After Sandy: Are We Ready for the Next Big Storm?

NEW YORK— After Superstorm Sandy, officials in New York and New Jersey vowed to make sure the unprecedented destruction wouldn’t happen again.Two years later, would it?There are some concrete signs of tougher protections, from a nearly-finished sea w...
After Sandy: Are We Ready for the Next Big Storm?
Chris Niebling, deputy operation chief of the Office of Emergency Management in Mantoloking, N.J., Oct. 9, 2014. Niebling steps over construction of the new seawall while giving a tour of the construction. After Superstorm Sandy, New York and New Jersey officials vowed to make sure the unprecedented destruction wouldn’t happen again. AP Photo/Julio Cortez
Updated:

NEW YORK—After Superstorm Sandy, officials in New York and New Jersey vowed to make sure the unprecedented destruction wouldn’t happen again.

Two years later, would it?

There are some concrete signs of tougher protections, from a nearly finished sea wall protecting two devastated New Jersey towns to a Long Island boardwalk rebuilt to serve as a retaining wall. 

New floodgates protect a power plant where Sandy plunged miles of Manhattan into darkness and some homes sit higher while other buildings boast new flood barriers.

Enhanced preparedness has hardened backup power systems at hospitals, forged new systems to flood-proof subway vents, installed generators at dozens of gas stations to run pumps in a power outage, redrawn evacuation-zone maps, and reshaped emergency plans for managing problems from debris to traffic.

But many planned projects are still years off and some ideas still under study. Thousands of homeowners await repair aid, some of it coupled with steps to make homes safer. 

Some efforts to buy out flood-prone homes haven’t gotten takers in the worst hit areas. And across the coast, a patchwork of protections leaves some areas more vulnerable than others.

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) workers test a newly installed vent cover over the South Ferry station, in New York, Oct. 2, 2014. The station was damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012. (AP Photo/MTA New York City Transit, Marc A. Hermann)
Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) workers test a newly installed vent cover over the South Ferry station, in New York, Oct. 2, 2014. The station was damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012. AP Photo/MTA New York City Transit, Marc A. Hermann