Transcript

You know, I think within Emergency Management, within city government, Katrina was definitely a wake up call. And there's not a meteorologist or an expert that I have talked to that says that this storm will not impact the lawns in a major way. Praise God that we were alive, that we are alive, and God bless you all for helping us. I'd never seen anything like that. And it is so, you know, brief films on television with the palm trees bending and things like that. But to see the damage that it created, it was just, you know, houses gone, buildings completely destroyed, trees down everywhere, people in desperate need of assistance. As you look down from this hill, you could see the entire city was flooded. Katrina was so far reaching it, it affected 3 coastal states, Alabama, Mississippi and and. Louisiana people weren't really used to thinking about hurricanes the way that we are now. They're haughty people, I'll put it to you that way. They deal with a lot of storms and they thought they could ride this one out too. And, and they found that unfortunately, a lot of people found out they were wrong. It's always kind of eye opening when you're making a forecast, knowing that it's going to be a, a real significant impact, probably changing people's lives for many years, if not for entire lifetime. So immediately we started getting these requests to send people down at the same time. You realize that people were being evacuated to the city here. Everybody came to help us after 911. It was sort of like a give back time. It was my first deployment, so it was my first time dealing with a significant event that caused such widespread damage in multiple states with the large amount of fatalities. Yeah, when we first got down there, we flew into the airport. The airport was completely deserted except for us. And as we traveled around New Orleans, there was flooding everywhere we went. It was very difficult for us to navigate and to figure out where we were going once we entered. Across the border into Mississippi, we started seeing damage already hundreds of miles from the coast. Signs were down, trailers were overturned. It was it was a big mess. And as we got closer and closer, it got messy. The urban search and rescue program was built for a heavy like concrete structure building that type. So when you had a water event at the time, we didn't even have boats, which was going to be kind of troublesome if you had to get in the water and get people out. Working in this industry for more than two decades is, you know, you can't. Prepare for the last emergency. It was only four years, not even after 911. So the focus was so much on terrorism. We had had the citywide blackout a couple years earlier. Hurricanes weren't really on our radar. It's not just things getting wet and blown away. This. A lot of things involved that are unique to hurricanes. Robin stealing you, you name it. During that particular time, I think people go in survival mode. We were ready for that mindset, like go be a police officer. What I got was people just needed a conversation, people needed help, people needed to know where to go. How do we get to the resources that are being offered? The story being put out cross media was that there was no one there helping. No, no one was there helping. People weren't doing the right thing. I can tell you that FDY and NYPD and Nice and are now very involved. The message is getting out. We're putting together storm teams right away. If you live anywhere along the US coastline, essentially from Brownsville, TX all the way through Maine, you can be impacted by hurricanes. For a New Yorker, they need to realize that a Katrina like CAT5 hurricane would decimate the city. A Cat 3 is probably going to kill a lot of people. After Katrina hit, we put together a very robust community engagement plan. I still remember the first time I did this. I was out in Coney Island. I was talking to people about hurricanes and you could almost hear them laugh. I know they said New York City would never flood, and a couple years later we saw that. Joining us right now on the phone is the Office of Emergency Management Commissioner from New York City. I was in Hurricane Ida and unfortunately, I was in Louisiana, and we've lost more people in New York City than we did in Louisiana. New York has learned that Mother Nature is more powerful than anything in the world. And harass it could be very, very frightening. I think because we went down to Hurricane Katrina, because we've been down to other hurricanes in and around the country, we will much better able and more properly prepared to help the people in the city of New York. Every community, local teams, state teams, federal teams, all working together, the US and them is over. We share resources, we share information, Everyone is on the same page. So there's a personal responsibility within preparedness. People need to make sure that. They have a plan, so if their lives are disrupted from an emergency, could be a hurricane, could be something else, they know what to do. But know when those watches and warnings are issued that it really means it's time to take some type of action. You need to seek the advice to local officials. And if they're telling you to evacuate, do so. The question is, you know, 20 years later, where do we stand? There really is a strong partnership between the public, between Emergency Management, between the other agencies and, you know, that's really what we want. We want. People to reach out. We want to do better. We want to understand what people's needs are, and we want to find the best way within the resources we have to help people be prepared for emergencies. And we could all help each other out. No matter what's going on, whether it pertains to us directly or not, will be much better off as people. From what I know about still being in touch with the Department of Buildings and what I know about our fire department and Police Department and our Emergency Management, I would say New York is in pretty good hands.