On a cool October day nearly 14 years ago, a furious wind set upon Brooklyn, ripping trees from the ground and whipping powerlines across asphalt with ease. A few hours later, as night descended and families huddled together under candlelight and blankets, water surged to the height of SUVs and threw them into local storefronts. The next day, as the ocean’s fury subsided, Brooklyn woke to find its parks ravaged, its community centers flooded, and its most vulnerable populations devastated.
The cataclysmic conditions brought about by Hurricane Sandy served as a stark warning for New York. Growing up here, the most inclement weather I thought I’d ever deal with was snow that piles up so high you can’t open your front door- the kind that compacts heavier than concrete when you spend the morning watching TV instead of shoveling out a blizzard’s snow-day gift. As the years go by, those snow days are becoming rarer and rarer, while sweltering summer days and torrential downpours come by much more often. Soon, Sandy-like, 100-year floods will happen more frequently in New York. Gone are snow days- New York is entering the era of flood days. Unlike snow, Brooklyn isn’t prepared for these floods, and the people who’ll be most affected by them are the communities historically marred by redlining and administrative apathy.
Sandy revealed just how unprepared Brooklyn was for catastrophic flood events- especially in its southern neighborhoods like Coney Island, Brighton Beach and Red Hook. During Sandy, NYCHA housing complexes in Red Hook were decimated by floods: businesses closed, electrical systems were fried, and boilers were drowned. For weeks after the flood, the people of Red Hook were isolated in their homes without power or heat. Even after heat returned through faulty boilers, creeping catastrophes festered in the homes of these Brooklynites in the years following…