Could big hurricane hit NYC area?

Could big hurricane hit NYC area?

	Published : Thu, 31 May 2007 21:18 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - Life in New York comes with inescapable urban pitfalls: crowded subways, spiraling rents, never-ending traffic.

And, once a century or so, a hurricane.

While local weather concerns run more to snowstorms than tropical storms, the nation's largest city is about due for a major hurricane. Think 130-mph winds and a 30-foot storm surge, with flooding that could turn City Hall into a lone building perched above an immersed lower Manhattan.

The storm threatens to inflict more than $100 billion in economic losses while forcing the evacuation of 3 million people -- more than six times the population of pre-Katrina New Orleans.

The last major New York-area hurricane was the Long Island Express of 1938, which caused 700 deaths along the Eastern seaboard.

Historically, the city endures a hurricane roughly once every 90 years. Inevitably, another will hit -- and, says Nicholas K. Coch, a professor of geology at Queens College and one of the nation's foremost hurricane experts, 'that has the potential for catastrophic effects.'

New York City is most at risk between August and October. The 1938 hurricane, which hit in September, came ashore on Long Island about 75 miles from the city.

A similar blast in 2007 would result in total economic losses of more than $100 billion -- and that's not even a worst-case scenario, according to projections by AIR Worldwide Corp., a Boston-based firm specializing in risk management for natural catastrophes.

A Category 3 hurricane in New York would behave like a Category 4 in the South, for several reasons. A Northern hurricane typically travels at 34 mph, about triple the speed of a Southern storm.

And the city is particularly vulnerable because of its location at a bend between the Long Island and New Jersey coastlines, sitting at a right angle to incoming storms.

A major hurricane would produce a storm surge of up to 30 feet, with flooding in all five boroughs, airport and highway closings, and inevitable traffic jams. The lower Manhattan flood zone for a hurricane making landfall just south of the city includes the World Trade Center site, Wall Street and police headquarters.

City Hall -- which sits on higher ground and is located toward the middle of the island -- might turn into a small island as the East and Hudson rivers converge to its south. If that sounds implausible, it has happened before: A September 1821 hurricane raised the tides by 13 feet in an hour and flooded Manhattan from its southern tip to Canal Street.

Today, that would knock out most of Wall Street and assorted subway lines, while flooding tourist attractions like the South Street Seaport. The city's biggest beaches in the Rockaways and Coney Island would temporarily disappear as the Atlantic Ocean came inland.

Last year, the city unveiled its new hurricane plan -- evacuating 3 million people, while providing shelter for more than 600,000 others. Officials at the Office of Emergency Management estimated the preparedness costs at up to $30 million.

But part of the preparedness problem is convincing New Yorkers that hurricanes are on the list of big-city worries.

'People often ask me, `What's the most dangerous thing about a hurricane hitting New York?'' Coch says. 'And I say, `The New Yorker.' People have fixed in minds that hurricanes happen on palm-fringed coast. But you cannot deny history.'