Government must cut the red tape and get to work protecting cities from the next disaster.

The last of these five years since Hurricane Sandy assaulted New York’s shores brings freshly heightened reckoning with just how near disaster looms again. As Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico struggle still to dry out, evidence of ever more vicious weather patterns, a still-recovering New York City region whispers and wonders: How ready are we when the next Sandy hits, not in 500 years, not in 100 years, but within our lifetimes?

At least much readier than on Oct. 29, 2012, when subway and road tunnels had few barriers to inundation, sea water zapped the systems running apartment and office buildings, and dozens died after failing to follow evacuation orders.

Flood gates and elevated equipment and seared memories of that long night of the storm surge’s horror will all do their part to reduce the damage done next time.

Federal funding to ultimately total $3 billion is helping the city’s injured public housing projects rebuild to resist future inundation, with additional grants paying to elevate homes and fortify apartment buildings.

And sea life-powered “living breakwaters” will soon shield Staten Island off Tottenville, the brainchild of MacArthur Genius Kate Orff.

But pull the camera lens back to see just how inadequate funding, regulations and political will forestall necessary fortifications our city’s leaders envisioned in Sandy’s aftermath.

These call for moving mountains to protect the islands and spits of land surrounded by New York Harbor in this terribly vulnerable metropolis.

In 2013, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg prioritized flood protection systems for Hunts Point in the Bronx, Red Hook in Brooklyn, and, in Manhattan, East Harlem and a swoop around the bend of lower Manhattan.

Each would use earth berms and other barriers to manage sea rise and stave of storm surges, much like the Dutch do. All depend on federal dollars just starting to trickle in, with only the 3.2 miles from E. 23rd St. down to the Brooklyn Bridge yet substantially funded.

Most conspicuously, that leaves the rim of lower Manhattan, from the Seaport to Battery Park City, undefended against the harbor’s waters — putting New York City’s historic heart, its 277,000 jobs and a growing number of residents, in harm’s way of destructive storm surges that Rutgers researchers now say could occur as frequently as every five years by 2030.

Shoring up the nation’s financial and cultural capital doesn’t have to be a financially ruinous proposition for Congress. President Trump was on to something when he announced in August his aim to streamline environmental reviews for federally funded construction projects to realize significant cost and time savings. (The important message was promptly drowned out when Trump went on to defend the “fine people” who marched in Charlottesville.)

It will also cost far less to fortify now than to shell out emergency funds in the wake of all too predictable devastation.

Cut the red tape. Find the money, as part of the infrastructure plan the President has promised. And get on with the increasingly urgent work of building up the nation’s biggest city to stand strong against anything the oceans dare to throw at us.