‘I’ OF THE STORM
Isaias targets city after hitting Carolinas
The city is expected to be battered by heavy rain and wind gusts of up to 60 mph on Tuesday as Tropical Storm Isaias bears down on the five boroughs.
The storm was expected to hit the city in the morning after making landfall as a hurricane in the Carolinas late Monday night. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for the greater metropolitan area through Tuesday night.
Mayor de Blasio said Monday he was not taking any chances and told New Yorkers to brace for “tropical storm-force” winds as early as 11 a.m., with sustained gusts between 35 and 55 mph in the afternoon. The storm is expected to bring at least 2 to 4 inches of rain to the city, with up to 6 inches possible in some hard-hit areas.
“We don’t want to overreact, but we never want to underestimate it, either,” de Blaso said of the storm. “Better safe than sorry.”
City workers began setting up barriers in lower Manhattan to protect buildings from potential flooding as early as Sunday, the mayor said.
“This is going to help protect the community right around there that got hit very hard in Sandy,” Hizzoner said at a press conference, referencing the 2012 superstorm that ravaged the city. “This is the kind of thing we’re going to have to do to protect ourselves from this point forward given climate change and the challenges that we face.”
Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell noted the storm gained speed Monday afternoon, and was slated to hit the city earlier than previously expected.
With high tide expected in the city’s waters between 9 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, “the fact that the storm is moving up faster actually is better for the city and the impacts we’re going to experience,” she said.
Emergency Management personnel installed orange “tiger dams” — interlocking tubes filled with water — from Wall St. to Catherine Slip and from South St. to Water St., said Criswell.
The roughly milelong barricade links into permanent barriers along the waterfront and are secured together with sandbags.
The storm is not expected to cause as much damage as Sandy, when a massive tidal surge inundated the southern end of Manhattan with roughly 4 feet of water. Criswell said 1 or 2 feet of storm surge is expected Tuesday, not high enough to breach the temporary barrier.
“This storm appears to have a very localized impact on this area [lower Manhattan],” de Blasio said. “This is one area we’re particularly concerned about given the projections.”
The mayor pointed to other preparations along waterfronts in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island — all of which were hard hit by Sandy.
If the storm is worse than expected and forces areas of the city to be evacuated, “we’re in a much better position to do so from the lessons we learned from Sandy,” de Blasio said.
The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development also partners with the Red Cross on an emergency sheltering program that will be activated for unsheltered New Yorkers if necessary, officials said.
City beaches will be closed to swimming Tuesday, though surfing will be allowed, according to the de Blasio administration. Lifeguards won’t be on duty.
“We strongly urge all New Yorkers not to risk their lives by ignoring this directive,” Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver said in a statement.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is also bracing for the impact — and officials announced plans to shut down aboveground subway service if sustained wind gusts exceed 39 mph as expected.
Bus service will continue unless wind gusts exceed 70 mph, which would trigger a citywide closure of
streets, said MTA spokesman Tim Minton.
Tractor-trailers will be banned from the MTA’s bridges Tuesday, and officials said they will consider closing them to all traffic if winds exceed a sustained speed of 60 mph.
Metro-North trains will run on a weekend schedule throughout the day, a move intended to give crews more time to clear trees that may fall on tracks during the storm.
The agency is still repairing transit infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Sandy, which flooded subway tunnels, stations and railyards. Transit officials said they’re better prepared this time.
Frank Jezycki, interim NYC Transit senior vice president of subways, said at a news conference there are new sidewalk grate covers in place to keep water from pouring into the subway. He said there are 40,000 grates where water can slip into the subway from the street — and 2,200 of them are in low-lying areas.
Nearly all of those vulnerable grates now have mechanical devices that close them, Jezycki said.
Construction crews have repaired eight of the MTA’s nine East River subway tunnels, which were all damaged during Sandy. The agency is also working to install new barriers at three train yards that were flooded during the 2012 storm.
“We’ll be getting the benefits of resiliency efforts that have been going on for years since Superstorm Sandy, particularly in low-lying areas across New York City,” said MTA Chief Operating Officer Mario Peloquin.