- [Voiceover] Water is flooding into New York City.
- [Voiceover] Looks like LaGuardia
is just sinking into the ocean there.
- You gotta take a look at this.
All the winds have picked up and this is what happens,
debris-like pieces of the boardwalk
have come for three blocks.
- Sandy is coming.
The question is: how will New York City handle it?
- [Voiceover] Almost six years ago,
Super Storm Sandy slammed into the Eastern seaboard.
It was historically bad for New York and New Jersey.
- Let me start with I just never thought I would see
what I saw today.
- [Voiceover] It ground much of New York's subway system
to a halt and blacked out lower Manhattan.
- Lower Manhattan remains eerily dark
and partially under water.
- [Voiceover] Bad as Sandy was,
climate models tend to point to one thing,
storms getting more intense and more frequent.
Hurricanes will dump more rain
and rising sea levels will make storm surge worse.
That means more flooding.
A storm like Sandy will come again but in the meantime,
New York is gearing up for battle
and they're hoping it will be enough.
Sandy was a wake-up call for New York.
- Hurricane Sandy is the place to start that conversation.
It was the worse natural disaster we've ever faced as a city
44 lives were lost, $19 billion in damages
and lost economic activity really caused us to rethink
what it means to be a coastal city
with 520 miles of coastline.
- [Voiceover] Dan Zarrilli, senior director
for climate policy programs in the City.
He's keeping tabs on a wide range of programs
aimed at preparing New York for climate change
and surviving the next Sandy.
That means efforts to fortify the shorelines,
protect public housing and hospitals
and crucially, improve infrastructure like power and subways
for when they're needed most.
Post-Sandy contacts were investing over $20 billion
in climate adaption measures.
We're also working to build resilience
into everything we do every day,
every dollar we spend, we get more resilient,
we get better prepared.
- [Voiceover] New York City isn't alone of course,
major megacities sit on coasts all around the world.
Think of Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Buenos Aires.
Around 40 percent of the world's population lives on
or near the coast,
that's almost two and a half billion people.
And globally, NASA thinks sea levels could rise
as much as six and a half feet by the year 2100.
These are global problems but the fixes have to be
so completely unique to each city.
And in the case of New York, unique to each subway station.
- Each station, although they all seem identical
and you know, there are stairs going down,
each one presents its own unique challenge.
When you start opening up concrete,
opening up walls and stuff like that,
everything poses a different challenge.
So, you approach one challenge at a time
and one stage in that time.
- [Voiceover] Verge Science reporter Alessandra Potenza
took a tour of New York City's subway system
with Robert Laga, a program manager
with New York City Transit.
He showed us the newest tools the MTA is using
to prevent water from flooding the system
like it did during Hurricane Sandy,
which the City is still recovering from.
First, Robert showed us a relatively simple way
of preventing floodwaters from entering the system...
Stoplogs.
These 80-pound aluminum logs are stacked at subway entrances
that are proned to flooding, in this case,
the Whitehall Street Station.
The logs take about an hour to install
and should keep about 14 feet of water out of the subway.
Everything has to be done manually of course
since the MTA can't rely on electricity during a blackout.
Next, Robert showed us a battleship-rated marine door
which weighs 3000 pounds
but can be put in place using one hand.
Using a standard bicycle pump,
a rubber gasket around the door is inflated
to seal the entrance shut.
Above ground, the subway ventilation grids
pose a huge issue for flood surge,
they allow water to just pour in.
To combat this,
the MTA has installed mechanical closures devices or MCDs
to around 3000 vents.
They are essentially trap doors that can be closed
in a matter of seconds,
again, with no electricity needed.
Prior to having MCDs...
- Pretty much plywood and sandbags.
That was it.
- [Voiceover] And moving uptown to Canal Street,
we saw another simple yet effective device:
a Flex-Gate designed by ILC Dover,
best known as the company that designed spacesuits
for NASA's Apollo mission.
This Kevlar tarp can be rolled out
by a single person in minutes,
closing off the subway entrances
and protecting it from up to sixteen feet of water head.
So, the MTA has proper safeguards in place,
the only thing left is to test them against the elements.
The MTA has set a disaster yard stick for all of its work,
the upgraded subway should survive a Category 2 hurricane,
that means winds of up to 110 miles per hour
and a storm surge to match.
For reference, Sandy slammed the area
with 80-mile-an-hour winds.
And the City is preparing for an extra three feet of water
beyond what a Category 2 storm brings.
One foot to account for future sea level rise,
one foot to account for wave action
and one foot of just extra wiggle room.
But climate models include a huge range of possible outcomes
By 2050, models suggest sea levels alone could increase
up to two and a half feet in the region,
far outstripping the MTA's plan.
Robert Laga says they'll be evaluating
that plan periodically.
And ultimately, we don't have a clue
when the next Sandy will arrive.
The very worst storm on record hit the area in 1821
and brought winds of up to 156 miles per hour.
That put it just shy of a Category 5 and again,
the MTA is preparing for a Category 2.
For now, all New York can do is react, improve,
live with uncertainty
and use Sandy as leverage against complacency.
- We're at the beginning of this and since Hurricane Sandy
we've invested billions of dollars in this already
and we have more to do
but by no means are we close to being done
with everything that needs to happen
to make New York City climate ready
and we're gonna continue to get more and more prepared.
- Just for the record, we just finished making the video
and this is what our subway system looks like
after a flash flood.
So, I don't know if we are quite ready for another hurricane
But it should be interesting.
(water splashing) (indistinct chatter)