The Big One: What Happens to NYC When a Monster Hurricane Hits
Imagine the following: It's a beautiful Labor Day weekend. Sunny,cloudless, 80 degrees. Backyard barbecues are fired up all over themetropolitan area, and the beaches of New York City, New Jersey and southern Long Island are jam-packed with bathers. The only sign that something unusual is happening is the relatively big waves rolling up on Coney Island. It's a surfer's paradise. Mike Lee isn't enjoying the long weekend. For the last two weeks, Lee, theDirector of Watch Command at New York City's Office of Emergency Management, has been observinga series of weather systems form off the western coast of Africa, organize themselves into the familiarswirling pattern of tropical storms, and line up like airplanes coming in for a landing on the Caribbean. One of those storms, a category-4 monster hurricane with sustained winds of 140 m.p.h., is violentlychurning the ocean 350 nautical miles off the coast of Georgia. A hurricane like this one can usually be counted on to curve eastwardand die a harmless death over the Atlantic. But with a large area of high pressure hovering just offthe east coast, the computer models at the National Hurricane Center in Miami are largely in agreement:This one is heading north, tracking a direct hit on New Jersey somewhere north of Atlantic City. Like the legendary "Long Island Express" of 1938, the fastest-moving hurricane ever recorded,it's moving quickly.While no human or computer can ever be completely sure what a hurricaneis going to do, this is looking like a worst-case scenario for New York City, the kind of scenario"that gives emergency managers serious gastrointestinal distress," says Lee. Because of itscounter-clockwise rotation, the right side of a hurricane is the most powerful part of the storm. The right side of this storm is fixing to land a haymaker on New York Harbor. If it makes landfall duringhigh tide, the devastation will be unprecedented. With the storm expected to hit within 24 hours, Mike Lee is in constantcommunication with Mike Wyllie, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service'sNew York office in Upton. The OEM's emergency operations center, meanwhile, is buzzing, whilethe mayor and his chiefs are hunkered down in the situation room. They have an incredibly difficultdecision to make, a decision that has never before been made in New York City. They are preparingto order the evacuation of 900,000 New Yorkers whose homes are in the path of catastrophic floodingin the event of a category-4 hurricane. They will provide shelter for nearly a quarter million. And while the storm is still far enough away that it could drift off course and miss New York City completely,a full evacuation may take up to 18 hours. They need to decide now. The fact that a mayoral electionis only two months away doesn't make the decision any less complicated. An unnecessary evacuationcould be a political catastrophe. --- Though it sounds like science fiction, the above scenario is all tooplausible. "Try to tell someone in Sheepshead Bay that they have to evacuate immediately becausewithin the next 24 hours they'll have 30 feet of storm surge on their neighborhood," says Mike Lee,before pausing to let you think about three stories of ocean water roiling through your own neighborhood. "They'll laugh at you-absolutely laugh at you," he says. "I mean, I barely even believe it." I met Lee at this year's Long Island/New York City Emergency Managementconference and spent some time with him at the OEM "bunker" in Brooklyn. It turns out that the region'semergency managers aren't only worrying about terrorism these days. The big topic of discussionat the Melville, Long Island, Hilton was hurricanes. And the strong consensus is that the metropolitanregion is due for a big one. Overdue, in fact. The 1938 Long Island Express, a borderline category-4 hurricane thatplowed into West Hampton, causing widespread death and devastation across New York, New Jerseyand New England, was the last major hurricane to hit the region. Statistically speaking, "a stormof that magnitude may repeat every 70 to 80 years or so," Lee says. "So, do the math. Whether it happensthis year, next year, or in five years, it's going to happen." And with this year's hurricane seasonforecasted to be even busier and more dangerous than last year's record-setter, "It's just a matterof time," Lee says. Though it is rare for big hurricanes to hit the New York metropolitanregion, there are a variety of "oceanographic, demographic and geologic characteristics thatgreatly amplify any hurricane" that comes our way, according to Nicholas Coch, a professor of coastalgeology at Queens College. In many ways, Coch explains, "The New York City area is the worst possibleplace for a hurricane to make a landfall." New York's first vulnerability is psychological. This is a city wherechildren playing in the dirt are told by their mothers to "get up off the floor." We tend to forgetthat we have any connection whatsoever to the natural world. The vast majority of the city's eightmillion inhabitants simply have no idea that a hurricane can happen here. "We live in a complacent coastal city," Lee says. "A lot of people don'teven think that there are beaches here," never mind 478 miles of coastline. In fact, New York Cityis behind only Miami and New Orleans on the list of U.S. cities most likely to suffer a major hurricanedisaster. Compounding the problem is the fact that many of the New Yorkers who lived through 1985'sHurricane Gloria believe they've experienced the worst of what nature has to offer. "That wasn'ta hurricane," meteorologist Wyllie says. The storm was billed as a category-2 that weakened beforeit hit and came in at low tide. "Gloria was nothing." New York's second vulnerability is demographic. During the decadesof calm between major hurricanes, the city grows and forgets. During the great hurricane of 1821,only 152,000 people lived in New York City. When the next major, direct hit came in 1893, the city'spopulation was 2.5 million. At the time of the 1938 storm, Long Island wasn't a densely populatedsuburban sprawl; it was a rural home for oyster fishermen, potato farmers and wealthy industrialists.The same storm today would wreak incredible havoc. AIR Worldwide Corporation estimates $11.6billion in New York losses alone. More than 20 million people live in the greater metropolitan region.Many live on coastal land, reclaimed swamp and barrier islands. Much of Lower Manhattan is builton landfill. Places like Rockaway, Coney Island and Manhattan Beach "are stretches of land thatnature has created to protect the mainland from hurricanes," Lee says. "In our civilization thisis also the most desirable land to develop and build on. We're not going to undevelop it. So we nowhave to deal with the threat." Coch, the six-foot-seven-and-a-half professor once nicknamed "Dr.Doom" because he was the first scientist to widely publicize New York City's hurricane historyand vulnerabilities, put it more poetically in a 1995 New York Times interview: The onlydifference between now and then is that "now we have millions of people to offer the God of the Sea." New York City's biggest vulnerability is the most unyielding geology.The New York bight is the right angle formed by Long Island and New Jersey with the city tucked intoits apex. "Hurricanes do not like right angles," Lee says. "[They allow] water to accumulate andpile up." Couple this with the fact that New York resides on a very shallow continentalshelf, and as a big storm pushes north, New York Harbor "acts as a funnel." As storm surge forces itsway into the harbor and up the rivers, it has nowhere to go but onto land. New York City, it turns out,has some of the highest storm-surge values in the country. "When we see a category-3 storm makinglandfall in Florida, it may only have a 12-, 13-foot storm surge," Lee says. "For us here, a category-1storm can give us 12 feet of storm surge." Storm surge is the dome of seawater that is lifted up and pushed forwardin front of a hurricane. It acts almost like a mini-tsunami, causing sea levels to rise rapidly andviolently. Most people believe that high winds and rains are the main dangers of a hurricane. Infact, inland flooding caused by storm surge is the big killer. In 1821, stunned New Yorkersrecorded sea levels rising as fast as 13 feet in a single hour at the Battery. The East River and HudsonRivers merged over Lower Manhattan all the way to Canal Street. According to Coch, the fact thatthe 1821 storm struck at low tide "is the only thing that saved the city." --- To get a sense of the damage that storm surge can do to New York City, call311 and ask them to send you a full-color copy of the New York City Hurricane Evacuation Map. It isa truly mind-boggling document. If a storm like the Long Island Express makes a direct hit on thecity, everything below Broome Street will be inundated, some parts under as much as 20 and 30 feetof water. Chelsea and Greenwich Village are completely flooded, with the Hudson spilling overall the way to 7th Avenue. Likewise, the East River and East Village become one, with ocean watersurging all the way to 1st Avenue. If you haven't evacuated before the storm, forget it. During thestorm, Manhattan's east- and west-side highways vanish. Tunnels and bridges become unusable. The outer boroughs also get hit hard. Opposed to that new Ikea being builton the waterfront in Red Hook? Don't worry. There's a decent chance it won't be there after a moderate-sizehurricane. Residents of Williamsburg-Greenpoint should seek out a male and female of each speciesand get in their arks. In a kind of one-two-punch effect, a major hurricane will push ocean waterdown from the Long Island Sound into the Upper East Side, South Bronx and northern Queens, floodingthose areas severely. Vast stretches of southern Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island will be devastated.The map shows Atlantic Ocean storm surge reaching as far inland as Flatbush, just south of ProspectPark, with 31.3 feet of water atop Howard Beach. "A lot of people say, 'How can you come up with these numbers? Thirty feet,that's ridiculous. It's science fiction.' Actually," Lee says, "It's science fact." Hurricanesin the southern U.S. have proven the Army Corps of Engineers' storm-surge calculations to be accuratewithin a few inches. For a taste of what will happen to the city's infrastructure, we can lookat the damage wrought by the great nor'easters of the early 1990s. During those storms, the L trainhad to be backed out as the 14th Street tunnel began filling with water, and the FDR highway was sobadly inundated that 50 motorists had to be rescued by dive teams. In the event of a direct hit by acategory-3 hurricane, surge maps show that the Holland and Battery Tunnels will be completely filled with sea water, with many subway and railroad tunnels severely flooded as well. The runwaysof LaGuardia and JFK airports will get flooded by 18.1 and 31.2 feet of water, respectively. Then there are the winds. The city's two million trees will be a huge problem. "New York City's trees haven't been stressed in years except for an isolated severe thunderstormor two," Wyllie says. They've had plenty of time to grow and wrap their roots around undergroundphone, electric, gas and water lines. As they are uprooted in the heavy winds, a lot of infrastructureboth above and below ground is going to get wrecked. As for skyscrapers, "The impact of catastrophic winds on high-risebuildings is still a little vague," Lee says. "We don't feel we have enough data on that." We do know that hurricane wind speeds multiply at higher altitudes.At 350 feet, the height of high-rise buildings on the Battery and the towers of the George WashingtonBridge, hurricane winds will be twice as fast as they are on the ground. Newer, glass-skinned towersare not likely to do well in those conditions. Neither will human beings caught outside amidst flyingdebris. To give a sense of the unbelievable force of hurricane winds, Lee shows a photo from one ofthe four storms that struck Florida last year. It depicts a blunt piece of two-by-four driven straightthrough the trunk of a palm tree. "It would be nasty," Wyllie agrees. "If you get sustained winds going80 to 90 miles per hour in the city-whoa, you can't believe the destruction. We've never seenthat. And as you go up 200, 300 feet," he considers that for a moment. "That'll be 100, 110 mph winds.Watch out." ---