City of Water

As climate change triggers sea-level rise and extreme weather, even New York, one of the world's best-prepared cities, may not be doing enough

- By Adam Piore. Photo-illustration by Thomas Jackson

There are a million ways to die in New York City but drowning in a rainstorm is not something many New Yorkers have ever worried about. That changed last September when the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the Big Apple, unleashing 80- mile-an-hour winds and dumping three-and-a-half inches of rain in a single hour, almost twice as much water as the city’s antiquated sewer systems could handle. The flood warning came too late to save a Nepali couple and their 2-year-old son, who drowned in Woodside, Queens when the sewers overflowed and water roared downhill, inundating their cramped, illegal basement apartment. It did not help a 43-year-old mother and her 22-year-old son, who died in Jamaica, Queens when floodwaters sent a car barreling into the side of their building, causing a partial collapse. Or the 66-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant who perished shouting for help in a basement bedroom near Cypress Hill, Brooklyn.

“This storm has now rewritten the map,” the city’s Mayor Bill de Blasio somberly declared five days later while touring the devastation. “We used to think that flooding was a coastal thing. It’s not anymore. It can happen all over the city.”