State Registries Saved Lives During Sandy, But Not in NYC

In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a registry that would allow disaster responders to know where to find people most urgently in need of aid. But he does not appear to have followed through.

Police in the Rockaways found the drowned body of 90-year-old George Stathis lying between a couch and the wall in his Belle Harbor basement five days after Hurricane Sandy. In Staten Island, Jack Paterno, paralyzed from cerebral palsy, was helpless to escape as flood waters rushed into his bungalow.