'Living under a rock' — Mayor Adams again draws criticism for response to severe weather

As heavy rains crippled parts of New York City on Friday, Mayor Eric Adams was forced once again to answer critics calling him out for a flatfooted response to a severe weather event.

Weather experts had forecast intense rainfall on Thursday evening. However, Adams waited until midday Friday to hold a public briefing – hours after the driving rains had already forced the closures of major thoroughfares, most of the subway system and a terminal of LaGuardia International Airport. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a state of emergency and urged New Yorkers to stay at home and off the roads. The mayor instructed people to stay home or “shelter in place” just before noon — hours after people had already made their way to work or taken their kids to school.

Scenes of flooding and water cascading in subway stations immediately brought back memories of the remnants of Hurricane Ida two years ago, when 13 people died.

"If anyone was caught off guard, they had to be living under a rock," Adams said defensively during an interview on 1010 WINS later Friday evening, hours after mounting criticism.

In advance of Friday’s deluge, city officials warned New Yorkers about the potential dangers of flash flooding via social media and alerts from the city’s Notify NYC app, reminiscent of how they handled the air quality crisis in June. The mayor was chastised at the time for a delayed and muted response as hazardous levels of wildfire smoke enveloped the city.

But during the air quality crisis and again on Friday, the mayor's critics said he didn't take a leadership role prior to the natural disaster, showing up in public hours after people had faced the most serious risks. Instead, the mayor was seen attending a campaign fundraiser in Upper Manhattan.

In December 2022, the mayor also faced criticism for leaving town as severe weather flooded the city.

“There still seems to be a problem of quickly notifying as many people as possible and over-relying on social media, as opposed to being on TV and radio stations,” said Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, who nonetheless credited the city for its on-the-ground response.

“We have to get into place and let people know how bad it seems to be getting much quicker than we do,” he added.

NYC public schools were officially open for the day, although several schools had power outages or had to move students out of flooded classrooms.

Had he known how severe the rain would become, Williams said, he would have elected to keep his teenage daughter home from school. Instead, like many parents, he was trying to figure out how to get his child home safely on a day when the rain interrupted subway service and forced major roadway closures.

City Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn similarly faulted the mayor for failing to appear before New Yorkers prior to the flooding. He said Adams should have ordered city schools to move to remote learning on Friday.

Restler said he spent several hours in the morning assisting residents in South Williamsburg, where streets were waterlogged, in part due to clogged catch basins.

“Did the mayor use his bully pulpit to communicate clearly to New Yorkers about the threat that we were facing? Did the mayor manage his agencies to prepare as well as we could for an extreme weather event?” Restler said. “It certainly seems like the communication was lackluster and the preparation was lackluster. And that caused a significantly more chaotic day than what needed to be.”

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso called on both the mayor and governor to “revamp” their communications process.

“This morning’s events have made it glaringly apparent that New York City and state must improve their processes for communicating with New Yorkers about sudden and extreme weather before it happens,” he said in a statement.

Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens who has expressed interest in challenging Adams in a Democratic mayoral primary, argued that the city did not appear to have learned from past weather emergencies.

On Friday, her district, which includes East Elmhurst, experienced some of the worst flooding. The area was also badly affected during the storm that resulted from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

“I’m incredibly frustrated,” she said. “We’re kind of seeing Ida all over again.”

She described the flooding as tantamount to a public safety crisis, a priority under Adams, a former police officer. Referring to the mayor’s news conference last week on new surveillance technology in the subways, she added, “No robot is going to save any of my neighbors from drowning.”

City workers, many of whom had to report to their jobs in person, were also angry at the administration. Adams has allowed some unionized city employees to adopt a hybrid schedule but thousands of others are not officially permitted to work remotely.

According to an email obtained by Gothamist, the city’s human resources department waited until noon to let city employees know that their agencies may in some cases allow them to work from home.

“Days like today we see how this inflexible stance to working from home is not only silly, but putting workers in danger needlessly,” one city worker told Gothamist, requesting anonymity to avoid retribution. “Surely, we should at least have a working emergency remote work plan by now.”

During a virtual press conference on Friday, the mayor defended his decision to leave communicating about the flash floods in the hands of city agency officials.

“As I've stated over and over again, this administration operates as a team,” Adams said. “I want my commissioners, my deputy commissioners, the leaders of this team, who are closest to the ground of a situation to communicate.”

Anticipating criticism, Fabien Levy, the deputy mayor for communications, noted that the mayor’s office had emailed a news release about the flood watch. That email was sent around 11 p.m. Thursday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who joined the mayor at his press conference, issued her own release around 5 p.m. on Thursday. She urged those in New York City, the Hudson Valley and on Long Island to “prepare for heavy rainfall and isolated flash flooding on Friday.”

Later that evening, the governor gave a brief interview to 1010 WINS. She said there was a 70% chance of flash flooding, and warned that it is “going to result in havoc throughout the downstate region.”

“It could be dangerous,” Hochul said. “We’ve had circumstances as recently as this summer where vehicles were swept away. And also in our homes, we’ve had literally houses washed away. So I just wanted people to know we’re preparing.”

Hochul did another round of media hits on Friday morning, appearing on both television and radio to urge New York City residents to avoid unnecessary travel, if at all necessary.

Jon Campbell contributed reporting.