by Betsy McCaughey, Townhall:
New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Denverites and other blue-city residents should feel scared as they watch Los Angeles neighborhoods obliterated by fire. These other cities could be next, victims of the same dysfunctional one-party government that puts woke priorities ahead of disaster prevention and readiness.
It doesn’t have to be a fire. Imagine floodwaters rising inside Gotham’s Queens-Midtown Tunnel. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued a warning on Jan. 2 that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Bridges and Tunnels division has failed to carry out the inspections and maintenance of the flood doors installed after Hurricane Sandy to allow the tunnels to be sealed off.
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Auditors found broken gasket seals, which would allow water to seep into the Queens-Midtown and the Brooklyn-Battery tunnels.
“It’s not (a) matter of if but of when,” said DiNapoli about another massive storm like Sandy, which caused the deaths of 44 city residents and damaged or destroyed 69,000 homes. DiNapoli warned in a 2022 report that “the city needs to be ready,” but so far there is “inadequate coordination.”
That’s the job of New York City Emergency Management, but its poor performance, says DiNapoli, is “very concerning.”
For example, NYCEM creates and maintains four evacuation plans, but they were last updated in 2013, and there has been no formal assessment of their adequacy.
For many disasters, including terrorism, the first line of defense is the New York Police Department. But the department’s headcount is the lowest it’s been in more than three decades. Mayor Eric Adams pledged in November to bring on 1,600 cops in 2025, but it’s proving impossible to recruit them. Blame what retired NYPD Sgt. Joseph Giacalone calls the “stupid laws” passed by the ultra-left City Council and left-wing state legislature that tie the hands of cops and coddle criminals.
