Corey Maller

Officially founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, New Orleans was strategically located at the crossroads of three navigable water bodies: Lake Pontchartrain, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River. The city later evolved into one of the most important ports in America providing a gateway to the nation’s agricultural riches. To reduce the natural risks of flooding, the physical environment surrounding New Orleans was re-engineered. Levees were built to control the flow of the Mississippi and to contain flooding from Lake Pontchartrain, which was especially useful during hurricane season. Also, with many areas of the city below sea level, heavy rainfall would fill the city with water just like a giant bowl. Therefore, a pumping system was required to keep the city dry during heavy rain. The ideology of conquering and taming nature rather than living in harmony with it, was (and still is) the driving force in the physical vulnerability of the New Orleans metropolitan area. Katrina could be called and example of Mother Nature taking back what's rightfully hers (along with Sandy in NYC).

How people manage to deal with natural disasters depends on how socially vulnerable they are. Do they have healthcare? How's their quality of life? Do they have access to basic goods, services, and emergency response personnel? Do they have political representation? Those who had access to personal resources evacuated the city. Those who didn't were forced to ride out the storm in their homes or move to shelters. This is what happened during hurricane Katrina: Poor and impoverished people (many black) were struggling just to survive and their options were limited by the ineffectiveness of preparedness and the inadequacy of response. To reduce the impacts of natural disasters, we need to lessen our social vulnerability and increase disaster resilience with improvements in the social conditions and living standards in our cities. We need to build housing and infrastructure in harmony with nature and design cities to be resilient to environmental threats even if it means smaller, more livable places, and fewer profits for land and urban developers and a smaller tax base for the city. Disasters are income neutral and color-blind.

So what would happen if a major hurricane struck NYC today? By a hurricane I don't mean another hurricane Sandy. I mean a direct or near direct hit from a category 3 or 4 hurricane. Believe it or not, NYC might be one of the worst places in the world for a hurricane to strike. This is due to the fact that NYC is extremely vulnerable to storm surge. Let's say a category 4 hurricane were to approach from the south and make landfall on Long Island just a little east of the city. The ocean water would be pushed into the NY Bight. A bight is a curve in the shoreline of an open coast that funnels and increases the speed and intensity of storm surge. As the hurricane approaches the winds would push the water into the Raritan Bay. As long as the winds keep blowing from the east the ocean water can only enter, not exit the bay. This results in rising water in northeastern NJ and in the upper New York Bay flooding areas such as Battery Park. The same would occur in the western Long Island sound as the storm moves further north. Water from the sound would pile up into the Eastchester Bay and East River. Computer simulations have shown that the surge could be anywhere from 20-30 feet in areas such as Staten Island, Coney Island, and Lower Manhattan. It would likely end up being the costliest disaster in U.S. history. According to hurricane probability models, there is a 2.6% chance that a hurricane will strike the NYC area in any given hurricane season. Also, there is 13.6% chance that a hurricane will affect the city during a 50 year period and a 3.3% chance of a category 3 or greater. Below is a map of predicted storm surge for a category 4 hurricane.

Most of the damage and casualties from tropical cyclones are a result of storm surge. A storm surge is a coastal flood or tsunami-like phenomenon of rising water commonly associated with low pressure weather systems such as tropical cyclones and strong extra-tropical cyclones. One obvious cause of storm surge is strong surface winds. Therefore, it's natural to think that a more intense storm with stronger sustained winds will produce a higher surge. On the contrary, the last 15 years have shown that's not always the case. Let me explain why by comparing two storms: hurricane Katrina and Charley. Charley, which struck Punta Gorda, Florida in 2004, was a compact, but more intense storm with sustained winds of 150 mph at landfall. However, the storm surge was just 6-8 ft. This is because it had an observed radius of maximum winds (RMW) at landfall of 6 miles within the eye wall (The strongest winds were contained within a 6 mile radius around the eye). Katrina was a much larger, but weaker storm with sustained winds of 125 mph at landfall. However, it's RMW was 30-40 miles, which resulted in a 25 ft + surge that destroyed everything in its path. This is because a larger wind field covers a larger surface area of water allowing for more water to be pushed inland. Therefore, if Charley was a larger, but weaker storm with 115 mph winds the surge would have been much larger. Another example is Ike in 2008, which had winds of 110 mph at landfall yet produced a 17 ft surge in spots. It had a RMW of 40-50 miles and at least tropical storm-force winds extending over 200 miles out from the center.

Corey D. Maller

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