residential enclave with intimate sand lanes running between homes, has proven remarkably resilient over the years.


Courtesy of Mary Quinn
Mary Quinn, now 59, stands with her parents and older brothers as a little girl in Breezy Point in front of their bungalow, which was the typical type of housing in the community's earlier days. Quinn's family moved to the community full time in the early 1960s. She rebuilt the house in 1994.

The Breezy Point Cooperative was created in 1960 when residents learned that the 800-acres on which their homes stood had been quietly sold to a developer interested in building seaside high-rises. A group of homeowners went door-to-door collecting $500 from each family to raise an initial $75,000 defense fund, she said, and the group was ultimately able to buy back 400 acres for $12 million.
The co-op has been an oasis of economic stability in the decades since, paying off its communal mortgage years ago. That prosperity was in part due to the board’s initial ban on mortgage loans -- a requirement that was eventually relaxed to allow buyers to put 50 percent down on a home and finance the remainder. As a result, Ingram said that not a single Breezy Point home was foreclosed on during the housing crisis that erupted in 2008.

Smith said the credit belongs “to our ancestors … (who) really took a major chance, put up money in a belief in something that did not occur anywhere else in the United States: a community of houses that owned the land underneath them.”
The city briefly considered making Breezy Point a public park in 1962, but protests from residents and the developer scotched that effort. Then, after the National Park Service took title to land to the west and east after the same developer ran into financial problems, the cooperative went to federal court to battle with its new neighbor over ownership of newly formed sand flats, winning the rights to the land in 1982.
“A lot of people who live there today have no idea of the battles that were fought to get this property,” said Smith, 62, who was about 9 when the fight began to save Breezy Point, “and that’s why people really don’t want to leave the place. I’m certainly one of them.”
Moran and Bach are among the residents hoping they can rebuild their bungalow, which may have to be demolished.
The home, which was built by Bach’s deceased father, was inundated by a couple of feet of raw sewage and water, has a slight tilt and apparently some problems with the foundation. Though city inspectors indicated in two initial inspections that they should be able to rebuild, the couple fears it needs more than a repair and they may have to start anew.

John Makely / NBC News
Rob Moran, 38, cleans out the flooded basement of his home in Breezy Point, N.Y., on Dec. 1, 2012. Moran and his wife Carinne Bach, 38, are asking building inspectors to re-assess their home, which they fear may not be safe to live in.

With a Dec. 31 deadline set to apply for a free demolition provided by the city,they had hoped to learn at Thursday’s co-op board meeting how the building codes might change as a result of Sandy’s incursion, especially whether rebuilt homes might need to be elevated to lessen the likelihood of future flooding. But they left empty-handed.
“We got a little information, but I’m sure not quite as much as everybody had hoped,” said Bach, 38, a dance and fitness instructor who is several months pregnant. “I don’t think it’s for a lack of trying. I just think there’s so much red tape and so much unknown.”
“As far as where we’re to go from here, there’s not a clear road map,” she added.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hinted on Thursday that building code changes should be expected for waterfront areas, noting that “we can’t just rebuild what was there and hope for the best.”

John Makely / NBC News
A FEMA inspector works amid the burned homes in Breezy Point.

“As you can see, the yardstick has changed -- and so must we,” he added. “FEMA is currently in the process of updating their (flood) maps -- and those maps will guide us in setting new construction requirements.”
If new, more-stringent building requirements are put in place, many fear the expense will drive out some longtime residents, particularly the elderly and families that have kept summer or part-time homes -- about 40 percent of the residences -- there for decades.
Laurie Cerra is struggling to keep the small green bungalow that had been in her family for about 85 years. She swept the floors, filled garbage bags and struggled to hold back tears last week as volunteers used crowbars to rip down the walls. The home received a red card -- meaning it was unsafe to enter -- from inspectors, but she was doing the work in a bid to save the damaged foundation.
“I’m trying to separate myself from this, I really am. I spent every summer here … growing up. I’m really hoping I can repair the foundation,” said Cerra, 54, a dietitian from Greenfield Township, Pa.
But because she can’t get coverage from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which doesn’t provide emergency aid on second homes, and has not heard from her homeowners' insurance for wind damage coverage in three weeks, she can’t afford to rebuild in the short term.

John Makely / NBC News
Laurie Cerra, a registered dietitian from Pennsylvania, stands in the living room of her Breezy Point, N.Y., home on Dec. 1, 2012, as volunteers help her remove debris. Cerra is hoping she can save the damaged foundation and rebuild the home, which has been in her family for about 85 years.

“Maybe in, I don’t know, three or four years, if I get (the) foundation, then I can do it myself. I can try and do sheetrock myself,” she said. “At this point, no, it’s just going to be out of my savings account to rebuild.”
The co-op board is implicitly acknowledging the financial threat. In a statement posted online on Saturday, it said Breezy Point homeowners can now borrow, over the next two years, up to 80 percent of their home’s appraised value, or up to $500,000, to repair or replace their properties.

It also waived one part of the “carrying charges” -- monthly fees that include garbage collection, road and building maintenance, property tax and security services -- for the owners of about 300 homes that were destroyed or significantly damaged.
Lynch, the co-op board chairman, had upset some residents by reminding them that it is “really important” that shareholders continue to pay the fees “as our corporation will face real financial challenges and pressure in the immediate future.”
Lifelong resident Kim Dillon was among those who felt the tone was wrong so soon after the disaster.
“Our lives are in disarray and I don’t think their first contact with us should have been … ‘we’re still expecting maintenance fees’ when there’s people that don’t have houses,” said Dillon, 43, whose family is one of two that have moved back onto their block, even though there is still no running water.
But Dillon said her neighbors, who were like family, would be back, though she acknowledged her hometown would change as a result of the devastation.
“It’s going to be sad to see the bungalows gone, because that was like old Breezy Point,” she said, referring to the area known as “the wedge,” where the six-alarm fire burned so hot that stormy night. “I don’t think there’s going to be many -- if any -- left.”
The Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens, where more than 100 homes burned when Superstorm Sandy hit. (John Makely / NBC News)
Follow this link to view the panoramic of Breezy Point full-screen.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/08/15761239-sandy-struck-breezy-point-facing-greatest-historical-challenge?lite

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Cities , counties and states ignored the warnings about rising seal level and superstorms and now want the U.S. taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Hurricane Sandy Could Cost US 50 Billion Dollars in Damages

www.policymic.com/.../hurricane-sandy-path-of-damage-could-50-b...
Hurricane Sandy wrecked the NYC area and New Jersey. Millions are affected byt power outages, subway systems are crippled, and flooding is extensive.

Some areas took responsible protective precautions.

December 11, 2012 7:15 PM

Sand dunes spare NJ homes from Sandy's destruction


By Seth Doane

Play CBS News Video
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(CBS News) LONG BEACH ISLAND, N.J. - Six weeks after superstorm Sandy, FEMA said more than half a million homeowners want federal help. At least 356,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, most in New York and New Jersey. But it turns out many other homes were not damaged because they were protected by million-dollar sand dunes.

Jeff Davis rode out Sandy in his home on New Jersey's Long Beach Island. "We were lucky, we were lucky," he said.

His house was saved by a wall of sand, part of $16.8 million Army Corps of Engineers project completed six months before Sandy.

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"They basically brought the waves to a stand-still at this point," said Stew Farrell as he walked along a sand barrier. He is a coastal geologist examining how sand barriers stopped rising water pushed ashore by the storm.

"In places where the projects had not been constructed," said Farrell, "the damage was extensive and in some cases catastrophic."

Since 1986, the federal government helped New Jersey pay $700 million to build sand walls as high as 22 feet. But some critics, including Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, call it a beach bailout.

"What we need to do is reorient funding so cost is picked up by localities rather than tax payer. When you look at sea level rise, you're looking at a situation where we're not going to be able to hold back ocean with just sand any more.

Jeff Davis agreed with neighbors who opposed the dunes because they restricted beach access and blocked views. What he sees today has changed his mind.
"Can I put that crow down that I'm eating?" he joked.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57558606/sand-dunes-spare-nj-homes-from-sandys-destruction/

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