The remnants of tropical storm Ophelia triggered a state of emergency last Friday, shutting down subways and roads.
Officials evacuated one hospital in Brooklyn after it lost power. Some areas of Brooklyn and Queens recorded 7-to-8 inches of rain, rivaling Hurricane Ida’s devastating floods back in 2021.
And New York City’s sewer system can only handle about 2 inches of rain an hour.
Kate Orff is a professor at Columbia University who focuses on the intersection of urban design and climate dynamics. She’s also the founder of the landscape architecture firm, SCAPE. She joined WNYC’s All Things Considered host Sean Carlson on Monday to talk about what’s next.
An interview transcript is available below. It was lightly edited for clarity.
Sean Carlson: Your background is in landscape architecture and urban design, and you have a practice based in Lower Manhattan. So what was your reaction on Friday when you saw all this flooding around the city?
Kate Orff: Well, I guess like many New Yorkers, I was shocked at the extent and the fact that this flood emergency happened during a time when children were going home from school and during rush hour.
But on the other hand, I have to say that it is a predictable emergency. If you think about it – we had Hurricane Ida two years ago, where we had people who perished and who died and the lowlands were flooded in New York.
We had just a massive flash flooding event just in July and upstate New York, where parts of the Hudson Valley saw 8 inches of rain. So, it’s always a shock, but then I’m shocked that I’m shocked.
How does all of the concrete and pavement in the city contribute to the flash flooding?
Well, I think that’s really the crux of the challenge. I mean, I know after and during the flooding, it was like, “We have to clean out the drains, we have to do this, we have to do that.”
But I really feel like we have had huge eras of urban change in New York City from when we started the gridiron pattern to Frederick Law Olmsted,…
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