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Posts from the ‘Resilience’ Category

Aug 6

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Interview with resident of Far Rockaway

"Just walking and seeing everybody in the same situation. Everybody had backpacks on like big, big backpacks, big jackets, everyone was doing what they could but, I mean, the sad part it's -- I think it was six hours walking, the sad part was just how exhausted everyone was. And it wasn't like a desperate exhaustion, it was just like, uh, so much shit to do. But the positive -- everyone came together, man. Rockaway is a resilient old place... It was like all right, let's go do so and so's basement and then everyone go there, get that basement done. And the next day, all right, what are we doing tomorrow? All right, we'll do so and so's basement. It was everyone trying to do what they can for everyone."

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Jul 24

Interview with Cecil Scheib, Managing Director for the NYC Building Resiliency Task Force

"Well there’s several levels of building resilience. So one thing that our current code handles very comprehensively is that a building be resilient enough that after an event, people can get out of it safely. They can safely evacuate. So generally that’s defined as 90 minutes, maybe two hours. What makes the resiliency effort different for New York City is that we’re trying to lengthen the amount of time that the building could be habitable so that people are not forced to evacuate. And this is important for a couple of reasons. One is people do not like to leave their homes—they’re worried about looting, they’re worried about safety, they don’t have places to go. So they like to stay home. And we saw after Sandy, a lot of people living in unsafe conditions because they did not want to leave. Second, the city only has limited capability to actually shelter people—you know, at shelters—and so the more people you can keep in a building, you know, the easier it is for the city to handle the people that really don’t have any option. So one level is just the emergency egress and just getting out safely. Another level might be what we call survivability."

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Jul 24

Interview with Noah Budnick, Deputy Director, Transportation Alternatives

"I think it was a testament to New Yorkers’ perseverance that folks who could make it through and try to get on with their daily lives really did and it's also, I think it was a great example of the diversity of transportation choices in the city that makes the city great. Because New York has so many ways of getting from A to B it makes the city more resilient which is a great lesson from the storm that we're not just wed to a car or to the subways, that when something goes down we have a backup plan."

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Jul 24

Interview with Josh Bisker, Time’s Up and NYU Office of Government and Community Affairs

"Spaces where it was free reign, where the community could organize what it needed, as it needed, seem to create the opportunity for resiliency and health. Here with the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, there with churches -- mostly churches and like a couple of businesses. I've never thought so well of churches. ... The thing that the churches gave to us was space to organize and assess our needs and then deliver upon them. And there are no other spaces like that, no other spaces like that."

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Jul 23

Interview with Lisa Cowan, Board President of the Red Hook Initiative

"So they went in, they opened the doors, people immediately came in to start charging their phones and figure out what was going on, and both people who were living in the neighborhood and in the houses came in, and then volunteers, who were I think literally biking around the neighborhood looking for a place to help, found our doors being open, and so pretty quickly people started cooking, dropping off supplies, different kinds of providers showed up, and because we had this physical space, and because we had a staff that was local, and because we had a social media presence, we were pretty quickly at the—at the center of a lot of different supply and demand."

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