NYC NOW - August 14, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Another storm is expected tonight, though not as severe as New York experienced early Sunday. New York City's Transportation Department plans to soon introduce more extra-large cargo e-bikes to reduce trucks and alleviate traffic. Today, we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 2003 blackout, a monumental power outage; Christina Farrell of the Office of Emergency Management, a key responder in 2003, speaks on New York City's readiness for future blackouts.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Monday, August 14th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Another storm is forecast for tonight, but the weather service is not predicting the severity that the New York region had early on Sunday. WNYC's Nancy Solomon explains. Although there were two tornado warnings in New Jersey over the weekend, Matt Broody of the National Weather, the service says all the damage came from severe thunderstorms. Trees down, wires down, power outages, things like that.

Downed trees in Summit knocked out service on the Morrison-Essex NJ Transit Rail line. Brutie says the region is seeing more tornadoes. There have already been 13 warnings this year. But severe thunderstorm warnings should not be ignored. He says during any high wind event, people should stay away from the windows. New York City's Transportation Department wants more extra-large cargo e-bikes on city streets. A plan released today would allow large pedal-assist cargo bikes to deliver packages. The bikes are about as wide as a golf cart.

The city says the bikes would take trucks off the street, reduce traffic, and help the environment. Some of the bikes already have been put into use by delivery companies through a pilot program. The proposed rules go into effect in. 30 days after a public comment period. 82 and partly sunny now. Partly sunny today in a high of 86. Showers and thunderstorms tonight and overnight, gusty winds, heavy rain with the threat of flash flooding, and that goes into tomorrow morning, clouding 84 on Tuesday. Right now, 82 and partly sunny in the city.

20 years ago today, an overgrown tree branch in Cleveland, Ohio hit a power line. It triggered a cascading effect that caused one of the most significant power outages in the history of the USA. We've been asking what you remember from the blackout of 2003. 46-year-old Summers' shawl of Queens remembers this about it. It was my first day at a new office job in Midtown, and the power went out around 4 p.m. I think people joked it was the new kid's fault, which meant me. I was also between apartments at the time and with conflicting instructions on whether to go home or stay put. I decided to sleep on a filing cabinet that night, along with a few other stranded new colleagues.

We sang songs and raided people's snack drawers, but the magical part was going onto the roof of the building to see so many stars above Manhattan, which are normally hidden by light pollution. I took a bus and walked to Queens the next day to an empty apartment for a shower. I was at that job for 14 years, maybe partly due because of how bonding that experience was. Summers, thank you so much for sharing that with us. that blackout remains one of the most significant power outages in U.S. history. But what lessons did New York City learn from 2003 and how prepared are we to deal with future blackouts? Christina Farrell is the first Deputy Commissioner of the Office of Emergency Management in New York City.

She was one of the key members of the response team back in 2003 and she joins us now. Deputy Commissioner Farrell, thank you for coming on. Thank you. When there's an outage like that that impacts Subways, hospitals, summer camps, and bridges and tunnels. Where do you even begin to try to get things back to normal? The first thing that we do at emergency management, what we did in 2003, and what we continue to do is we will activate the city's emergency operation center.

And we have, you know, hundreds of partners. This was obviously in all hands on deck type of situation. And back then, people just kind of showed up at the emergency operation center that we were in then, because communication really was down. And it's organized into emergency support functions. So transportation, health and medical, public safety, human services. You know, and this is what we exercise. This is what we practice.

And as you noted, we learned a lot from the 2003 blackout. We continue to learn every time we have a significant power situation and start to put our plans in place. What kind of steps have been taken to reduce the change? chance of such a widespread blackout from happening again? So one of our strongest partners, our closest partners is conned, but they are continually strengthening, you know, the grid and their work around that. Within the city, we have continuity of operations. We really focus on the most vulnerable. So like if someone is on life-sustaining equipment, you know, we need to make sure

that they have battery backup. You know, we need to know who those people are. There's a program through the utility providers in the city where people can register to let people know, let the utilities and by function, we'll get that list during an emergency that they are on life-sustaining equipment so we can check in on them and get them to a facility that can help them if that's what they need. Commissioner, we recently had listeners share stories of what they remember from those days in 2003, many of them described as similar feeling of panic when the lights went out.

His listener, Leslie Hart, from Brooklyn. I used my cell phone to call my mother in Middletown. She said her electricity was also out. Oh, my God. I immediately thought that it was another terrorist attack on New York City. Of course, the 9-11 attacks had just happened a couple of years before. What was the Office of Emergency Management's understanding of what was happening at that time? We started getting some calls. I remember the Red Cross. They called us, to told us, you know, a key partner of ours. They were having a blackout. My boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband, was in Williamsburg. He called and said all the traffic lights were out. You know, once it was clear, it wasn't localized and it was citywide. We do have citywide incident coordinators. So we dispatched them. We started obviously immediately talking to police and fire. And we realized, wow, this is citywide. And then beyond that, we started speaking.

to the state, to the Port Authority, you know, because it was almost inconceivable that it was 50 million people. It was Canada. It went so far west and north. It really was unprecedented. Any tips on what we should do, New Yorkers should do, to prepare in case something like this happens again? So, you know, it starts with information. Notify NYC is the city's free emergency notification system. And we do still do phone calls. People can register the landline. It's very important to understand what the hazards are and have information on what's going on. Outside of that, you know, really the two actions people will take during an emergency is to evacuate or to shelter in place. Specific to a blackout, you know, one thing we saw in 2003,

and we've seen again, you know, if your car is running out of gas, pumps are electric, so they may not be working. Also, if you're going to stores, you know, it's always a good idea to have some small denominations of bills. You know, and then a really important thing, too, especially, you know, for this kind of situation is once you're prepared to check in on your friends, your neighbors, you know, you may be okay, but they may need some extra help or a safe place to stay. A long list of things to do to prepare for the next time with Deputy Commissioner, Christina Ferrell. Commissioner, thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We'll be back this evening.