Date: 2024-12-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00025607
CLIMATE
EXTREME WEATHER
Reuters: New York deluge triggers flash floods, brings chaos to subways
EXTREME WEATHER
Reuters: New York deluge triggers flash floods, brings chaos to subways
Original article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-subways-disrupted-more-heavy-rain-triggers-flooding-2023-09-29/
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I travelled to an event in New York City the day before this rain-storm and flooding. I did not carry with me either a raincoat or an umbrella. I left the city about the time the Mayor deliverd an alert about the upcoming rainstorm. That evening we had no sense whatever about the upcoming weather catastrophe!
I get quite annoyed at the way the media does so much of its reporting without much meaninful context. The serious problem that climate change would pose has been known for more than 40 years yet none of the big powerful leaders (ouch! ... realy!) in politics, finance and big corporations have done all in their immense power to make sure that issues like climate change did not have any negative impact on their power and financial wealth in the immediate short run.
These powerful nexi of power are doing everything to avoid responsibility now just as they have for decades.
Most of the public infrastructure of the United States ... as well as all the other old industrialized countries around the world were designed and build in the 19th century when the population was much smaller than it is now. The global population was 1.7 billion in 1900 and grew to 7.1 billion by 2004 (about) and now (2023) is about 8 billion. Much of the infrastreucture is old, inadequate for our modern times , and well past its 'end of life'!
According to GDP statistics the world in total is enormously wealthy in aggregate, as well as in per capita terms, yet we have chosen not to invest very much in upgrading infrastructure in preparation for the climate change that the experts have been talking about for decades.
Some might remember that President Carter (who was President in the late 1970s and is now 99 years old) had solar panels installed on the White House roof. Powerful people of the day ridiculed the move and when Ronald Reagan became President, he removed the panels!
More than 40 years later we must now ask who is going to pay for the incremental costs of all the infrastructure upgrades that are now needed and have become essential and quite urgent? Is it our children and grandchildren who will pay or is it going to be those that have had unpaid and unearned benefit over the past four decades?
I don't know what cost and benefit mechanism can be designed ... but something along the lines of a wealth tax or assessment might be the answer. This is a simple outline of what might be used:
- Every person with a wealth of more than (say) $5 million would be assessed a death duty at a rate that varies with the total of the estate.
- Inter-person transfer of wealth would be assessed at the same rate.
- Wealth would be taxed annually according to what it is not contributing to society, the environment and the economy. The key here is that wealth that is merely 'in storage' would attract taxation at a much higher rate than wealth that is being deployed for the betterment of society, the evnironment or the economy.
Peter Burgess
Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Bing Guan in New York, Mike Segar in Mamaroneck, New York, Brendan O'Brien in Chicago, and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Daniel Wallis
October 3, 202311:38 AM EDT ... Updated 3 days ago
NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Torrential downpours after a week of mostly steady rainfall brought flash flooding to New York City on Friday, disrupting subway service, inundating ground-level apartments and turning some streets into small lakes.
Almost eight inches (20 cm) of rain fell in some parts of the most populous city in the U.S., enough to enable a sea lion at Central Park Zoo to swim briefly out of the confines of her pool enclosure. Another few inches could fall in the region before the storm system pushed out to sea later on Friday, forecasters said.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned of 'life-threatening' floods and declared a state of emergency for New York City, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley. Some National Guard troops were deployed to assist in the response.
In Mamaroneck, a Westchester County suburb north of the city, emergency officials used inflatable rafts to rescue people trapped in buildings by floods.
Flooding caused major disruptions to New York's subway system and the Metro North commuter rail service, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, which operates both. Some subway lines were suspended entirely, and many stations were closed. Some bus routes slowed to a crawl, trapping riders for hours. Officials warned some New Yorkers to avoid traveling unless they were fleeing a flooded area.
Systems producing intense rainfalls such as Friday's have become more common in many parts of the U.S., including the New York City area.
Global warming has produced more extreme weather patterns in much of the world, according to climate scientists.
The rain capped one of New York's wettest Septembers on record, with 13.74 inches (34.9 cm) of rain falling during the month as of 11 a.m. on Friday, and more on the way, said Dominic Ramunni, a National Weather Service forecaster. The all-time high was set in 1882 when 16.82 inches (42.72 cm) fell in September.
'I don't know if we'll beat the record, but we'll come close,' Ramunni said.
It was the rainiest day at the city's John F. Kennedy International Airport since records began in 1948, the New York office of the National Weather Service said, citing preliminary data.
Despite the warnings, the city's public schools were open for the day. Some buildings experienced flooding but no operations were affected, a district spokesperson said.
At least one suburban district, Bronxville just north of New York, dismissed students early because of the worsening flooding. Patti Zhang, 43, a social worker from New Hyde Park, near the border of New York City and Long Island's Nassau County, lives around the corner from the elementary school attended by her three children. The family braved the weather and walked to school on Friday morning.
In some spots the water pooling on the street was 5 inches (13 cm) deep, she said, spilling over the tops of her children's rain boots. Zhang said she had to make a second trip to school to deliver dry shoes and socks for them.
'This is crazy,' she said. 'When will this stop?'
Floodwaters marooned vehicles on streets and poured into subway stations, disrupting the journeys of millions of commuters.
Mohammed Doha, a 52-year-old construction worker who lives in a ground-level, two-bedroom apartment in The Hole, a low-lying wedge of blocks on the border between Brooklyn and Queens, splashed through his kitchen in sandals.
'If they would have a proper drainage system like the other areas of the city, then we wouldn't have this problem,' he said. 'We are really, really suffering.'
Yasiel Ogando, a 38-year-old hospital worker who lives in The Hole with her family, complained that the city gave residents no warning about the flooding, a complaint echoed by some elected officials. Some compared it to a lack of warnings in June ahead of the arrival of toxic smoke from Canadian wildfires drifting south.
'Nothing gets done,' Ogando said, after a morning trying to bail water mixed with sewage out of the basement of the family home. 'It's really bad. It's terrible.'
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, whose office issued a 'travel advisory' late on Thursday night, defended his administration's response at a press conference on Friday saying that 'all of the necessary precautions were taken.'
In neighboring New Jersey, low-lying Hoboken, a city directly across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, declared a state of emergency, with all but one of the southern routes into town under water.
Hoboken's newly installed floodgates, designed to close automatically when water pooled on roadways, were down, blocking many streets to vehicular traffic.
Friday's deluge followed a bout of heavy downpours and strong winds last weekend from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia. That storm soaked New York City and caused widespread power outages in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
In New York, intermittent rain this week further saturated the ground, setting up conditions conducive to flash flooding.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
[1/15] ... A school bus drives on a flooded street, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding across mid-Atlantic and Northeast, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Acquire Licensing Rights
[2/15] ... [2/15] Residents walk through floodwaters during a heavy rain storm in the New York City suburb of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, September 29. REUTERS/Mike Segar
[3/15] ... A police officer from the NYPD Highway Patrol uses his mobile phone next to cars stuck in a flooded street after heavy rains as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, at the FDR Drive in Manhattan near the Williamsburg Bridge, in New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
[4/15] ... Cars sit at a standstill, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding across mid-Atlantic and Northeast, closed the south bound Cross Island Parkway in the Queens borough in New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
[5/15] ... A general view of the New York City skyline after heavy rains as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, in New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
[6/15] ... Residents escape rising floodwaters during a heavy rain storm in the New York City suburb of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar
[7/15] ... Mohammed Doha, 52, a construction worker, scoops contaminated water out of his flooded first-floor home in the Hole, one of the lowest neighborhoods in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Bing Guan
[8/15] ... A man carries his belongings as he abandons his vehicle which stalled in floodwaters during a heavy rain storm in the New York City suburb of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar
[9/15] ... A motorist drives through a flooded street after heavy rains as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding, at the FDR Drive in Manhattan near the Williamsburg Bridge, in New York City, September 29. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
[10/15] ... An abandoned vehicle sits in floodwaters during a heavy rain storm in the New York City suburb of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar
[11/15] ... A plow truck drives through flooded streets in the Hole, one of the lowest neighborhoods in New York City, New York, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Bing Guan
[12/15] ... A woman walks along a flooded street, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding across mid-Atlantic and Northeast, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
[13/15] ... A woman walks along a flooded street in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, September 29. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
[14/15] ... Residents walk through floodwaters during a heavy rain storm in the New York City suburb of Mamaroneck in Westchester County, New York, September 29. REUTERS/Mike Segar
[15/15] ... Traffic is seen on a flooded street, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bring flooding across mid-Atlantic and Northeast, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., September 29, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid