It was a sleepless night for many of the hundreds of migrant families staying at the city’s massive tent facility at Floyd Bennett Field in Southeast Brooklyn, as howling winds and intense rains pounded the structures for hours — leading occupants to fear for their safety.
“No one slept from 2 a.m. onward, everyone was awake,” Anabel Lopez, 39, told Gothamist in Spanish Monday morning while dodging deep puddles and carrying a bag of groceries through the site’s parking lot.
Lopez said security guards at the tent where she’s been living — one of four at the former federal airfield — turned on the lights in the early morning hours and told residents to stay calm as the guards kept watch to make sure the tent was intact.
Gisela Viera, 32, who was venturing out of the shelter Monday morning with her 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son, said they were worried about potential flooding from nearby Jamaica Bay. She said she didn’t send her kids to school as usual, because they didn’t get any sleep.
“They woke up because people were screaming because they were scared,” Viera recounted.
In an interview on 1010 WINS Monday morning, Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, said the tent facility did not flood, noting the tents were dry and secure when he visited around 4 a.m.
Iscol said the structures are designed to “flex” in heavy winds, so they can be loud during intense storms. He said the situation overnight wasn’t “anywhere near” the threshold that would trigger officials to evacuate the site.
“Those tents are able to withstand much, much more significant weather than what we had earlier today,” Iscol said.
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, later told Gothamist the tent structures can withstand sustained winds of up to 36 mph and wind gusts of up to 55 mph. The National Weather Service reported gusts of up to 54 mph at nearby JFK Airport as of around 6:30 a.m. and up to 49 mph at nearby Breezy…
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