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" While the 1938 hurricane battered Long Island, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, America&amp;#039;s densest, most populous city narrowly escaped its wrath. But at New York City&amp;#039;s Office of Emergency Management, officials such as deputy commissioner for planning and preparedness Kelly McKinney know that the Big Apple&amp;#039;s luck 70 years ago might not last forever.  What kind of damage would occur if a storm such as the one in 1938 hit the island of Manhattan directly? We would be looking at extensive damage. There are a lot of different hazards from a hurricane like that -- strong winds, flooding from heavy rains, tornadoes -- but the biggest hazard is storm surge. The storm surge for a hurricane like 1938 in New York City could be anywhere from 15 to 25 feet -- extensive flooding throughout the five boroughs.  If a massive hurricane was heading for NYC, how would such a large population efficiently evacuate? The plan is just to get them to higher ground either within the city or outside of the city. That&amp;#039;s the key: You don&amp;#039;t have to go far, you just have to get away from those areas that have flooded. We&amp;#039;ve got a mass transit system that can move 2 million people -- it does move more than 3 million people -- each and every day. We would be using the bridges and the tunnels and mass transit to move those people before the storm hits. Before the storm comes, it&amp;#039;s going to be blue-sky conditions, and that&amp;#039;s when we&amp;#039;re going to be doing this move -- when the weather looks nice. One of the worst things about the 1938 storm was how little warning residents had. With all of our radar and satellite technology, is there any possibility that NYC could be caught by surprise? No, not really. The capabilities now are so far advanced. We&amp;#039;re watching that storm -- every storm, in fact -- as they form off the coast of Africa and as they move across the Caribbean. Are we going to have as much time as we need? No. But it&amp;#039;s not like we&amp;#039;re going to wake up one day and there&amp;#039;s going to be a storm bearing down on us four hours away like 1938.  In 1938, the hurricane destroyed major urban infrastructure. Are there any plans to help reinforce NYC&amp;#039;s already aging infrastructure when a hurricane hits? It is a concern, but we have mitigation plans, which means that you reinforce buildings and move things out of flood zones before the storm happens. So we have identified mitigation projects, and we&amp;#039;re beginning to move forward with those. The thing about it is that the best way to do mitigation projects is to build mitigation into your normal capital program so that, for instance, if a wastewater treatment plant is aging, and you&amp;#039;re going to upgrade it, then you design that mitigation into the upgrade.  Let&amp;#039;s talk about worst-case scenarios. In 1938 New England there was no warning system, and with Katrina there was the failure of the levee system. What could be the analogous Achilles Heel of the New York plans? The second storm is going to be a piece of cake -- all of [the trees, water tanks, signs and street furniture] is going to get battened down. But the first storm&amp;#039;s going to be a little bit of a bad day for us. The storm surge and flooding are going to be a big deal as well, but we&amp;#039;ve got a media-saturated market here, so when the mayor says, &amp;quot;All right, you need to move,&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s going to go out on all the radios and TVs. And to the extent that people move, it&amp;#039;s going to be a good operation. And to the extent that people don&amp;#039;t believe it or decide they can ride it out, it&amp;#039;s going to be worse for everybody. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a1976/4219893/>