New York Hospitals Still Far From Back-To-Normal After Sandy
Superstorm Sandy visited briefly two weeks ago, but her impact will be felt in New York for quite some time to come. Power has finally been restored to 99% of the affected homes, and gasoline rationing has ended for our neighbors in New Jersey. But this doesn’t mean that the hard parts are over.
The damage to New York’s public hospital system was originally estimated at over $300 million. Earlier this week, Alan Aviles, president of New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, said that those original estimates were low and that the price tag will actually be “far north” of $300 million. Time estimates to fully restore Coney Island and Bellevue, both of which experienced significant flood damage are between 2 and 3 months, with some services coming back on-line sooner.
While I think we all hope that Sandy was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Aviles said that part of the process of rebuilding will be to developing processes to handle similar storms in the future. “We’re going to go forward assuming this [kind of storm] can happen next year.”
Let’s hope that preparation remains untested for a long time.
