New York City declares state of emergency amid flash floods | Hacker News Reader

New York City declares state of emergency amid flash floods

cnn.com

83 pointsanigbrowl112 comments

Employers letting their recently brought back to office remote employees go home early to try to beat transit issues caused by extreme weather events that are becoming more common due to global warming caused by everyone commuting to office every day burning energy and creating pollution.

It took a global pandemic to spur us to switch to a more modern and as it happens environmentally friendly way of working, which could even help us alleviate housing issues by allowing more people to disperse around the country, help local economies in more rural places, but no, let’s go back to doing things exactly how we did before.

Everything is fine.

Sure... But how much extra energy is consumer by people heating/cooling their 1-2 person homes now they're in it all day? Likely less than transit, and not zero. Regardless, the primary impact on climate change has always been and likely always will be those who manufacture your clothes, plastics, electronics etc - which people bought more over over said pandemic.

Rural areas invaded by "COVID refugees" are broadly losing out on their culture and filling with yuppies with too much money and no interest in community.

I admire your passion, but the problems are more complex.

I'd like to hear from people who are there right now. How scary is this? Because it looks like the end of the world. But are we all watching the same whirlpool video and it was cherry picked doom, or is it really that bad everywhere?

In Manhattan, at least, there has been a significant amount of rainfall, but things have mostly cleared up now on the streets.

The videos show the worst spots--in most cases you can get around them, assuming you have time and aren't worried about getting wet.

It's definitely scary and dangerous if you or your car happens to be stuck in the water. If you're in an apartment that doesn't have drainage issues, you can probably stay inside without noticing much. If you own a house with a basement in some neighborhoods, there's a good chance you have (potentially sewage-contaminated) water flowing into it.

Its not all areas of Brooklyn that are flooded of course. Some of those areas flooded usually experience some kind of flooding when it rains heavily. There was a heavy monsoon like downpour on 4 th of July for about an hour and there was flooding in the Prospect Park area and Windsor terrace area(flooded now again); Enough that given I was in my previously lowered car I wouldn't have been able to drive through it.

Another flooded area Borough Park is flat and I believe gets a lot of run off from the more elevation Sunset park neighborhood nextdoor.

It’s fine. There’s a map somewhere with all the spots where floods will happen. Good to reference before living somewhere new.

I have family all over NYC. Seems like Brooklyn got hit the hardest. The video they took and sent me, some streets are about knee height. Other borough are flooded enough to effect homes and basements but nothing catastrophically bad. The worse part is the backed up drains and sewers.

8 million people across 300 square miles, so there’s variety. It’s fine near me, but canceled dinner plans because of train issues.

Media will highlight the worst.

I just biked from midtown Manhattan to Prospect park since I couldn’t commute by train.

It’s fine. More puddles, more street closures, more aggressive drivers. Just NYC on a sugar rush.

I biked through Prospect Park this morning and it was absolutely hellish. A lot has changed in the last eight hours or so.

Did not enter the park. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of trees have fallen on the loop.

I took the subway to broad street, took the boat to the statue of liberty and walked back to Soho. That whole region of Manhattan, at least, is fine. There were some delays on the subway because someone slipped on the stairs from the rain and needed medical attention, that's about it.

Not a local but drove into Long Island city for a date night in midtown. Wouldn’t have guessed there was a noteworthy problem although there was a lot of rain.

I spent all day with friends going around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. We had to Uber around since the subway was mostly disabled. That was expensive and traffic wasn't great but we got around just fine. All the places we went to were open and happy to serve us.

I live in Brooklyn. It's.... as bad as Ida was 2 years ago, maybe slightly less.

My cellar flooded, but I was able to pump it out as the storm drains caught up. I've changed some plumbing in prep -- Ida I took 2' in the Cellar, today I had about 2" when I was able to pump out.

The most dangerous thing is cellar apartments (of which there are many illegal) that can flood quickly.

Glad to read to you’re much better prepared!

Agree about the basement apartments, in particular it seems to be the ones with the doors that open inwards that become death traps with flooding

> doors that open inwards that become death traps with flooding

Do you mean doors that open outwards? The weight/pressure of floodwater outside the door would seal it shut from the outside, whereas it would eventually break open a door that opens inwards, right? Is it the violence of the breakin itself that's so dangerous with inward-opening doors?

Perhaps I'm misremembering this but IIRC the news at the time the pressure against the door from the inside made it too hard to pull open at get out.

Right now it’s not scary at all. If anything I’m impressed by the city’s drainage systems because this morning was an absolute horror show in my area of Brooklyn.

IMO the bigger story from this particular storm is the lack of preparation by the Mayor’s office. We heard very little about the oncoming storm from government sources. Declaring a state of emergency is all very well but it’s (literally!) pretty late in the day.

Depends on location. UWS is high ground. Its just rainy and wet but that's it.

In the suburbs, people were evacuated from the low areas. I went out for an hour and getting home was a challenge because most roads were closed down due to flooding

It was a river in the street. Sewers were backed up.

However it was fine. Just had to bucket some water out of some inconvenient areas.

Some kids went to school. My daughter did not. Some coworkers went in and got stuck on the subway.

A very unpleasant day but nothing to freak about.

Is anyone aware of major civil engineering effort being undertaken in NYC to deal with this? They've had several major flooding events in the last handful of years. Seems almost as if they need levees.

https://www.6sqft.com/army-corps-of-engineers-releases-first...

Thank you for the link. A bit unfortunate for the aesthetics but likely necessary.

Today’s flooding was caused by excessive rain, and I think the problems are mostly around inadequate drainage? Whereas Sandy was a storm surge and could have been mitigated with something like levees.

NYC might be able to do something like that if it wasn't being strangled budget-wise by an insanely expensive, overstaffed, and ineffective police department.

NYer here.

NYC infrastructure is old and unmaintained. The sewer system is 175 years old. These floods happen every year at different magnitude.

> NYC infrastructure is old and unmaintained. The sewer system is 175 years old. These floods happen every year at different magnitude.

Given the amount of money I pay for taxes to the state, perhaps the state/city should update that infrastructure.

They are, but they are a bit backlogged on what exactly they need to do.

Part of the issue is that New York is so old it runs a combined sewer/storm drain system. Modern practice is to separate the two since the former needs to be treated and the latter generally doesn't, but when they're combined the outflows overwhelm the sewage system and then that's how you get backed up sewage, sewage emergency discharge into the harbor, etc.

Actually separating the two is quite difficult. On the one hand that means requiring building owners to separate and plug into a new system. Then you run into the fact that in New York 170+ years of haphazardly planned utilities by multiple public and private actors means there is no accurate map of where exactly things are underground, which makes building a new system going under every street expensive and full of legal issues. (The city has been trying to get a handle on this problem for years but doesn't get a lot of cooperation since a lot of these entities treat the location of their stuff underground as trade secrets, if they even have accurate information themselves.)

Right now, the projects taking up most of their time are

* the construction of Water Tunnel no. 3, since the other two tunnels that deliver all the water to NYC have never been shut down for inspection at any point in their 100+ year lives and can't be unless a backup tunnel exists

* lead pipe remediation, because there's still a lot of it.

So...too much legacy technical debt. And no political will to do anything. In an environment of rising interest rates (more expensive gov bonds) and lower tax receipts.

Makes sense, given quality of life and city services have been getting worse. And things should (predictably) get worse.

NYer here also.

For the past 10-12 years or so, yes, this has been happening more and more. This kind of thing was not happening 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, at this level any how. You can say now "these floods happen every year", but this used to not be the case.

This year New York was covered by smoke due to Canadian forest fires. I can't remember that ever happening in the past half century. I'm sure in a few years someone will these "this happens every year".

You’re not wrong and the trend is toward more of these torrential-to-flood events. The story is simple: the infrastructure we have doesn’t handle multiple inches of rain in a very short period of time.

Would that rain have previously had somewhere to run off to, i.e. is over-development plus a lack of infrastructure projects to blame here? Or was the city already heavily developed like this and the storm just that much worse?

I’m used to Charleston, SC flooding over the years and the worst spots always neatly lined up with the historical maps, specially the areas of the peninsula that were filled in with trash and covered with dirt. Areas that would have otherwise been low-lying wetlands were the streets you could kayak through.

As others pointed out, generalizing across NYC is quite hard. Some areas - particularly in Brooklyn and Queens - are probably more developed than they used to be.

What I was pointing to this something like this: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

From that article: > Heavy precipitation does not necessarily mean the total amount of precipitation at a location has increased—just that precipitation is occurring in more intense events. However, changes in the intensity of precipitation, when combined with changes in the interval between precipitation events, can also lead to changes in overall precipitation totals.

In other words, 6 inches of rain fell at JFK over 4 days, that might be manageable for the infrastructure. Not so much if it happens in one day, which is what this articles speaks to.

The flooding are also getting worse because the infrastructure isn't getting any better.

Smokes were due to criminal behavior.

Smokes were due to criminal behavior.

Doubtful.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/police-arrest-man-su...

'Chibougamau Mayor Manon Cyr says she was relieved when she learned of Paré’s arrest. In an interview Friday, the mayor said the fires that Paré is accused of starting were unrelated to the two massive wildfires that forced the evacuation of the town in June.

“We’ll see what’s said in court on this,” Cyr said. “But the big fires that caused the evacuation were caused by lightning.”'

NYC resident, here. Its crazy bad.

NYC resident here. It is not "crazy bad". Other than the trains not running (which, let's be clear, is unfortunately not super rare), I barely noticed a difference.

Zero-content exaggeration like this is infuriating. Obviously, if you're in an area that got flooded, it may well be the worst thing you've experienced in years. One person cannot speak for a city of 8 million people.

I mean...I don't disagree about context-free doom, but unless you work from home and had nothing to do today, you were likely affected by this in some way.

Basically the entire subway and commuter rail serving millions of people was barely functional all day long, there was massive gridlock traffic because the highways flooded, many hours later three major road links out of the city (the Saw Mill, Hutchinson, and Bronx River parkways) remain closed to traffic, and there's widespread water damage to people's property–down the block from me cars floated out of the street and onto the sidewalk! Not great!

For what it's worth, I live in Manhattan and don't work from home, and this didn't affect my day at all beyond my evening commute taking an extra half hour or so.

> NYC resident here. It is not "crazy bad". Other than the trains not running (which, let's be clear, is unfortunately not super rare), I barely noticed a difference.

You must not have been in BK. 1/2/3, 4/5/6, N/Q/W/R all stopped running or partial service in BK. Local and express busses down in that area. Major streets shut down, including the ones around BK bridge. I spent 4 hours in traffic picking up my wife today. Also saw 4 accidents, bc drivers here seem to prefer driving more reckless in rain. If that's not "crazy bad", I don't know what it.

> Zero-content exaggeration like this is infuriating. Obviously, if you're in an area that got flooded, it may well be the worst thing you've experienced in years. One person cannot speak for a city of 8 million people.

Too many new yorkers have adopted this attitude of "its not that bad!" when it gets ugly here. I get it, I like the city (when its working) too, but I want the city to be better. I have been living or consistently visiting the city (and by "city", I mean all of NYC, not just Manhattan) since 2011. Thing have been getting worse, especially since covid. I have seen a video of people open cooking a roast pig on the sidewalk. NYC is 3rd world. The only thing keeping me here is my job that requires me to come into the office 3x/week.

I don't think that saying "it's crazy" is even specific enough to be called an exaggeration, nor is it untrue. It doesn't take that many force multipliers to make your experience during these floods absolutely wild and crazy painful. Try being homeless, incarcerated, mentally ill? I mean, I'm glad you're comfortable, but the city as a whole has really had a crazier than usual day.

I had 2.5ft of water in my basement and my kids school was flooded, all of pre-K had to be taught in the cafeteria.

Just because nothing happened to you doesn't mean nothing happened.

I literally said that if you were someone who was flooded, it might be the worst thing to happen to you in years.

there was sandy and then there was the hurricane that happened two years ago... this shit just keeps happening. the entire drainage/sewer system needs renovation and the city/state hasn't invested in those projects.

My understanding was that Manhattan didn't get hit bad but Brooklyn did. it's not just a few people who got flooded, it was entire schools, fire depts, parks, reservoirs, shops, etc.

Again?! Didn't this same thing happen last year or maybe the one before?

It'll probably happen next year and the year after that too.

Every year until the underwriters refuse to underwrite - as is already happening on the gulf coast.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

At least in New York the geology permits a seawall, if they get their shit together and build it.

Does a sea wall help with too much rain at once?

I don't know about NYC but in general a sea wall could hold back a high tide. A lot of coastal cities flood when there is high rainfall coinciding with a high tide. When the tide is low the rain just drains into the river and out to sea.

In this case though, as far as I can tell it really was mostly a lot of rain at once, i.e. too much for sewers to drain to the sea to prevent flooding. I don't think a sea wall could improve this; only better storm drains could.

I think this was different for Hurricane Sandy, where a storm tide was actually pushing in water from the sea/rivers, which is the scenario where a sea wall would help.

And I suppose often it's a bit of both – storm drains stop working once the sea level is too high.

No, but better drainage would.

In my sister's ex-subdivision in Houston, the streets were designed to flood, channeling any water away from property and into bayous, rivers, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. It worked as designed over several tropical storms. The streets were a mess but everybody's home, driveway, and property stayed dry.

NYC needs a similar effort - change the streets and subways to channel water away from property and into the harbor, while providing means to harden the underground parts that can't get wet. It will be crazy expensive, but it's an engineering & construction problem, not a geographic or climate one.

Dumping water into the harbor only really works if it won't just come right back out onto the land. Most of the flooded areas are at sea level.

Hence the seawall idea.

Though as you may be aware, the 3rd and 5th wards are not so well protected. Low-lying parts of highways are often flooded out, especially during hurricanes.

It does if you can drain into the body of water you are blocking with the seawall.

I'm pretty confident it will happen, there's too much real-estate money to not do it.

The current project has been beset by problems with this as well.

Anywhere with a seawall will have lower flooding inside but more flooding outside. When it was originally proposed at the Narrows, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens were not pleased.

Sandy the subway stations were filled with water. There were emergency flood gates built into the tunnels in some places but they weren’t maintained.

"Didn't we have record floods last year too?"

"Didn't we have record highs last year too?"

"Didn't we have record tornadoes last year too?"

"Didn't we have record fires last year too?"

Welcome to the age of climate instability.

*Welcome to the age of constant 24/7 sensationalized news cycles. Gotta get those clicks! One doom-n-gloom done, onto the next!

These are the actual results of climate change though. What's being sensationalized here?

How do you come to this definite conclusion? Would this have been something like a two to three sigma event given no climate change? I highly doubt it

I had 2.5 ft (0.762 meters) of water in my basement this morning :( (Clinton Hill/ Bed-Stuy Brooklyn)

my kids school P.S. 11, basement level also flooded. my coffeeshop that I go to in the morning, flooded.

I’m going to purchase a house with a basement. Do you know how the water got in?

the NYC sewer backed-up into the apt. All the rain water and the sewer go to the same place because NYC's sewer system is from the 1800's.

If you do get a house, get one with a sump pump. if it's the bottom floor of an apartment building, get one with a back flow valve going into the building. When buying used, make sure to look over the HOA's minutes to see if they've had issues with flooding in the past and what repairs they've done to address those issues.

I seem to be hearing about these torrential rain/flood in the news more often and this data visualization that I made a couple of years ago seems relevant.

https://twitter.com/oikoweather/status/1338691244470403075

Basically, since 1950, we've added 2 litres of water per square meter of earth's surface to the atmosphere. This is twice the volume of Lake Erie.

UWS/HK seems fine - I suspect we're at a higher elevation. BK seems the worst hit from the videos.

If you can’t stand the heat, get off of Earth, as Elon says.

I feel so bad for all those who just moved there, I hope they’re all ok.

Who?

There's been planeloads of new arrivals

Oh? Which ones?

Everyone's constantly declaring states of emergency. It's hard to care.

Over the last year, San Francisco and Alameda have been in a "state of emergency" over:

- monkeypox - COVID-19 - homelessness - drug use

This weekend I might go look back at everything and see what duration we have not been in an emergency over.

How many people need to be affected, in your opinion, to have a bonafide emergency?

one.

renewiltord.

Hahaha, that's brillo mate. No, I don't think it's a number of people thing. I think there's got to be some anomalous event. You can't constantly be in an emergency. That's just the new normal, eh?

That's why it's called The Long Emergency....

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