hurricane sandy case study decision sheet

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Hurricane sandy: a crisis analysis case study.

• Sara Bondesson Sara Bondesson Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership, Swedish Defence University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1598
• Published online: 19 November 2020

Spontaneous, so-called emergent groups often arise in response to emergencies, disasters, and crises where citizens and relief workers find that pre-established norms of behavior, roles, and practices come into flux because of the severity and uncertainty of the situation. The scholarship on emergent groups dates to 1950s sociological theory on emergence and convergence, whereas contemporary research forms part of the wider disaster scholarship field. Emergent groups have been conceptualized and theorized from various angles, ranging from discussions around their effectiveness, to their possibilities as channels for the positive forces of citizen’s altruism, as well as to more skeptical accounts detailing the challenges emergent groups may pose for established emergency management organizations in relief situations. Scarce scholarly attention, however, is paid to the role of emergent groups when it comes to empowering marginalized and vulnerable communities. The few empirical studies that exist suggest linkages between active participation in emergent groups and empowerment of otherwise marginalized communities, as shown in an ethnographic study of the work of Occupy Sandy that emerged in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that struck New York City in 2012. Although more systematic research is warranted, such empirical examples show potential in terms of shifting emergency and disaster management toward more inclusionary, participatory, and empowering practices. As low-income communities, often of color, experience the increasingly harsh effects of climate change, important issues to ponder are inclusion, participation, and empowerment.

• emergent groups
• empowerment
• emancipation
• disaster risk reduction (DRR)
• disaster relief
• disaster management
• emergency management
• Hurricane Sandy
• crisis analysis

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• > Volume 10 Special Issue 3: Superstorm Sandy
• > Crisis Decision-Making During Hurricane Sandy: An Analysis...

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Crisis decision-making during hurricane sandy: an analysis of established and emergent disaster response behaviors in the new york metro area.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2016

This collective case study examined how and why specific organizational decision-making processes transpired at 2 large suburban county health departments in lower New York State during their response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The study also examined the relationships that the agencies developed with other emerging and established organizations within their respective health systems.

In investigating these themes, the authors conducted in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 30 senior-level public health staff and first responders; reviewed documentation; and moderated 2 focus group discussions with 17 participants.

Although a natural hazard such as a hurricane was not an unexpected event for these health departments, they nevertheless confronted a number of unforeseen challenges during the response phase: prolonged loss of power and fuel, limited situational awareness of the depth and breadth of the storm’s impact among disaster-exposed populations, and coordination problems with a number of organizations that emerged in response to the disaster.

Public health staff had few plans or protocols to guide them and often found themselves improvising and problem-solving with new organizations in the context of an overburdened health care system ( Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness . 2016;10:436–442).

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• Volume 10, Special Issue 3
• Thomas Chandler (a1) , David M Abramson (a2) , Benita Panigrahi (a1) , Jeff Schlegelmilch (a1) and Noelle Frye (a3)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2016.68

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Crisis Decision-Making During Hurricane Sandy: An Analysis of Established and Emergent Disaster Response Behaviors in the New York Metro Area

Objective This collective case study examined how and why specific organizational decision-making processes transpired at 2 large suburban county health departments in lower New York State during their response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The study also examined the relationships that the agencies developed with other emerging and established organizations within their respective health systems.

Methods In investigating these themes, the authors conducted in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 30 senior-level public health staff and first responders; reviewed documentation; and moderated 2 focus group discussions with 17 participants.

Results Although a natural hazard such as a hurricane was not an unexpected event for these health departments, they nevertheless confronted a number of unforeseen challenges during the response phase: prolonged loss of power and fuel, limited situational awareness of the depth and breadth of the storm’s impact among disaster-exposed populations, and coordination problems with a number of organizations that emerged in response to the disaster.

Conclusions Public health staff had few plans or protocols to guide them and often found themselves improvising and problem-solving with new organizations in the context of an overburdened health care system.

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Coastal Impacts, Recovery, and Resilience Post-Hurricane Sandy in the Northeastern US

• Perspectives
• Open access
• Published: 25 August 2020
• Volume 43 , pages 1603–1609, ( 2020 )

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• Amanda L. Babson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6713-6565 1 ,
• Richard O. Bennett 2 ,
• Susan Adamowicz 3 &
• Sara Stevens 4  

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Post-Hurricane Sandy research has improved our understanding of coastal resilience during major storm events, accelerated sea level rise, and other climate-related factors, helping to enhance science-based decision-making, restoration, and management of coastal systems. The central question this special section examines is: “looking across the breadth of research, natural resource management actions and restoration projects post-Hurricane Sandy, what can we say about coastal impact, recovery, and resilience to prepare for increasing impacts of future storms?” These five studies, along with lessons from other published and unpublished research, advance our understanding beyond just the documentation of hurricane impacts but also highlights both natural and managed recovery, thereby advancing the developing field of coastal resilience.

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Introduction

Hurricane Sandy made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone on October 29, 2012, near Brigantine, New Jersey. Record levels of storm surge were recorded in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut with tropical storm force winds extending over an area approximately 1600 km in diameter. The storm affected twenty-four states, with disaster declarations made in 12 States and the District of Columbia. In addition to extensive loss of life and infrastructure damage, there were significant impacts on estuarine and coastal ecosystems throughout the region. The magnitude of Hurricane Sandy and the breadth of research on ecosystem resilience post-Hurricane Sandy provides an opportunity to learn about the response and recovery of coastal ecosystems following the storm and to apply the results to ecosystem management to prepare for future storms.

This perspectives paper sets the context for the special section, which includes studies of post-storm resilience, results of natural resource management actions, and restoration projects as part of the post-Hurricane Sandy coastal resilience efforts by the Department of the Interior (DOI). The section highlights some of the post-Sandy science undertaken to document and understand post-storm ecosystem recovery and resilience, and how systems function, followed by how our management actions can support resilience. The collective research provides an important foundation for managers with data, tools, and information necessary for future natural resource planning and adaptation efforts in preparing for future storms and sea level rise. The five papers in this special section were derived for Hurricane Sandy sessions at the Coastal Estuarine Research Federation Annual Conference (CERF 2017). Although these conference sessions occurred 5 years after Hurricane Sandy and substantial research results had been completed, some restoration projects were just beginning post-implementation monitoring. Some of that monitoring continues today, and we continue to learn from the results. These studies are applicable to other areas impacted by major hurricanes.

The concept of coastal ecosystem resilience has taken a central role in research, yet resilience continues to be challenging to define and measure. Below, we define resilience and explore a range of studies that improve our understanding of how resilience functions in northeastern coastal ecosystems, and how we can expand our management actions to support the resilience of these systems.

Resilience is defined differently by different users. One definition of resilience, “the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions,” is taken from Executive Order 13653 Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change (Executive Order 13653, 2013 ). This was the definition that the goals of the funding supporting a number of these studies aimed to address, yet the different authors in this special section may use variations of the definition. We note that the ecological definition of resilience “the amount of disturbance a system can absorb without changing states” (Holling 1973 ) is much narrower than the definition used here and that there is active literature (Fisichelli et al. 2016 , Stein et al. 2014 ) on resilience definitions and their role in which adaptation strategies are favored. The authors favor a broader definition because hurricane response efforts are often inclusive of other forms of resilience beyond ecological.

Improving the ecosystem resilience of the United States’ northeastern coastline is a massive and multifaceted endeavor. Developing accurate and sensitive performance metrics for detecting and assessing change in resilience is equally complex. In order to track project performance and ultimate contribution to coastal resilience, it is necessary to establish baseline or reference point(s) and a consistent monitoring approach to track changes through time (NAS 2017 ; NRC 2012 ; Winderl 2014 ). As these projects were developed following Hurricane Sandy, adaptation was a relatively new field and the adaptation strategy of increasing resilience was a goal for recovery funding. Whereas there is not a consistent strategy for evaluating resilience here, by exploring different facets, we build a foundation for more systematic evaluations in the future.

As we have been experiencing increased hurricane strength and effects, our understanding of the ecological impacts has been growing. In the Hurricane Sandy-impacted region, fewer than ten hurricanes made landfall between 1899 and 1992, and fewer than five of those were considered major (Neumann et al. 1993 ). The Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Atlantic Coast have experienced more hurricanes and thus, the research has been more extensive in these regions, with special journal issues on Hurricane Andrew (Pimm et al. 1994 ), the 1999 hurricane season that included Dennis, Floyd, and Irene (Paerl et al. 2000 ); the 2004 Florida hurricane season (Greening et al. 2006 ); and an assessment of social-ecological issues related to hurricanes and other coastal disasters (Adger et al. 2005 ). The impacts on ecosystems go beyond wind and inundation, with impacts due to salinity changes and loss of dissolved oxygen due to decaying organic matter deposited during the storm. Types of impacts also include oyster mortality (Munroe et al. 2013 ); mangrove mortality resulting in replacement of black mangrove with red mangrove species or converting to mudflat (Smith et al. 1994 ); bird losses including shorebird and wading bird mortality, reduction in resident bird density and nest, and rookery destruction (Roman et al. 1994 ). The state of the science is moving beyond just documenting changes, but to understanding recovery, and using this scientific basis to better inform management actions.

A greater focus on understanding hurricane impacts, recovery, and resilience is occurring in part because climate change is playing a role in increasing the scale of these impacts. While it is an active research field to better understand the relationship between hurricanes and climate change, and there is low confidence in the detection or attribution of observed trends in hurricane frequency or intensity generally, it is well documented that climate change has contributed to the increases in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1970 and that hurricane rainfall and intensity are projected to increase in the future (IPCC 2014 ; Hayhoe et al. 2018 ).

In response to Hurricane Sandy, the United States Congress passed the Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Appropriations Act to provide supplemental funding to improve and streamline disaster assistance for Hurricane Sandy impacts. The DOI received approximately $445 million, post-sequestration, to respond to and recover from Hurricane Sandy impacts. In addition to the more traditional stream of financial support associated with disaster relief, directed towards cleanup and rebuilding based on damages caused by the storm, approximately $342 million was appropriated to support resilience. Funds were provided to restore and rebuild national parks, national wildlife refuges, and other Federal public assets with the goal of increasing the resilience and capacity of coastal habitat and infrastructure to withstand and reduce damage from storms (Arkema et al. 2019 ).

Initially, DOI directed resilience funds to projects that focused on rebuilding infrastructure, or monitoring, mapping, modeling, assessing, and forecasting as identified in the U.S. Geological Survey science plan for support of restoration and recovery in the wake of Hurricane Sandy (Buxton et al. 2013 ). DOI also conducted a competitive grant process among the DOI Bureaus to fund high priority science, in addition to coastal resilience projects. Subsequently, DOI partnered with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to administer the Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Competitive Grant Program to support approximately $100 million in projects led by state and local governments, tribes, nonprofits, and universities. The extent and diversity of competitively funded projects was an opportunity to assess some of the many experimental approaches to increase ecosystem and/or community resilience; they provide the larger context for the synthesis of this paper and this special section highlights but a small fraction of them.

The National Park Service (NPS) initiated multiple scientific studies to assess the response and resilience of coastal park systems following Hurricane Sandy. These projects were not only directed at understanding the changes that occurred in parks as a result of the storm but also to develop new science on storm impacts and the natural resiliency of coastal systems. Many of the NPS projects involved enhancing existing long-term monitoring in the parks as part of the NPS Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program (NPS 1992 ; NPS 2012 ), as well as creating baseline datasets needed to fulfill gaps in information needed for informed management. The NPS projects took place between 2013 and 2016 and provided a tremendous influx of new information, enhanced existing knowledge for park managers, and provided a better understanding of storm response and recovery that already has been, and continues to be incorporated into park management decisions and planning (NPS 2018 ).

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) resiliency projects that took place across eight national wildlife refuges or refuge complexes focused specifically on restoration and mitigation efforts, unlike the NPS projects, and fell within three primary categories: marsh and beach restoration, improving aquatic connectivity, and living shorelines. Restoration techniques included beneficial use of dredged sediment (thin to thick layer deposition), ditch remediation and runneling, eelgrass bed expansion, and barrier beach/back barrier ecosystem rebuilding. Aquatic connectivity projects included fish passage and culvert replacement (at two coastal refuges, with inland projects as well). Living shoreline projects included oyster bags, oyster castles, and hybrid measures such as wave attenuation structures across three refuges. Other techniques included invasive species control and removal of transmission poles and associated wires. These management and mitigation focused projects were complemented by scientific studies included in the Stronger Coast Project, which supported salt marsh integrity assessments, shoreline survey and analysis and integrated waterbird management monitoring.

Baseline Science and Monitoring

Hurricane Sandy provided an important lesson on the value of long-term baseline data and information and the additional need for important datasets. Baseline science collected consistently and following standardized methods over long periods of time are fundamental to understanding and identifying a change in the condition of natural resources and is necessary for informing conservation and land management decisions (Busch and Trexler 2003 ; Fancy and Bennetts 2012 ; Vaughan et al. 2001 ). Both the NPS I&M Division and the USFWS I&M Program reliably and consistently collect data throughout the park and national wildlife refuge systems, respectively. These data create the scientific basis for initiating new management practices and changing existing ones in parks and refuges (Fancy et al. 2009 ) and are critical in helping scientists and managers determine natural levels of variability versus human-induced changes.

One example of how baseline data collected for years prior to the storm improved our understanding of ecosystem resilience was at Fire Island National Seashore where the park experienced dramatic changes during the storm with the development of three breaches along the island (Hapke et al., 2017; van Ormondt et al. 2020). Two of the three breaches were closed immediately after the storm, but a breach that developed in the area of the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness remained open to the Great South Bay due to its wilderness designation. Allowing this breach to remain open created an opportunity for the NPS to study the effects of breaches not only on the island itself but the surrounding Great South Bay (Gobler et al. 2019 ; Hinrichs et al. 2018 , Olin et al. 2019 ). The long-term monitoring and baseline research collected both before and after the storm supported the extensive environmental impact statement developed to help guide whether the NPS should keep the Fire Island Wilderness breach open or manually close it (NPS 2018 ). The analysis of both pre-and post-breach data provided a strong scientific basis for allowing the breach to remain open. Other coastal parks and refuges, such as Gateway National Recreation Area, also saw dramatic changes to their shorelines, beaches, dunes, and coastal wetlands, and both the NPS and USFWS had been collecting coastal shoreline change and geomorphological data in these areas for years prior to the storm, creating important pre- and post-storm datasets needed to quantify the recovery of these systems.

The NPS I&M program was able to collect post-storm data in a timely manner using well-established, standardized methods (Oakley et al. 2003 ; Perkins et al. 2016 ; Sergeant et al. 2012 ). This effort has provided insight into understanding the natural resiliency and recovery of park systems to a powerful storm event like Hurricane Sandy (Wilson et al. 2019 ).

Despite significant investments in restoration and resilience projects, it is uncommon for funding to be provided to monitor and assess whether projects have met their stated objectives. When funding for monitoring and assessment is available, assessment of ecological outcomes is more common than socio-economic ones (NAS 2017 ). For the DOI resilience projects, a common set of ecological and socio-economic metrics for evaluating projects was developed after project selection and implementation (DOI 2015 ; DOI-MEG 2015 ). As a result, a subset of the projects representing a diversity of geographies, scales, and resilience activities received funding to implement a monitoring effort through 2023. The goal of this monitoring and data collection effort is to collect data for ecological and socio-economic metrics aligned with each of these projects in order to provide a consistent set of data to evaluate the effectiveness of resilience projects to meet their stated objectives. The overarching goals were to (1) reduce the impacts of coastal storm surge, wave velocity, sea level rise, and associated natural threats on coastal and inland communities; (2) strengthen the ecological integrity and functionality of coastal/inland ecosystems to protect communities and to enhance fish and wildlife and their associated habitats, and (3) enhance our understanding of the impacts of storm events and identify cost-effective resilience tools that help mitigate the effects of future storms, sea level rise, and other phenomena related to climate change. Metrics were implemented for each of the resilience activities, marsh restoration, living shoreline restoration, beach and/or dune restoration, and restoration of aquatic connectivity. Examples of metrics for marsh restoration include marsh surface elevation or nekton abundance ; full tables of ecological metrics by activity are available in DOI ( 2015 ). The socio-economic metrics include three categories of metrics: (1) community competence and empowerment, (2) human health and safety, and (3) property and infrastructure protection and enhancement. An example of a human health and safety metric is a reduction in number of households exposed to risk of injury, casualty, or other health effects from a particular flood event with the project as compared to without ; full tables of socio-economic metrics by a goal are available in DOI-MEG ( 2015 ). The goal is to collect socio-economic data that is aligned with each of the ecological resilience activities, e.g., marsh restoration. The collection of consistent ecological and socio-economic data is intended to determine the ecological and social benefits and the cost-effectiveness of projects.

Sharing Lessons

Others have evaluated key lessons learned following hurricanes, especially within the disaster response communities including the need for improving communication alerts; finding housing solutions for those displaced; understanding the effect hurricanes have on children’s physical health, mental health, and schooling; rebuilding with inclusion; speeding funding and coordination among federal agencies; and embracing resilience as the new planning standard (Atallah and Hoban 2017 ). It is not so much about hurricane readiness as it is about planning, implementing, and improvising when the disaster does not fit the plan that was developed. An analysis of lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy for the NPS included natural resource recommendations allowing natural processes to prevail; planning for sediment movement; generating monitoring plans; and developing long-term landscape-scale habitat plans (Babson et al. 2016 ).

As a result of lessons learned from Hurricane Irene in 2011, the Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Appropriations Act included amendments to the Stafford Act providing greater flexibility to FEMA for allowing more resilient rebuilding in Sandy-affected areas and in preparation for future storms (Clancy and Grannis 2013 ). Additionally, the issuance of executive orders and presidential policy directives after Hurricane Sandy helped focus the federal government on disaster resilience—coupling hazard mitigation and recovery efforts to break the damage-repair-damage cycle (GAO 2015 ).

The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Taskforce ( 2013 ) recognized the importance of institutionalizing regional approaches for resilience planning and coordination of Hurricane Sandy resilience projects. The DOI Hurricane Sandy program responded to the need for rapid initiation in coastal resilience projects following the devastating coastal impacts of Hurricane Sandy. DOI established a Leadership Team to ensure coordination and communication across Bureaus occurred while providing program oversight and decision-making. Key insights and lessons learned post-implementation of the DOI Hurricane Sandy resilience projects recognize the importance of (1) communicating with the public about each project increased acceptance and at times helped inform project design; (2) designing projects for future conditions (e.g., sea level rise and increased storm intensity) and striving to restore functioning ecosystems and human infrastructure yielded both ecological and economic benefits; (3) possessing prior planning and design studies or identifying projects through a regional planning effort, typically resulted in fewer changes in scope and timeline; (4) establishing baseline conditions, pre- and post-event allowed for better evaluation of management strategies; (5) incorporating a detailed monitoring plan to assess project performance and providing funding to implement the monitoring plan was critical to project assessment; (6) applying ecological and socio-economic metrics was essential to evaluate project effectiveness consistently and was critical to determine best practices for the future; and finally (7) funding should be made available to support data management, analysis, and final report writing (NFWF 2019 ) in order to complete the cycle of project conception, design, implementation, and assessment.

Science, Outreach, and Communicating with Public

A major effort to communicate the post-Sandy science to resource managers, affected communities and the broader public helped build partner support and demonstrate the resilience benefits of the projects. Different messaging styles and platforms were used for different projects and audiences.

The NPS supported science communicators who developed project briefs, researcher profiles, videos, StoryMaps, web stories, and a social media campaign. Materials are available at https://www.nps.gov/im/ncbn/briefs-newsletters.htm (accessed June 23, 2020). An analysis of the communication challenges, during both storm preparation and recovery within three parks, includes recommendations to NPS staff and officials, on information availability and access, needed protocols and training, and opportunities for teaching moments with the public (Menezes et al. 2019 ).

The USFWS developed a centralized website with detailed project information and a StoryMap to serve as the spatial platform for basic information as well as the ability to drill down into project specifics (https://www.fws.gov/hurricane/sandy/index.cfm (accessed June 23, 2020)). From the website, different audiences could access fact sheets, blog posts, videos, and media coverage. Storytelling was effective in showing the benefits to wildlife and people. Benefits of engaging partners early and often were especially evident in large-scale efforts like Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge’s beach and salt marsh restoration or the Fire Island Wilderness breach. In considering restoration, resilience, and change, local partners that understand what is happening and why are more accepting of change that is part of adaptation. Going forward, continued communication with communities, demonstrating what worked, can build confidence in investments that utilize forward-thinking science and restoration and have a positive long-term return on investment. Likewise, communicating actions that did not work will provide insight into future decision-making and investments. An Evaluation of the Hurricane Sandy Resilience Program (NFWF 2019 ) found that projects improved ecological and human community resilience, filled key knowledge gaps, provided direct benefits, and catalyzed planning for future activities.

Overview of Papers in Special Section

The five papers included in this special section provide examples of multiple issues related to storm impacts, recovery, and resilience. Kang and Xia ( 2020 ) model circulation and a storm surge of the Maryland Coastal Bays: the interactions between winds, surge, and high river flow during the storm. Understanding the role of different drivers of flooding and hydrodynamic exchange on an event scale is transferable to other shallow estuaries and lagoons, especially those with multiple inlets. Yeates et al. ( 2020 ) provide a regional-scale analysis of the storm’s role in salt marsh surface elevation. Morris et al. ( 2020 ) model salt marsh change for four parks with differing sediment budgets, but more importantly, differing organic matter production. Burdick et al. ( 2019 ) provide an evaluation of a management tool, ditch remediation, one of a range of restoration techniques tested post-Hurricane Sandy, with the idea that restored salt marshes can better trap sediment and increase organic matter production, thus will be more resilient. Olin et al. ( 2019 ) explore the response of the Great South Bay, NY, following the breach of Fire Island, studying nekton and community assemblages.

Olin et al. ( 2019 ), along with many other studies, including Hinrichs et al. ( 2018 ) and Gobler et al. ( 2019 ), informed the Environmental Impact Statement recommendations (NPS 2018 ) for the Fire Island Wilderness breach. As other barrier islands breach in future storms, having the experience of monitoring the water quality, geomorphic response, and ecosystem benefits documented by allowing the Fire Island breach to remain open may help shape future decision-making, as well as monitoring plans. The demonstration of geomorphic resilience at Fire Island, NY, which is modeled by Wilson et al. ( 2019 ), is further explored by Psuty et al. ( 2020 ), documenting dune displacement and recovery at Fort Tilden, Gateway National Recreation Area, NY, including interactions with groins and bulkheads that disrupt sediment transport.

Given the variety of post-Sandy management actions to support resilience that relies on changes in marsh sediment budgets and distribution (e.g., ditch filling, thin layer deposition, removing tidal restrictions), Ganju ( 2019 ) makes the case for including sediment budgets in restoration planning, especially for salt marshes.

Other reports share results from broader Hurricane Sandy resilience projects, including Tinoco and Peterson ( 2016 ), that evaluate the effect of the Fire Island Wilderness breach on seagrasses. Several studies conducted at National Seashores along the mid-Atlantic coast conducted groundwater modeling to evaluate the effects of climate change on barrier island groundwater dynamics (Carleton et al. 2020 ; Fleming et al. in press ; Misut and Dressler in press ).

The collective post-Hurricane Sandy research presented in this special section, along with other post-Sandy research, advances our understanding of natural resiliency, as well as, the efficacy of building resilience through restoration and management applications.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank David Eisenhauer and Norbert Psuty for contributions to the manuscript and the National Wildlife Refuges and National Parks that hosted the projects. The paper was much improved thanks to peer review comments from Charles Roman and an anonymous reviewer.

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Babson, A.L., Bennett, R.O., Adamowicz, S. et al. Coastal Impacts, Recovery, and Resilience Post-Hurricane Sandy in the Northeastern US. Estuaries and Coasts 43 , 1603–1609 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-020-00809-x

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Impact and Management of Hurricane Sandy

October 2012

The Caribbean (hitting Jamaica, Cuba and Bermuda) and the USA (affecting 24 states)

• Damage in the US estimated at over $63 billion
• Vulnerable Coastline due to:
• Coast from Delaware to Rhode Island is densely populated
• Large areas of expensive coastal property very close to sea level
• Many recreational and tourist resorts with beach front infrastructure such as hotels and amusement parks
• Numerous barrier islands which are unstable, prone to storm surges and wave erosion, and hard to evacuate during rescue phase
• Widespread disruption of transport and utilities in Jamaica.
• Haiti badly affected by flooding and landslides.
• 20,000 airline flights cancelled over the period October 27th-November 1st, 8.6 million power outages. Nearly 600,000 businesses and homes were destroyed.
• At least 286 people were killed either directly or indirectly by Sandy. There were 147 direct deaths: 72 in the USA and the rest mainly in Caribbean, including 54 in Haiti and 11 in Cuba.
• In the USA of the 87 indirect deaths from Sandy, at least 50 were attributable to either falls by the elderly, carbon monoxide poisoning from inadequately ventilated generators and cooking equipment, or hypothermia as a cold snap followed Sandy and extended power outages left people without heating.

Management and Response

Preparations

Caribbean and Bermuda

• October 22nd issued a tropical storm watch
• October 23rd upgraded to a Tropical storm warning
• Many residents stocked up on supplies and reinforced roofing material
• People were urged to take care of their neighbours, especially the elderly, children and disabled
• Schools, government buildings and the airport in Kingston shut down
• Early curfews were put in place to protect residents, properties and to prevent crime

United States

• East Coast attempted to head off long-term power failures by being prepared to repair storm damage and employees working longer hours
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) monitored Sandy
• Flight cancellations put in place
• National Guard and U.S Air Force put as many as 45,000 personnel in at least seven states on alert for possible duty in response to the preparations and aftermath of Sandy
• Florida - Closure and cancellations of activities in schools
• Carolinas - Tropical storm watch was issued. National park service closed at least 5 sections
• Washington, D.C - October 26th declared state of emergency. Metro service, both rail and bus was cancelled on October 29ths due to expected high winds
• Maryland - State of emergency announced October 26th, Residents were evacuated with the assistance of the Maryland Natural Resources Police, 2 shelters were opened. Maryland Transit Administration cancelled all services for October 29th and 30th.

Case Study – Hurricane Sandy

New york and its history of storms.

New York City is no stranger to the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes. In fact, being located on something of a meteorological crossroads, lying in the zone where cold, Canadian Arctic air masses meet the warm Gulf Stream current, the Big Apple is in the firing line for both extreme winter storms and tropical cyclones.

One particularly notable storm that hit New York is the blizzard of 11 March 1888, which is considered one the USA’s worst ever blizzards. As for hurricanes and tropical cyclones, a number of tropical cyclones have clipped New York as they worked their way northwards, three making a direct hit (or landfall) over New York City: the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane, the 1893 New York Hurricane and Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The 1938 New England Hurricane came very close, making landfall on nearby Long Island.

Meanwhile, several hurricanes and tropical storms have just clipped New York City, including Hurricane Agnes, which passed just west of New York in June 1972 and killed 24. Hurricane Hazel brought record-breaking gusts of 113 mph to Battery Park, Manhattan Island, in October 1954. More recently Tropical Storm Floyd brought 60 mph winds and flash flooding to New York City in September 1999, whilst Hurricane Irene made landfall on Coney Island in August 2011, sparking the first-ever mandatory evacuation of coastal residents as a precaution.

2012’s Hurricane Sandy broke no wind or rainfall records in the Big Apple, but this massive hurricane proved one of the costliest ever to affect the USA. It brought winds up to 100 mph and widespread flooding from the associated storm surge. The surge flooded large parts of lower Manhattan, including subways and tunnels, caused mass power outages and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, not just in New York but also in neighbouring New Jersey.

Some background on hurricanes and tropical cyclones

Before we look at how Sandy developed into one of New York City’s most notorious visitors it’s worth taking a closer look at some general aspects of tropical cyclones and hurricanes.

A tropical cyclone is the generic name given to a weather system over tropical or sub-tropical waters containing an organised area of thunderstorms, with cyclonic winds (anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere) around a low pressure centre. The tropical cyclone spectrum ranges from relatively small, weak storms called tropical depressions, with surface wind speeds less than 38 mph, to powerful hurricanes with surface wind speeds in excess of 160 mph. They are among the most dangerous natural hazards on earth and every year they cause considerable loss of life and damage to property.

Tropical cyclones typically start life over tropical oceans, forming when tropical thunderstorms are able to cluster and merge together in areas where the sea surface temperature is 27 ºC or more, where wind speed does not vary greatly with height and where winds near the ocean surface blow from different directions.

The sea provides a constant source of heat and moisture to ‘fuel’ the tropical cyclone. Winds near the ocean surface blowing from different directions help the warm, moist air rise and form cloud, and as wind speeds do not vary greatly with height, the cloud is able to grow into the giant thunderstorms.

When reaching land (known as ‘making landfall’), tropical cyclones will quickly tend to weaken because their ‘fuel source’ has been cut off. They will also weaken if they move over areas of cooler sea. Or they can weaken if wind speeds near the upper parts of the tropical cyclone cloud increase – ‘blowing’ the tops of the cloud downstream, destroying some of the cyclone’s organised structure and weakening it. Sometimes, however, a tropical cyclone will move away from the tropics and sub-tropics into the mid-latitudes and merge with existing mid-latitude weather systems. When this happens large and very powerful storms can form from the merger of the two systems.

There are various categories of tropical cyclone based on their wind speed. Weak tropical cyclones are called tropical depressions. When winds reach 39 mph they become known as tropical storms and they are then also given a name, which helps weather forecasters talk about them. Tropical cyclones can last more than a week and there can be more than one over any ocean at once, so giving them different names helps prevent confusion in weather forecasts. When winds reach 74 mph tropical storms over the Atlantic and north-east Pacific become known as hurricanes, and it is usually not until a storm becomes a hurricane that an ‘eye’ (an area of calm in the centre of a storm) becomes visible. In North America the Saffir-Simpson scale is used to categorise hurricane intensity – there are five categories and a hurricane is known as a ‘major hurricane’ if it reaches category 3 or higher.

Table One: Categories of tropical cyclone.

Figure One: Tropical cyclone distribution ( https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/weather/tropical-cyclones/facts ).

Figure One shows where Atlantic hurricanes tend to occur. They usually take place between early June and late November, though a few have been known in both May and December. The peak in the Atlantic hurricane season is mid-August to around mid-October. Climatologically a powerful hurricane tracking close the USA’s eastern seaboard becomes more likely later in the summer and during the autumn; later in the year such storms will tend to be steered away north-eastwards into the Atlantic Ocean.

Typically tropical cyclones move forward at speeds of around 10 to 15 mph, though they can move both more slowly or much quicker, perhaps as fast as 40 mph under some circumstances. Movement can also be erratic, making forecasting their track even more challenging. A typical hurricane is around 300 to 400 miles in diameter, though as we shall see later they can be much bigger. The highest wind speeds will be wrapped around the core of the hurricane, extending out 25 to 50 miles from the core in smaller hurricanes, and 150 to 200 miles in larger ones.

The size of tropical cyclones is such that they will tend to steer around larger scale weather systems. In the case of Hurricane Sandy we shall see that this played an important role in determining her track.

The evolution of Sandy

Sandy started life as a cluster of thunderstorms which left western Africa on 11 October 2012 and moved westward to reach the Caribbean Sea on 18 October. This cluster of thunderstorms then gradually intensified to become a tropical storm on the 22nd. It moved towards Jamaica and on 24 October officially became a hurricane, called Sandy, just south of Jamaica. Sandy then moved across Jamaica, bringing with it winds up to 85 mph, before crossing eastern Cuba on the 25th. Sandy was at its most intense as it crossed eastern Cuba and moved towards the Bahamas, sustaining winds of around 115 mph. Sandy hit the Bahamas on the 26th and then weakened a little, briefly dropping back to a tropical storm before re-intensifying to a hurricane on the 27th. During the 26th and 27th Sandy was also able to grow much bigger in size whilst tracking almost parallel to the east coast of the USA.

An area of high pressure developing over Ontario on the 28th spread eastwards on the 29th and 30th, and acted as a block to Sandy’s path. Instead of curving north-eastwards into the Atlantic Ocean as many hurricanes do, Sandy was instead forced to turn north-westwards towards north-eastern USA. At the same time it interacted with a mid-latitude weather system which helped it to re-intensify and become much larger.

Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the early evening of 29 October as one the most intense and damaging storms ever to affect the east coast of the USA. Sustained surface winds at landfall were close to 80 mph with gusts between 85 and 95 mph. After making landfall Sandy moved north-westwards, bringing heavy snow and blizzards to parts of the central Appalachian Mountains, and by the morning of 31 October no discernible storm centre could be found as the remnants of Sandy pressed on towards the Great Lakes and eastern Canada.

As Sandy was so big, wind damage covered a much larger area than would usually be expected from a hurricane. A larger area of strong winds led to a larger than usual storm surge. Sandy’s arrival into the US coast on the 29th also coincided with both high tide and spring tide, meaning that the tide would be at around its highest level. In New York City this added an extra 20 to 50 cm to the high water mark.

The extensive damage Sandy caused was the result of a number of unfortunate coincidences. It was able to grow particularly big, it was steered by the weather pattern developing over Canada, its landfall coincided with one of the highest tides of the month, worsening the impact of the storm surge, and it was pushed into the New York area rather than the less densely populated area further north.

Sandy’s impacts

• Impacts extended to Canada, Wisconsin and Lake Michigan down the eastern side of the USA into the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
• At least 286 people were killed either directly or indirectly by Sandy. There were 147 direct deaths: 72 in the USA and the rest mainly in Caribbean, including 54 in Haiti and 11 in Cuba.
• In the USA of the 87 indirect deaths from Sandy, at least 50 were attributable to either falls by the elderly, carbon monoxide poisoning from inadequately ventilated generators and cooking equipment, or hypothermia as a cold snap followed Sandy and extended power outages left people without heating.
• Sandy was Cuba’s deadliest hurricane since 2005, whilst over the USA this was the greatest number of hurricane deaths from one storm outside of the southern states since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. Sandy was also the first hurricane to make landfall in Jamaica since 1988.
• Sandy will go down as one of the USA’s costliest hurricanes. Damage estimates, based on 2012 values, will top $60 billion. In New York City economic losses are estimated at exceeding $18 billion.
• Elsewhere damage estimates, again based on 2012 values, exceeded $30 million in the Dominican Republic, $100 million in Jamaica and $750 million in Haiti, as Haiti’s costliest hurricane on record. In Cuba damage estimates were around $2 billion, making it one of Cuba’s costliest ever hurricanes.
• 346,000 houses were damaged or destroyed in New Jersey and 305,000 damaged or destroyed in New York and there were power outages from Indiana to Maine, with more than 8.5 million homes and businesses losing power. More than 18,000 flights were cancelled.
• Sandy goes down as the largest hurricane on record in the Atlantic since at least 1988 in terms of diameter of gales. Among other meteorological ‘highlights’, Sandy brought 80 to 90 mph gusts over New York and New Jersey and its rain turned to heavy snow and blizzards over the Central Appalachians.
• Sandy also brought heavy rain into north-east USA, the highest totals occurring south and west of New York City where typical amounts were around 25 mm whereas, for example, Washington DC had more than 125 mm and Niagara Falls close to 75 mm.
• Record storm tides were also recorded in New Jersey, New York State and Pennsylvania coastal areas; in New York City, for example, the storm tide rose more than 4 m above mean low water, a record high storm tide for New York, beating the previous record set in 1960. Meanwhile, waves close to 10 m high were recorded in New York harbour, more than 2 m higher than the previous record, whilst waves just offshore New York were probably the largest in at least the last 40 or so years.

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Hurricane Sandy Fact Sheet

As Hurricane Sandy left a wake of destruction across the Mid-Atlantic States and New England, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) mobilized resources to speed storm recovery on Federal and tribal lands in the impacted region and to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in its efforts to assist States and local governments in the disaster area.  At the peak, over 1,500 DOI employees were supporting response and recovery missions for Hurricane Sandy, through deployments and disaster recovery work in at their home locations. Currently, we still have 195 employees deployed.

Key areas for Department of the Interior response and recovery activities include the following:

• Approximately 260 wildland firefighters from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park service have responded with fellow wildland firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service and State Forestry Divisions to support FEMA staging areas, assist in emergency operations centers, and provide crews to clear trees for emergency access and power crews. More than 1,200 wildland firefighters from all agencies were a part of this effort.
• The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is leading a Tribal Assistance Coordination Group (TAC-G), enhancing communications and coordination between Native American Tribes in the disaster area, other Federal agencies, and non-profit relief organizations.  American Red Cross, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were key participants in this effort.
• The National Park Service (NPS) has deployed more than 800 incident management personnel, technical experts and work crews to assist personnel at parks throughout the region in recovery operations.  As of  December 5, 400 NPS employees from 99 parks were supporting NPS and interagency recovery efforts for Hurricane Sandy.  Expedited recovery will speed the resumption of tourism in impacted communities.  Extensive recovery work is needed at the National Parks in New York and New Jersey.  Working with interagency partners, NPS has also established debris transfer sites at Jacob Riis Park in New York to support local clean-up activities and is providing feeding for emergency workers in the vicinity of its logistics base at Fort Wadsworth in the Gateway National Recreation Area. In addition, the NPS Emergency Services has extended their logistics operations to assist the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and BIA.
• The U.S. Park Police, an agency of the NPS responsible for law enforcement in urban parks, deployed its “Eagle-1” helicopter from Washington, DC to New York to assist with damage assessment, law enforcement, and emergency medical support at impacted parks. U.S. Park Police also provided law enforcement officers to support a Disaster Medical Assistance Team from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  In addition, two U.S. Park Police command officials from the Washington Metropolitan Area responded to the NY-NJ area to support the NPS Incident Management Teams.
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) continues to assess damage to its facilities and natural habitat throughout the area impacted by Hurricane Sandy.  More than 42 FWS staff deployed to assist fellow employees with damage assessment and repairs in the hardest hit areas, including S.B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge in CT; Great Swamp and E.B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuges in NJ; and Long Island National Wildlife Refuge in NY. FWS response efforts were demobilized on November 12.
• U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) applied its broad technical expertise to support a number of interagency requirements during this emergency with 200 employees engaged in supporting the USGS response. USGS deployed 231 sensors prior to the landfall of Hurricane Sandy to record the level of storm surge and coastal inundation. After the storm passed, field crews moved in quickly to recover equipment as well as identify and flag high-water marks throughout the impacted area. Data were posted to a website as sensors were retrieved. In addition, aerial Lidar surveys were initiated from New York to North Carolina to assess coastal erosion; a landslide alert was distributed to state geologists and the National Weather Service; water-quality samples were collected on swollen rivers and the Chesapeake Bay; and the Bureau disseminated aerial imagery and geospatial products to Federal, tribal, state and local organizations.
• The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which is responsible for managing energy and mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), is dedicating personnel and resources to the response efforts for Hurricane Sandy and the need for OCS sand to rebuild and project the Nation’s coastlines and wetlands. Prior to Hurricane Sandy making landfall, models predicted that more than 90 percent of coastlines along the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia (Delmarva) Peninsula, New Jersey, and New York would experience beach and dune erosion. BOEM is currently focusing on the direct needs of localities and States impacted by Hurricane Sandy. The bureau is communicating with stakeholders in the affected areas regarding site analysis and resource availability, and identification of environmental concerns in preparation of potential projects to replenish dunes, coasts and coastal marine habitats damaged by the storm.
• Department of the Interior’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance (OEPC), working with DOI bureaus and interagency partners, is providing technical expertise to FEMA and other interagency partners to support tribal, state and local governments in the mitigation of damage to and protection of natural and cultural resources and historic properties. OEPC is coordinating Mission Assignments from FEMA for Response and Recovery efforts in New York and New Jersey.In addition OEPC is coordinating with the U.S. Coast Guard and DOI Bureau’s on marine debris salvage issues.OEPC currently has 6 personnel involved in response and recovery and have had a total of 11 personnel involved to date.

Updated 12/6/2012

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