Resiliency
PortSide NewYork was honored with a "Champions of Change" award from the Obama White House for our hurricane Sandy prepartion and recovery work. We saved our ship from the storm, set up and ran a Sandy aid station, created a virtual aid station, ran 6 months of Sandy Survivor Meetings, and more.
In 2022, the 10th anniversary of Sandy, PortSide continues resiliency planning work in and for Red Hook with a series of events and initiatives. If you want to get involved, please send an email to chiclet@portsidenewyork.org.
1st 2022 event: Castrips will bring 30 students on March 17, 9am to 1pm from the Houston international high school Awty. They will learn about and then help boost Red Hook resiliency by distributing a PortSide postcard with flood prep info. Get in touch if you want to help edit that postcard, lived in Red Hook NYCHA during Sandy and want to speak at the event, or want to be a guide for the students as they move around Red Hook.
RESILIENCY 101 below is a deep resource section with info on how to prepare for a flood (short and long term), an overview of resiliency plans for Red Hook including NYCHA's, maps that show Sandy flooding and damage to trees. Includes historic and modern studies of the sewer system and maps that show what parts of Red Hook were once water-- all of which effects current flooding, and more!
Resiliency is also needed to deal with the pandemic. There is a link to Covid19 Red Hook Resources on the main menu bar.
1 Why & how Red Hook floods & how to prepare
You can download this one-page PDF flyer at link below. We have copied its words below so that you can easily click the hyperlinks to get to all Red Hook WaterStories content mentioned in the PDF. The jpeg version is for sharing on social media, but…
2 Resiliency: Flood Prep Info for Red Hook
Google Translation: Chinese(中文), Spanish(Español)
For our larger collection of resiliency info go here.For Jim McMahon's Red Hook Sandy flood map go here.
Please take our short survey about flood prepContact PortSide NewYork…
3 Storm Prep info - SBIDC Dewberry training session
Storm Preparedness For Small Business, an excellent event organized by SBIDC took place on 9/17/13. The tips are also useful for home owners and non-profits, and much of it also applies for areas besides Red Hook.
SBIDC set up this day-long program…
4 Sandy Storm Surge map, 2012
This map was researched, created and generously shared with the Red Hook community by Red Hook resident Jim McMahon who wanted to help his neighbors recover from Hurricane Sandy and prepare for future floods. Jim donated the map for fundraisers,…
5 Sandy Damage to Red Hook Trees
2013 Sandy Flood saline impacted tree survey by Eymund Diegel for the NYC Parks DepartmentText on map:"Gowanus / Red Hook Flood Impacts: Post Sandy Flood Tree Leaf Out Percentages.
Trees impacted by salt water ponding and salt water flooding. June…
6 NYCHA information - Management Offices, Residents Associations, Sandy recovery & resiliency plans
The NYCHA public housing in Red Hook is the largest NYCHA development in Brooklyn, and the second largest in New York City. It is where the overwhelming majority of Red Hook residents live.Land for the houses was condemned May, 1938, the same month…
7 Equitable Resilience Through Preservation - Columbia University
PortSide was engaged to work with the 2020 Spring semester of Columbia University's graduate Historic Preservation studio which used Red Hook as a study area. At the bottom of this page, is an audio tour PortSide gave along this theme.You can read…
8 32 Oral Histories from Red Hook Sandy Survivors, 2012
Hurricane Sandy hit Brooklyn around 8pm on October 29, 2012. which caused devastating flooding in Red Hook. The following 32 interviews are part of a project "Sandy: Tell Your Story"recorded by Emergency Management Methodology Partners (EMMP) in…
9
How to Report Flooding & Why
Street FloodingReport Street flooding to NYC by calling 311 or by going to their 311 website. There is a detailed questionaire to report flooding on the the website, that allows you to submit images and other attachments.Sewer BackupsNew York City…
10 How tide and wind affect flooding in Red Hook
Tide + surge + wind over water (fetch) = what you need to know.To calculate the risk of flooding at a location,
You need to take the height of the expected storm surge, the time it is expected, and compare that time to the tide cycle in the harbor.…
11 Ready Red Hook
Red Hook community members created an emergency plan to cover the 72 HOURS BEFORE AND AFTER an emergency called Ready Red Hook.
This plan - for all emergencies, not just floods - was created in the aftermath of the Sandy Hurricane, in an effort to…
12 High Ground NYC, a flood evacuation app for vehicles - in development
Shortly after Sandy, PortSide identified the need for a flood evacuation plan for vehicles. Current evacuation plans focus on people, but where are all the vehicles supposed to go in a city where parking spaces can be hard to find?At the 2016 Red…
13 Overview of Red Hook Resiliency Plans
Post hurricane Sandy, Red Hook continues to be intensely studied by the city, state and federal government as well as by many academics. Jump to aquick overview of multiple government-funded plans and how they interrelate (or don't).
14 Resilient Red Hook, formerly Red Hook NY Rising Committee
The Resilient Red Hook(RRH) group was founded as a result of hurricane Sandy by a NYS-funded program NY Rising. It was originally the Red Hook NY Rising Committee. After completing the state-funded work in Spring 2014, the group kept meeting and a…
15 1844 Hassler Coastal survey of Staten Island and Gowanus with oyster mudflats (cropped to Gowanus Bay)
1844 Coastal Survey. Red Hook's watery past has a bearing on how this place floods in current times. This map shows the topography at the end of Red Hook's tide mill pond era, meaning that much of what is today called Red Hook is still…
16 Map of Historic Location of Creeks and Streams in Red Hook & Gowanus, 2014
This map contains community group research (Gowanus Canal Conservancy / Public Lab) on finding stream restoration opportunities in the Gowanus Watershed. It uses hydrological surface flow modeling by Eymund Diegel. This map looks at alternative…
17 Gowanus Watershed With 1766 Marshes and 2013 Sandy Flood Line
Sandy essentially flooded anyone who built on the former tidal marshes.
Map Explanation by mapmaker Eymund Diegel:
Red lines are the upland Sandy flood lines (minus part the Fort Defiance Island area which is missing dry non flood area during…
18 Open Sewer Atlas NYC
You've heard of watersheds, this project is about sewersheds. The sewer system impacts flooding in Red Hook both in terms of overflows coming up into the street from storm drains and backing up into buildings via their sewer lines. The…
19 Sewerage, Erie Basin and The Report of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission of New York, 1910
Sample No. 2, Marked from 017 Erie Basin.
Found: Numerous small worms resembling round worms, 0r Nematodes. Numerous diatoms, Oogonia, Conferva filaments, bits of wood, considerable plant epidermis. Ulothrix, Botryococcus braunii, Schizomeris…
20 New York Harbor Observing and Prediction System (NYHOPS) Red Hook Recording Station
Wondering about Red Hook water conditions like currents, tide height, salinity? And how those relate to storms?Red Hook is home to a high-tech water monitoring device overseen by the Davidson Laboratory at Stevens Institute that runs the Urban Ocean…
21 Gowanus Canal Storm Surge Barrier Study, 2016
The Goawnus Canal Storm Surge Barrier Study was presented to the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency. The report looks at the feasability of future studies and actions the City and the Army…