FEMA awards NYU Langone Medical Center $1.13 billion for Hurricane Sandy recovery

According to the office of U.S. Senator Charles E. Shumer (D-NY), the $1.13 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Public Assistance funding for Sandy repair work and mitigation projects at New York University’s (NYU) Langone Medical Center is the second-largest Project Worksheet in FEMA’s history.

Shumer helped advocate for the award and noted in a press release that although $1.13 billion is a lot of money, the damage the non-profit medical center sustained nearly two years ago when Hurricane Sandy caused storm surge to flood the lower levels of the hospital was more extensive than many people realize.

“When I witnessed this [damage] first-hand a few days after Sandy, I was shocked,” Senator Shumer stated. “I am pleased to see this desperately needed reimbursement to repair and rebuild in a resilient way.”

Since Oct. 29, 2012, when storm surge driven by Superstorm Sandy knocked out power to the city and led to the failure of NYU Langone Medical Center’s backup generator, the hospital has become somewhat of a case study for what can go wrong during an emergency from nearly every possible perspective. It even led to policy precedents, such as what should happen to a hospital trying to meet EHR Meaningful Use attestation deadlines when it is hit by a disaster, and new insights into how and why hospital generators may fail. (Hint: It is not enough to simply protect the generators from flooding, fuel pumps and distribution circuts on lower levels must also be considered.)

NYU Langone Medical Center had transferred all but critical patients before the storm hit, but kept those for whom a transfer might be risky in the hospital believing that riding out the storm in a large hospital with backup generators would be safer than a transfer. When many of the backup generators then failed during the storm because of problems with fuel pumps and circuits, it forced a 15-hour long evacuation of more than 200 patients from a multi-story builing in dangerous conditions — without light, elevators or even water for flushing toilets. The overall damage was so extensive that the Medical Center’s new emergency room only opened this spring.

According to Shumer, the funding will help Langone recover financially from the enormous resources it had to put into rebuilding. The funds were authorized by FEMA’s Alternative Procedures, a process he and other members of Congress built into the Sandy Aid bill that is designed to cut federal red tape for reimbursement funds by providing a lump sum payment instead of the typical incremental funding by FEMA. His office noted that the $1.13 billion is the total project cost, 90 percent of which will be covered by the federal government. Of that, $540 million is for permanent repairs and restoration for damaged elements of a variety of NYU Langone buildings, and $589 million will go toward hazard mitigation efforts to protect against future storms.

Separately, in February, FEMA annouced that it had awarded $2.8 million in Public Assistance grants to NYU Langone Medical Center to replace damaged equipment that supported research functions for its Smilow Research Center. Like many acacemic hospitals NYU Langone housed research departments’ equipment, like specialized freezers, in the basement where there naturally was the most flooding damage.