Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears Live on FOX 5's "The 6 O'Clock News"

September 29, 2023

Steve Lacy: Joining us right now, Mayor Eric Adams to tell us how the city's been dealing with today's crisis. Mayor, thanks for joining us. Walk us through the hardest hit areas and how the city is responding at this hour.

Mayor Eric Adams: Several, this morning when I was out looking at and surveying several parts of the city, we saw flooding on the Belt Parkway, some partial flooding out in Canarsie when I drove through there, and we saw a little in the Flatbush area particularly going around on the Prospect Heights area where Prospect Park is located.

And so it's a real concern, you know, the heavy rainfalls, you know, our subway system is below ground, and so it impacted our services. But you know, New York pushed through and just hats off to our first responders, our civil servants and New Yorkers that knew they needed to take alternate ways to get to their place of employment or stay at home.

Natasha Verma: Responding to criticism that the city wasn't properly prepared for the storm or that we didn't hear from you soon enough. You didn't mention it in your presser yesterday and schools were still open today. How are you responding to that?

Mayor Adams: You know, you guys have been around a long time. You know every time you have a storm you hear chorus that comes with it. We understand that, and it's part of the process. I built an amazing team, and if I am the only one that could respond to these urgent matters, then we're in a lot of trouble.

I have an ex-military person in NYCEM, Zach Iscol, who was front and center. We made the announcement NotifyNYC around 2:50, 2:45 yesterday. The news stations did an amazing job of sending out the warning at the same time. And for anyone who stated our schools should be closed, I made it clear from Covid days: the safest place for a child is in school, and we are not going to ever move away from that. Our children shouldn't be out hanging out with their friends on street corners.

We got through this day, parents had stability, because not every parent can work from home and have the emergency childcare. Great decision by the chancellor — another leader in the city — and we're going to continue to make sure under urgent emergencies we will close schools; other than that, our babies are going to be in the school.

Lacy: What sort of price tag do you think the city is looking at long term to deal with the impacts of climate change in storms like this which we're told are once every 100 or once in 1,000 years but seem to happen twice a year at this point.

Mayor Adams: No, this is something that we need to be concerned. It's long term and short term. Long term is what we're doing by shoring up our shorelines and waterfronts, but this rain is not coming from the rivers and the oceans, and so we have to be prepared inland as well. And that is why we're doing everything about really rebuilding and looking at our sewer systems, getting them prepared for this heavy rain flow.

Listen, these sewer systems are not built to handle water at this level, and so it's a combination. We must do greater things to improve our environment, and that's what we're doing, our team at DEP and our environmental group are coming in place with real small plan NYC items that we want to do to improve our environment.

Lacy: And Mr. Mayor, before we let you go, I do want to ask about, do we have any update on basement apartments?  That was, we saw a tremendous loss of life two years ago during Ida. I know there's been issues sort of updating the rules to make those illegal apartments legal to sort of get the whole world above ground. That's been stalled. Do you have any update on that situation for this storm?

Mayor Adams: We learned a lot after what happened years ago when we lost many of...several New Yorkers. And everything from early warning systems that are in place letting people know. We have a notification that specifically goes to those who are in basement apartments. And so we were very clear, listen, these first responders did an amazing job.

Three rescues from basements, 15 rescues from cars that were stalled on our roadways, zero reported injuries thus far, zero serious injuries thus far. That's what we need to be really looking at. This city responded. First responders, civil servants, everyday New Yorkers, and we got through this storm. We got more rain for tonight, but we need to take our hats off to this great resilient city.

Verma: Yes. I mean, that is really good news. All right, Mayor Adams, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us tonight.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.

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