Resiliency
PortSide NewYork was honored with a "Champions of Change" award from the Obama White House and honors from the NYS Senate for our hurricane Sandy prepartion and recovery work: we saved our historic 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. Since Sandy, PortSide has worked on Red Hook resiliency via being appointed to government committees, resiliency projects with artists and colleges programs, plus our own independent work. There's a list on our website at https://portsidenewyork.org/our-sandy-recovery.
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. The section 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!
What you urgently need to know is up top. The historical info can have contemporary relevance; e.g. maps of buried waterways can be helpful for showing waterways that come back to life during heavy rains. It's good to know if your home or car is near those spots.
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 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.…
5 Current weather on the Mary Whalen
click here for detailed weather report
The one above includes an AQI (Air Quality Index).
Simpler verson is at the bottom.
It is important to understand weather to understand how sudden rain increases flooding risks, how high tide affects…
6 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,…
7
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…
8 “Medical Matt” Kraushar: Hurricane Sandy, COVID19, & Resiliency
Matt Kraushar, dubbed “Medical Matt,” set up a Red Hook Sandy recovery medical team. He was a medical student living on Van Brunt Street when Sandy hit. He learned from Katrina that medical issues that were managed under normal conditions could blow…
9 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…
10 Hurricane Sandy Stories
Hurricane Sandy hit Brooklyn around 8pm on October 29, 2012. which caused devastating flooding in Red Hook. The following are stories, oral accounts and images relating to the superstorm and its aftermath.1)PortSide NewYork Sandy Story: Saving MARY…
11 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…
12 Occupy Sandy: Race, Class, and Disaster Gentrification
Zoltán Glück was a graduate student when Sandy hit, and he worked with Occupy Sandy doing recovery work in Red Hook, Brooklyn.Occupy Sandy, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, was a major and innovative force for Sandy recovery in New…
13 PortSide NewYork Sandy Story: Saving MARY WHALEN
April 21, 2013
This is PortSide NewYork's hurricane Sandy story. Apersonal report by Carolina Salguero, Director of PortSide, speaking as Shipkeeper of the MARY A. WHALEN.This installment covers PortSide's time in port preparing for Sandy, riding…
14 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).
15 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…
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Red Hook day after Hurricane Sandy - Photos by Joao de Souza, 2012
Hurricane Sandy hit New York with great force and water on Ocober 29, 2012. The following day, João de Souza photographed the aftermath and the first efforts of cleaning up and pumping out in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Below is a curated selection of his…
17 Eymund Diegel map: Map of Historic Location of Creeks and Streams in Red Hook & Gowanus, 2014
This map looks at alternative siting scenarios for rainwater holding tanks outside of the Gowanus Marsh flood zone as an alternative to the 2013 Superfund Plan Gowanus sewer tank proposal.The map contains community group research (Gowanus Canal…
18 Eymund Diegel map: 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…
19 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…
20 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…
21 Eymund Diegel map: Sandy Damage to Red Hook Trees, 2013
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…
22 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…
23 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 water. Note…
24 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. No group assumed responsibility for updating the plan or conducting drills or even for hosting the webpage linked here;…
25 Resilient Red Hook, formerly Red Hook NY Rising Committee
The Resilient Red Hook(RRH) group grew out of a NYS-funded program NY Rising which was a response to hurricanes Ira, Lee and Sandy. PortSide's ED Carolina Salguero was one of the appointed members of NY Rising and in RRH for a few years.After…
26 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…
27 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…