Hurricane Irene New York: Top 5 Dangers of a Hurricane in the City

If Hurricane Irene keeps to its projected path, a region unaccustomed to natural disasters may experience two in a single week. The earthquake on Tuesday -- which was centered in Mineral, Va., and sent tremors up and down the Eastern Seaboard -- caused no measurable damage in New York, but if Irene hits the region later this week, it will be a very different story.

Even if Irene reaches New York as a weakened Category 1 or Category 2 hurricane, it could still wreak considerable havoc because the city is simply not prepared to handle such storms the way Florida or the Gulf Coast are. In a worst-case scenario, here are the top five threats New York City would face from a major hurricane.

1. Storm surge

The single biggest effect New York City would see from a major hurricane is the storm surge. This is the term for water pushed toward the shore by high winds, and it can rise many feet above sea level and inundate entire neighborhoods. In the New England Hurricane of 1938, the storm surge from the East River flooded three blocks of Manhattan, even though the center of the hurricane was many miles away, pummeling eastern Long Island. The Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane of 1821 made landfall in the city itself -- in Jamaica Bay, Queens -- and the 13-foot surge inundated more than a mile of Manhattan from Battery Park to Canal Street.

Storm surges can be catastrophic even in the best-protected cities -- just look at New Orleans when the levees failed. While a Katrina-like scenario is unlikely in New York, a smaller surge could still be deadly because of the structure of New York's waterways. New York Harbor is narrow, which means that water rushing northward from the storm surge, with nowhere to go, would build up very high -- as high as 30 feet, or the third floor of some buildings, according to past warnings from the city's Office of Emergency Management. According to an evacuation map posted on the city's official Web site, aside from Lower Manhattan, many low-lying parts of the other four boroughs would also be at risk, including LaGuardia Airport and J.F.K. Airport, which are located right by Flushing Bay and Jamaica Bay, respectively. All of this would be compounded if the storm surge happened at high tide.

[link to www.ibtimes.com]