Hurricanes Threatens NYC with Billions in Damage

Hurricane season is coming — and hundreds of thousands of homes in the New York area are still at risk from flooding. Despite all the work now underway to make homes more resilient, the area is very vulnerable.

“Even one single hurricane at a lower-level category can cause significant damage if it makes landfall in a highly populated area,” said Dr. Tom Jeffery, senior hazard scientist at CoreLogic.

In the New York metropolitan area, 723,000 homes could be damaged by the storm surge from a powerful, category five hurricane. These home have an estimated reconstruction cost of $264 billion — assuming a worst-case scenario at 100% destruction. Of those homes, 131,000 are extremely at risk, meaning that even a relatively weak, category one hurricane could flood the property.

Fewer hurricanes are projected to strike the U.S. in 2017, but a it’s still possible that one of those storms will make landfall at New York.

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