Something I enjoyed about this article is that it gives real numbers on how much actual value there is in the city that could be destroyed or temporarily shut down in event of a very strong hurricane. There is approximately 300,000 people and about $18.3 Billion worth of infrastructure located in the mandatory evacuation flood area of manhattan. These numbers don’t even include buildings and people that are not in as much flood risk but there is never 100% assurance that a storm couldn’t force water into these areas as well. Along with just the value of the buildings, what goes on inside these buildings is of unmeasurable value that if something were to happen to stop business in manhattan for even a couple days or weeks, the economy would take huge hit. Knowing this makes we question why we have not gone out of our way to make sure that no storm can cause serious damage.
Something that I found to be very confusing was how buildings and homes that are in flood-risk zones are encouraged to be built a little higher up than ground level to “proof” them of ground water flood damage but if they do that, they can get penalized for going against zoning hight regulations. This makes builders and owners stuck between a rock and a hard place when deciding to either prevent and pay a penalty or pray and not pay a penalty. I agree with the writer of the article that the zoning regulation should be “lifted for freeboard measures”.
The map in the article showing the 1/100 and 1/500 flood zone areas makes me very worrisome in a sense that nearly 95% of Manhattan Island isn’t zoned in these categories. This means that in the time of a very bad storm, such as a category 5 hurricane, damages will astronomically exceed the government’s and insurance agencies’ preparedness in terms of financials that could cause an out of control downward spiral.
