Officials warned for years of dangers to New York from storm surges
Top officials were told time and again about the dangers New York faces from superstorms
The warnings came, again and again.
For nearly a decade, scientists told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril - rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns. The alarm bells grew louder after Tropical Storm Irene last year, when the city shut down its subway system and water rushed into the Rockaways on Long Island and in Lower Manhattan.
On Tuesday, as New Yorkers woke up to submerged neighbourhoods and water-soaked electrical equipment amid superstorm Sandy, officials took their first tentative steps towards considering major infrastructure changes that could protect the city's fragile shores and eight million residents from repeated disastrous damage.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state should consider a levee system or storm surge barriers and face up to the inadequacy of the existing protections.
"The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level," Cuomo said. "As soon as you breach the sides of Manhattan, you now have a whole infrastructure under the city that fills - the subway system, the foundations for buildings" and the World Trade Centre site.
The Cuomo administration plans talks with city and federal officials about how to proceed. The task could be daunting, given fiscal realities: storm surge barriers, the huge sea gates that some scientists say would be the best protection against floods, could cost as much as US$10 billion.
But many experts say, given what happened with the latest storm, that inertia could be more expensive.
