NYC NOW - May 4, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

The New York City Council is introducing a suite of new bills to bolster outreach and education on available mental health services. This comes just days after the death of Jordan Neely, who officials say had been suffering from mental illness on an F train and was put in a chokehold by another subway rider. And finally, most of the New York City metro area has seen more than a half a foot of rain this week. As the threat of flooding increased, so did a sense of concern that the city was not ready to ensure the safety of those in flood-prone areas. WNYC’s Michael Hill checks in with Zachary Iscol, Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management.

Good evening, and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. The New York City Council is introducing a suite of new bills to bolster available mental health services. One of the new bills requires the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to maintain a searchable database of outpatient mental health service providers in the city. Another would require every borough to have at least two crisis centers open to walk-ins to ensure people have easy access to mental health treatment. The bills are part of a so-called mental health roadmap announced last week.

This comes just days after the death of Jordan Neely, a black man who officials say had been suffering from mental illness on an F-train and was put in a chokehold by another subway rider. Everybody that knew him and people that knew him from the train on the regular knew that he didn't deserve it because he never came off as aggressive or violent. That's Minister Ray Tarvin. He joined dozens others at a vigil for nearly Wednesday at the Broadway Lafayette Station where he was killed. Adolfo Abrayo was there too.

He's a housing director with the Social Services Organization, Vocal New York. He says the incident highlights troubling behavior towards people experiencing distress on the subways. Instead, what we're seeing is people deputizing themselves and not having a compassionate approach to those who are struggling with mental health, and homelessness. The Manhattan DA's office is investigating the case. Stay close. There's more after the break. This week, most of the New York City metro area has seen more than a half a foot of rain.

It all started with last weekend's dramatic rainfall, causing flooded roadways and parks. And as the threat of flooding increased, so did a sense of concern that the city, despite the lessons learned from the deadly flooding after Hurricane Ida, was not ready to ensure the safety of those in flood-prone areas. For a look at the city's response and plan for all the rainfall, my colleague Michael Hill talked with Zachary Iskell, Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management. What do you think went right on Sunday and what went wrong?

So I think what went right was the city's response. We worked together leading up to that event. We worked with our state partners, our local partners. We were clearing catch basins. We were putting resources in place. The forecast was slightly under the amount of rainfall that we actually got. We put out the right amount of public messaging. And, you know, nobody was hurt or injured.

And that's the most important part. I think there was about five vehicles that needed to be moved off the roads. And, again, nobody was seriously injured and nobody died in that event. Late Sunday, your office tweeted a warning for those in basement apartments but didn't push out an alert on phones. Tell us about the thinking behind that decision. So I think what you're talking about is the wireless emergency alerts. For the wireless emergency alerts, those are managed for weather events by the National Weather Service. So you'd have to refer you to the National Weather Service. We put out alerts for other types of events, but we didn't meet the threshold for that type of flash flood warning.

So I think when you think about this type of event over the weekend, we got about five or six inches of rained throughout the entire weekend. To put that in perspective during Ida, we had 10 inches of rain in three hours. At no point, I think at the most one part of the city had about one inch of rain an hour on Sunday night. Our infrastructure, you know, the pipes underground, it's really designed to handle up to 1.8, almost two inches of rain an hour. During Ida, we were seeing over three inches an hour, and that's why you had a lot of that water back flowing from underground infrastructure into basements causing some of those deadly things. We weren't anywhere near approaching that on Sunday night.

Commissioner, do you have a system where you push out alerts on phones to those who are living in basements? Does OEM have that? We have Notify NYC and we have a basement messaging group that we recently launched, which I encourage everybody to sign up to. And then we do have the wireless emergency alerts, which we can send out. But the primary mechanism that we use is Notify NYC. Again, that has over a million subscribers.

You can then sign up for different types of messaging based on, you know, what types of alerts you want, whether it's traffic, whether it's based on your neighborhood or your community. And one of those groups that we recently launched is our basement notification system. So if you live in a basement in a lower floor apartment, I highly encourage you to sign up for Notify NYC and specifically subscribe to our basement group. In 2021, Commissioner, after 13 people died in the flooding, most of them in basement apartments. Then Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would issue stronger and more clear warnings, even promising to send emergency responders to knock on people's doors to evacuate them. If we are seeing this kind of rain, we have to have an evacuation mechanism that can reach them. And again, this is a very forceful measure.

It's not just saying to people you have to get out of your apartment. it's going door to door with our first responders and other city agencies to get people out. Commissioner, is the infrastructure to do something like that actually in place? And what would it take to trigger that type of response? So this is what I would say to folks. One of the reasons it's so important for people to sign up for these notifications is not only are we warning people about potential weather, but we're also providing information to people to keep them safe.

So if we see this type of forecast, we're expecting this amount of rain. This is the new normal. People have to get to higher ground. They have to figure out a way to get to either a higher level in the building that they live in. They have to have an evacuation plan before the weather comes. I respectfully disagree with the mayor. When we think about coastal storm evacuations, when we have a major hurricane coming, that doesn't happen during the hurricane. That happens.

The evacuations occur before the hurricane. When we have these type of weather events, it is simply not possible for first responders to go out into those dangerous situations to evacuate people into the flooding. But at that point, it's too late. People have to be prepared. They have to take precautions. They have to sign up for things like notify NYC to make sure that they have the information they need to keep themselves safe.

That's Zachary Iskell, Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management, talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.