Images of flooded NYC to star in awareness campaign

Imagine lower Manhattan flooded with water — a storm surge that washes over Wall Street and submerges the South Street Seaport.

Posters showing such a scenario, with the ominous warning "NYC Hurricane Ahead," are going up around the city this week to warn New Yorkers that what happened in the South could happen here.

The ad campaign by the city's Office of Emergency Management was planned long before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, but city officials say the devastation there is a grim reminder that New York must prepare for hurricanes that could similarly swallow swaths of the five boroughs.

"Even though we haven't had a hurricane in a while, we are susceptible," OEM spokesman Jarrod Bernstein said Thursday. "What we want is people to know where they live in terms of the zones now so they know what to do if a storm comes."

The zones at highest risk include lower Manhattan, Brooklyn's Coney Island, the Rockaways in Queens and the perimeter of Staten Island. Emergency officials say 30-foot-high storm surges could drown those areas during a major hurricane.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday that the city begins monitoring storms as they form off the coast of Africa. He said officials have studied New York's topography and have evacuation plans ready to go.

"The city has no land that is lower than sea level, but it clearly has some areas that are very close to sea level and that flood occasionally," he said. "We've looked very carefully at these."

Authorities say that surges are not limited to waterfronts and that flooding could push miles inland in some areas. The city is especially vulnerable because it is nestled in a bend along the coastline between New Jersey and Long Island. Hurricane season here is from August to October, when waters along the East Coast are warmer.

With much of the attention focused on hurricanes' familiar targets in the South, like Florida and the Gulf Coast, it is easy to think the Northeast is spared. But the storms have battered New York, too.

The worst hit in 1938, before hurricanes began receiving official names. The storm, known as the Long Island Express, was responsible for more than 600 deaths.

During the 1950s, there was Carol, then Edna, then Connie. Dozens died.

In 1960, Hurricane Donna landed in New York after crossing the Florida Keys and North Carolina. It brought raging 10-foot tides and some of the strongest winds the city had ever seen. More than 100 were killed.

The most recent major hurricane was Gloria in September 1985, disrupting trading on Wall Street and causing thousands to evacuate their homes in beachfront areas.

Nor'easters and storm flooding can wreak havoc in New York, too: The photo in the ad campaign launching this week wasn't taken after a hurricane but after a coastal flood in 1950.

The Office of Emergency Management's preparedness plan advises New Yorkers to study and learn the risk levels and evacuation routes for their neighborhoods.

In a hurricane emergency, residents would flee along evacuation routes and the city would open reception centers that would then funnel people to shelters throughout the five boroughs. A computer system would register refugees who entered reception centers, allowing them to track down friends and loved ones.

Unlike in New Orleans, which lies below sea level and could be evacuated for months, any evacuations in New York City would be short term, because tidal waters would recede.

NYC Hurricane

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