ALBANY – New York needs to rethink how it protects itself from what are becoming regular weather disasters, Gov. Cuomo said today in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
With large sections of lower Manhattan, parts of the outer boroughs and the south shore of Long Island being socked with record-breaking floods, Cuomo said officials need to start considering new approaches.
“The construction of the city did not anticipate these kinds of situations,” he said on Albany’s Talk1300 AM radio. “We are only a few feet above sea level. You now have a whole infrastructure under the city that fills. The subway system, the foundations of buildings.”
A new strategy for combating storms “is something we’re going to have to start to think about,” he said.
Cuomo said he believes major weather disasters are becoming more frequent.
“We have a 100-year flood every two years now,” he said.
He said the worst is over for the downstate area from yesterday’s Frankenstorm.
But, he added, “The real damage is when the water recedes and you see what it did and the damage to the systems and the damage to the homes.
“This was really very frightening last night,” he added. “The Hudson River was just pouring into the Ground Zero site. The pit was filling … Some of biggest commercial buildings in the city, the basements were flooded. It was as bad as anything I have experienced certainly in New York – and certainly that New Yorkers have experienced.”
Cuomo said people died when trees fell into their homes and by electrocution by downed wires.
“Literally we’re still running swift boat rescues,” he said, adding about two million New Yorkers are without power, including 900,000 – or 90 percent of all customers – on Long Island. “In Westchester it’s devastating.”
He also said that because New Jersey and other neighboring states are all coping with the devastation of the storm, New York is trying to bring in utility workers from as far as Texas and California to help with recovery efforts.
Cuomo said it was tough to battle a major fire in Queens because “literally you couldn’t get the trucks in there … We lost humvees where the water went over the humvees” on Long Island.
He also said the temporary shuttering of Wall Street and numerous businesses and New Yorkers’ inability to get around will depress sales, revenues and tax collections.
But he said he believes the federal government “will be responsible for the costs” of recovery efforts, including what he predicted will be “staggering” costs to repair the subway system.