MTA preparing NYC subways for severe flooding and torrential rain

[00:00:00]From Mike, our team coverage moves to Lisa Evers. She's in downtown Brooklyn this afternoon where they are holding a meeting on plans to handle today's deluge, Lisa.

[00:00:10]>> Well, Richard, I've been in a lot of places behind the scenes here in New York City, but this is my first time ever being inside an MTA pump room headquarters. Now, this is where they are navigating and monitoring all of the situations and preparing for the heavy rains. Let me show you what's going on here. So, this is one of the mobile pump trucks that they have that will be going out to deal with emergencies when water to keep water from flooding into the system. MTA CEO Janno Lieber telling us that their main goal is to keep the water from getting into the tracks, to getting into the subway system because what's been happening is once it does, once that water gets in there, the some of the electrical systems have been going out. So, they've been over the last several days, actually since the weekend, he said, they've had people on overtime trying to make sure that those electrical boxes are secure and getting these trucks ready. This truck will have five pumps and this is what they look like, these pumps that go to the various locations. He said there's 286 pump rooms spread throughout the city and throughout the subway system and that they're really concerned about the amount of water because on any average day, like even before it starts raining, they're pumping 13 million gallons of water out every single day. But, they said the goal is to try and get that keep the water from getting down onto the tracks and into the stations and also once it's there, to to try to keep it, you know, to try to get it out as fast as possible. So, take a look at some of this video we shot just a couple of minutes ago. They gave us a demonstration of how these pumps are working. So, the pumps will be able to be moved to the locations and this is the critical factor this particular time around. Uh Janno Lieber saying that we have to face the reality these storms are getting more frequent, this extreme weather, these extreme deluges, the short a short time span of heavy heavy amounts of rain that the city just isn't prepared for. So, these workers, these MTA workers that have been going overtime since the weekend, actually were checking drains, all the drains in the city, especially in the main thoroughfares around the subway stations, to make sure that they are not clogged with trash, make sure they're not clogged with debris, branches, anything like that that may slow the flow of water. And so, that's what they're trying to do. Now, um Lieber said that they have been working on this. They have He said it it may not be a full you know, it it may not be absolutely perfect because you can't predict where all of the rain is going to be at any particular moment.

[00:02:33]But, let's take a listen to what MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber had to say.

[00:02:38]>> Priority number one is getting the water out of the system. We do this every day.

[00:02:44]13 million gallons of water are removed every day from the subway system through our pumping infrastructure. The problem is that storms are getting more frequent and more intense. New Yorkers know this.

[00:02:58]And they're increasingly overwhelming the city of New York's sewer infrastructure.

[00:03:06]>> So, basically what they've been doing over the last several weeks has been really getting a whole system in place.

[00:03:12]They have these mobile trucks that are going to go out basically putting all of the pumps on wheels so that they can get to wherever they're needed. In order to find out where they're needed, of course, they're coordinating with New York City Emergency Management, but they also set up a command center here at the pump room headquarters to monitor where that water is coming in and let let's hope that they're able to get a lot of it out before it disrupts any kind of transportation. But, that's the latest here from downtown Brooklyn. I'm Lisa Evers, Fox 5 News. Richard, back to you.