re: How prepared would NYC be if a category 5 hurricane hit?

“Tropical storm with hurricane force gusts” doesn’t sound as serious

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“Tropical storm with hurricane force gusts” doesn’t sound as serious

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That is kind of the point. The media created the superstorm name just to make it sound more threatening after the fact.

ETA: Plus it was catchy

Everyone's forgetting that with the exception of The Bronx, NYC is all islands. Staten Island and Manhattan are obviously islands. Brooklyn and Queens are on the West end of Long Island, which would be on the East side of any storm that directly hit the city. All of Long Island, including its infrastructure that might allow bringing supplies to Brooklyn and Queens over land from ports farther East would be devastated by a Cat 5. The Bronx is connected directly to the rest of the state of New York and getting supplies in is not the monumental undertaking it would be for the other four boroughs.

The Bronx is 1.5 million people. NYC as a whole is about 8 million (city, not metroplex). 1.5 million people have all kinds of roads that can reach them. How do you keep the remaining 6.5 million people alive who have to be resupplied entirely via bridge or ship after a cat 5 comes in and destroys bridges, ports, docks, etc.?

Those people would go feral.

We haven't even begun to discuss the additional 7.5 million people that live on the parts of Long Island that aren't NYC who are also going to be battered, thirsty, and starving.

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I am not sure if anyone, especially on this board, has enough information to be able to provide an accurate answer.

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Insightful as always, Chris.

Many years ago, even before September 11, 2001, I read an article that purported to describe what New York City would look like in 1,000 years if left alone without any maintenance or human actions to preserve the infrastructure. (Also it assumed no damage from a war.)

Weird topic, I know but it was in National Geographic, I believe.

One thought in the article stuck with me and that was New York City on average takes a direct hit by a major hurricane once every 100 years. So that would mean the city would experience 10 hurricane landfalls in a millennium.

The result would be the World Trade Center towers would have had all of their windows blown out and the twin towers would have been basically skeleton structures.

Funny how an obscure article like that sticks in a memory cell in the brain....

Probably have some people saying that George Bush hates black people

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Subways became water pipelines during Sandy.

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I just moved from NYC after 5 years. My commute was going to be absolute f'ed by the L shutting down for years to repair following Sandy. If more trains took that damage it would hurt for a long time.

All it should take is a look at the effect on Long Island as a result of Hurricane Gloria in the middle or late 1980’s. The utter panic caused by the potential of that hurricane caused them to close down the George Washington Bridge effectively stranding people on the storm side instead of allowing them to evacuate Long Island.

There is far more development out further on Long Island than back then, yet for all intents and purposes the infrastructure is still the same.

As for all the comments whether or not Sandy was a hurricane or not, which we know it wasn’t, surely folks in our area are not that forgetful that we have already forgotten that a storm doesn’t even have to be named to do immense damage? One should also bear in mind topography and take into account storm tracks. The path of Sandy caused a storm surge that simply left it nowhere to disperse.

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All it should take is a look at the effect on Long Island as a result of Hurricane Gloria in the middle or late 1980’s. The utter panic caused by the potential of that hurricane caused them to close down the George Washington Bridge effectively stranding people on the storm side instead of allowing them to evacuate Long Island.

There is far more development out further on Long Island than back then, yet for all intents and purposes the infrastructure is still the same.

As for all the comments whether or not Sandy was a hurricane or not, which we know it wasn’t, surely folks in our area are not that forgetful that we have already forgotten that a storm doesn’t even have to be named to do immense damage? One should also bear in mind topography and take into account storm tracks. The path of Sandy caused a storm surge that simply left it nowhere to disperse.

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I grew up on Long Island and stayed home through Hurricane Gloria. I was 8 years old and loved climbing on all of the downed trees

I remember the radio playing Archie Bunker "Gloria!!" clips making light of the situation