The Cars Are Submarines

I can’t help thinking that in all the years I’d spent in New York City, I’d never experienced a hurricane or a tornado. But over the past few years, New York has seen tornados, hurricanes, record-breaking blizzards–in short, some of the most severe weather in centuries. All the houses in my neighborhood, and many others, lost power, and didn’t regain it for days, if not weeks. My parents’ car, and every other car in a 5-block radius? Submerged like submarines and completely useless. If you want to see climate refugees, look no further than Brooklyn, NY.

A view of lower Manhattan during Superstorm Sandy. Source: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

I’m thankful for the early warning system and the efforts that went into informing people ahead of the storm. But it was not nearly enough. Several hospitals lost power after the generators were flooded; some, like Coney Island Hospital, which caters largely to South Brooklyn’s low-income, immigrant, and elderly populations, won’t be open until at least January. What’s worse, most patients–as well as nearby residents–weren’t ordered to evacuate. After the over-precaution for Hurricane Irene, people were hesitant to leave their homes for another merely heavy storm. Now, they have left their homes, but mostly because they don’t have a home left to stay in.

I can’t begin to imagine how much worse it must be to live in the Caribbean or Southeast Asia, where intense hurricanes, cyclones, and monsoons are an annual occurrence. I would think that communities would become more resilient and neighborly over time, the way that New York has become after Sandy, but there’s evidence to the contrary. Ether Duflo and Abijit Banerjee, two economists at MIT, found that many people are less likely to help in times of need because they don’t want to start a cycle of reliance. This point (mentioned in their wonderfully insightful book Poor Economics) about avoiding taking on other people’s financial burdens–even when they’re your parents or siblings–jars with my upbringing. Nonetheless, these findings have significant consequences for economic development. Perhaps storms in the developing world have costs like these that we can’t see or measure, but that may be harder to overcome than the mess that we in New York are continuing to face.