B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Updates New Yorkers on State’s Preparedness in the Face of Extreme Weather

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul updated New Yorkers on the state’s preparedness and response capabilities as extreme weather continues to grow in frequency and intensity each year. In the face of this growing threat, as well as looming cuts in critical federal funding, Governor Hochul has made it a top priority to invest in the state’s capabilities to prepare for, and respond to, all types of extreme weather.

B-ROLL of the Governor touring the new Innovative State Weather Risk Communication Center at the University at Albany is available to stream on Youtube here and in TV quality video here (h.264, mp4).

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Good morning, everyone. This is a very special building we're in today — a state-of-the-art facility where we find students and experts working together to do one thing, and that is to keep New Yorkers safe, to address the climate issues that require a lot of research and innovation, and a lot of thought leadership.

And I want to thank the people who help us here. I want to thank our Commissioner, Jackie Bray — you'll be hearing from her, the Department of Homeland Security Emergency Services; Dr. Nick Bassill, the Director of the Weather Risk Communication Center at Mesonet which is really important. I just had a tour a few minutes ago; had a chance to thank the team here to talk about all the work that they're doing as well. And I want to thank Dr. Rodríguez for hosting us here once again.

Summer is supposed to be a time of joy — you have time to slow down, spend time with family, make memories, time for kids to build lasting memories and sometimes go to summer camps. This week we're reminded of how fragile that sense of joy and happiness can be when we saw the devastating floods in the Texas Hill Country that have destroyed so many lives and so many families.

Dozens of children, over 100 fatalities and over 200 people still unaccounted for statewide, and I cannot imagine that feeling of waking up every day and not knowing where your child is, your family member. It's excruciating, it's devastating, and I know I speak on behalf of all New Yorkers when I see our heartbreak for everyone who's been thrown into this chaos, this tragedy, this sadness. It was in Texas as well as North Carolina, New Mexico, and we truly mourn all these devastating losses.

And, we're helping. I said, “What can New York do?” They have a system where they put out a request for assistance from the beginning, and we've been waiting to be able to deploy our resources and we've deployed four state troopers — but, most importantly, our three specially-trained canines to assist with recovery — and I'm sure they're going to have some powerful stories to tell when they return. And I want to thank them and express my deep gratitude through all the first responders from New York and elsewhere who stepped up to help our friends in crisis.

We're always there. This is New York's way. We're always there to help when these events call for us. But here at home my first thought was, “Are we ready? What if the exact same events unfolded in the State of New York? Are we prepared? Would we have warning systems? Could we avert this horrible loss of life?” And so, I immediately call Commissioner Bray — who is our Emergency Management Expert, but also a former Chief of Staff from the National Weather Service, which comes into play hourly — and I said, “I want to come here. I want a briefing. I want to make sure that our team is on top of this because there is no room for a mistake or a failure when people's lives are on the line.”

And here's the situation: Don't even call it extreme weather anymore, this is weather. This is the normal weather that we're experiencing, and it's a shame. This was forecasted by thought leaders decades ago, that if mankind didn't stop its assault on Mother Nature, there'd be revenge. Well, Mother Nature is getting her revenge now and that's what we're dealing with. It grows more destructive every single year.

Since I became Governor toward the end of 2021, not one, but two hurricanes in my first couple of weeks on the job — still putting a team in place, still hiring my emergency management team. Two hurricanes; snow storms of an epic scale, historic scale of snow storms and deadly storms like we witnessed in Buffalo a few years ago; an earthquake in New York City; extreme drought; record-breaking heat; 20 brush fires, wildfires — we never had wildfires in the State of New York.

And guess how many tornadoes we've had? Thirty-seven tornadoes in the last 18 months — that was more than all of tornado alley combined, and we've already had five this year including just this past week in the town of Phelps. I called the Supervisor, we deployed people and a number of homes had their roofs blown off.

So, we're not here to alarm people, but we need to be vigilant and I want people to know about our preparation and what response system we have in place here. And right now for New York, there's no active weather warnings in effect so this is not what this purpose is, but I'm not waiting until tragedy strikes to make sure New Yorkers are reassured of how we're managing this.

First of all, we invest; we invest enormous dollars ahead of time. We also spend time, and I've met the people who do this; they track every possible storm — whether it's a raindrop coming down, whether it's a flash flood, whether it's a tornado, hopefully more rare, whether it's thunderstorms — they track them and we take them very seriously, and we rely on the best science and the best people starting right here at UAlbany's building, the eTech building that we're in. This is home to the State's Weather Risk Communication Center — it's a big sentence.

I was here with Al Roker when we first opened — he was so impressed with this place. There's nothing like this in the country. When you walk in these doors, you think, “Oh, of course it's a nice building. They're doing some work here. Doesn't matter.” It matters and nobody else takes this as seriously in the entire country as we do in the State of New York, and I'm proud of that.

We also have the National Weather Services Offices here. We're across the street from the State's Emergency Operations Center. When there's a crisis, all these systems coordinate together — that's the beauty of this. And we have the first partnership of its kind funded by the State of New York, bringing together top meteorologists, atmospheric scientists, social scientists and emergency managers to deliver real time information. That is everything. Everything relies on timeliness, speed you get it to them before and after the storms. And so, we track this and make sure that our state and local decision makers have everything they need, and so this center is designed to take federal forecasts and make sure that people on the ground understand them.

But this is really critical that we invest. So invest, what does that mean? It means money. You know what just happened this week? Just this week, this center was told they're losing $3 million to do their work — thank you, Washington, D.C. The same week people's lives are being lost because of catastrophic storms, you tell us that we just lost $3 million. We've lost money, FEMA has lost a lot of money across the country, hundreds of meteorologists have lost their jobs across the country and so many other key programs.

And so, what I was talking about is the Department of Homeland Security — they canceled a $3 million grant to the Mesonet researchers right here at UAlbany. This grant was awarded two years ago — developed emergency management tools using data from the statewide system. And a loss of about 12 positions — people that are saving lives with their work here today will not be able to stay because the federal government has different priorities obviously, right? We know what they are: making sure that the wealthiest in the nation have tax cuts — that's why this program is being cut.

So, while the President is disinvesting in the safety of Americans, we are investing. Fifteen months ago, we expanded the Office of Emergency Management — we doubled our field staff, we committed $15 million to help localities — and I come out of local government, you hear me say this all the time, how important it is that our localities have what they need as well, because that's where the action happens — and make sure there's flood barriers, and high flow pumps and generators. The generator's the most precious device in any kind of storm, and those preparations mean the difference between a disaster and withstanding a disaster and resilience. So, we made grants available last year.

Last year, I toured a lot of the flooded areas and I knew what people needed. They needed grants, they needed money to help rebuild their homes, and we committed $11 million in emergency services. This year, another $3.5 million to rehabilitate homes that are being destroyed by tornadoes. Guess what, my friends? We never had to worry about rebuilding homes after tornadoes because we didn't get them. They were such a rarity and now it's becoming another fact of life in New York that we have tornadoes and have to help communities rebuild.

And yesterday, I announced a $21 million program in flood protection projects in the Southern Tier. Floods, they were devastating. I watched, stood with a family on the shoreline and watched their home literally sinking into the river, and they knew that house that they had built — this young couple built it with their own hands, remember when we talked to them?

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And I was crying. They're just like, “This is everything. We saved our whole, all of our money to build this house.” His dad helped build, his mom helped build — everybody. It was a whole family pride to build their home and it was gone. So we announced more money to help in those areas as well.

So, I'm setting the course. I'm not blind to the fact that this is what is going to be our daily existence, our regular existence and there'll be more extreme weather events to come in the future. But our State Budget has to build on this, and we're continuing our work with Climate Smart communities, helping communities adapt to climate change, and that's why we have a $40 million Resilient and Ready program.

In May, we introduced the triple three, triple one — this is our real time emergency system. Anyone in the State of New York can now text the name of their county or borough to 3-3-3-1-1-1 and get critical responses to their questions. We're going to continue piloting these programs, making sure that people have what they need.

Our tabletop exercises, I participated in a number of them. What it looks like when you have all the professionals around a room, it's very impressive. And I sit there and they bring data to me based on a scenario that is often based on facts from elsewhere and they tell me how they respond to it, and I have to answer questions on how I want actions taken. So in light of these tragedies, I've asked my team to tabletop exactly what happened in Texas. I want that played out here with my professionals. I want the answer on how we would've dealt with that, what would've made the difference, anything we could have done, any lessons learned because that perhaps is the only positive takeaway from that kind of tragedy, is that others can learn and make sure that tragedy is averted in the future.

Basically it's all about protecting people, all about protecting New Yorkers, their lives, their families, their homes and whether it's the wildfires, or hurricanes, or heat waves, or flash floods, our mission is the same: keeping people safe — and how we do that? We act before it's too late — and to make sure that no family ever has to endure what we have seen unfold on television this past week.

With that, I want to turn it over to Commissioner Bray who will share how the state is responding to disasters and how families can be prepared as well. Commissioner Bray.