Seven months after New York City was inundated by more than eight inches of rain in late September, an investigation found that the city’s public communications were, in some cases, “woefully limited” and its infrastructure inadequate to the challenges of extreme weather.
The 44-page investigation by the office of Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, noted that 63 percent of the Department of Environmental Protection’s 51 specialized catch-basin cleaning trucks — a key part of the city’s arsenal to prevent floods — were out of service when the storm hit.
And though city officials began monitoring the storm a week ahead of its arrival and activated its “flash flood emergency plan” the morning before, that “proactive approach was not as effectively extended to public communications,” the report reads.
The mayor did not hold a news conference on the storm until nearly three hours after the heavy rains began. The Department of Education did not directly communicate “any information” to students’ families about the weather in advance of the storm, according to the comptroller.
While the city’s opt-in emergency alert system sent out notices, most New Yorkers do not subscribe to the flash-flood warnings: “Only 2.7 percent of New Yorkers over 16 years of age (185,895 people) received Notify NYC emergency alerts for the flash flood event on Sept. 29,” according to the report.
The investigation comes amid continued scrutiny of New York City’s emergency response efforts. When an earthquake rattled the city this month, it took officials 26 minutes to issue an alert. Last June, Mayor Eric Adams faced criticism for failing to adequately warn New Yorkers about the toxic air wafting in from Canadian wildfires.
Spokeswomen for the mayor’s office and the city’s Department of Environmental Protection had no immediate comment on Monday.
“Extreme storms thankfully don’t hit every day, but you have to be preparing for them every day,” Mr. Lander said in an interview. “And this report is evidence that the city needs to be doing a better job with that.”
The investigation examined the city’s progress delivering on three sets of recommendations issued after Hurricane Ida in 2021, when heavy rain inundated the city, killing 13 New Yorkers. It was the first time the National Weather Service had declared a flash flood emergency for the five boroughs.
Two years later, when rain tied to Tropical Storm Ophelia hit New York, the city suffered an estimated $100 million in economic losses, as the storm revealed what the comptroller’s office described as “serious shortcomings” in the city’s response.
The night before the storm, the National Weather Service warned of possible flash flooding and predicting up to five inches of rain in parts of New York City, with as much as two inches an hour. The city’s sewer system cannot handle more than 1.75 inches of rain an hour. By 9 a.m. the next day, parts of Brooklyn were seeing more than three inches of rain an hour.
More than 500 public school buildings suffered flood damage. Woodhull Hospital, a public hospital in Brooklyn, had to disconnect its electrical supply and evacuate. Subways shut down. Railroad lines were suspended.
City officials did try to notify basement residents, considered among the most vulnerable to flash flooding, about the storm, sending out messages to some of those in danger. But by the comptroller’s estimate, the city’s basement notification list encompasses less than 1 percent of the people who live in basements.
At the time of the storm, which occurred nearly two years into the mayor’s administration, the mayor had not appointed an extreme weather coordinator, a position created during Bill de Blasio’s administration, after Hurricane Ida. In March, City Hall notified the comptroller’s office that it had named Camille Joseph Varlack, the mayor’s chief of staff, to fill that position.
Ms. Varlack has already “begun to improve channels of communication across agencies for better real-time coordination,” the report reads.
There are other signs that the city is paying attention to its increasing vulnerability to severe weather.
Though the Department of Environmental Protection has yet to fund a $22.5 million-a-year plan to install new catch basins that will reduce clogging, the city now has dozens of flooding sensors installed throughout the city. It has also funded 20 community networks to alert neighbors about flooding risks.
The city has also distributed thousands of flood barriers and rain barrels and hundreds of sump pumps to vulnerable communities.
Yet most of the department’s storm water infrastructure projects are still in trouble: “Two-thirds of projects are over budget, with an average budget overrun of 310 percent,” the report reads. “Three-fifths of projects are delayed, with an average delay of 23.5 months.”
The status of the catch basin trucks seems to have only worsened since the storm; by the end of last year, 77 percent were out of service. The city is in the process of replacing more than half of those trucks. A spokesman for the city’s Sanitation Department, which maintains the trucks for the Department of Environmental Protection, referred questions to City Hall.
Hilary Howard contributed reporting.
