SOUTH JERSEY (KYW Newsradio) — Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey 10 years ago on Saturday. In the past decade, state officials have spent countless hours preparing for the next big storm.
Gov. Phil Murphy says climate change is delivering more powerful storms more frequently, and the storms since Sandy, like Hurricanes Ida and Ian, are evidence of that.
However, he said, “New Jersey is not going to be a sitting duck.”
“We are going to be proactive. We are going to be creative. We’re going to use the best science and the best engineering to our advantage. We’re making this a whole-of-government approach to not just build resilience but to fight climate change,” he said.
“Because as I said, we cannot stop the next storm but we must do all that we can to prevent it from leveling our state and throwing tens of thousands of lives into disarray.”
Atlantic City, Long Beach Island and many other shore communities in New Jersey took a direct hit from Hurricane Sandy. In all, 12 people were killed, 2.5 million lost power, the storm caused $37 billion in damage, with most of that affecting coastal communities.
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Murphy says state and local leaders up and down the Jersey Shore are committed to resiliency and being ready for whatever Mother Nature throws at us.
“While we cannot stop climate change and we cannot stop the next storm, that doesn’t mean we are to just throw up our hands and do nothing.”
Murphy said time and money is being spent on dunes, flood gates and pump stations to mitigate future damage. And the governor praised Sen. Bob Menendez, whom he said is fighting at the federal level to take politics out of disaster relief and prevent insurance companies from leaving policy holders out to dry when their homes are destroyed.
“I’m proud of our efforts to fix these problems, but the better solution is to overhaul our disaster recovery and flood insurance systems so that these problems never happen again.”