'Really bad': Severe storms are new normal, New York leaders say

STONY BROOK, Long Island (PIX11) -- As Long Island residents and work crews spent Tuesday cleaning up after last weekend's flood damage, officials said they now have to assume that major storm events like it will be more frequent. 

Suffolk County leaders laid out basic guidelines on Tuesday for making local infrastructure more resilient to climate change-fueled severe weather. Meanwhile, some county residents said that anything that can help spare them from the damage they've suffered is more than welcome. 

One of those residents is Chris Nemeth. She, her entire family, and some close friends were at her home in Stony Brook trying to salvage items in her finished basement, which the family uses as a walk-in closet. 

Everything was waterlogged after flood waters had risen to the ceiling last Sunday night into Monday morning.

"Living like this is really bad," Nemeth said while she packed clothes into boxes for removal. "Who can live like this? It's terrible."

The month's worth of rain -- nine inches -- that fell in 24 hours left her paddling a kayak to get out of her home on Monday. On Tuesday, her homegrown work crew was busy pumping water and removing mildewing items. 

It was a similar scene at the home next door on Martingale Court. There, George Echeverria talked about the overnight inundation Sunday into Monday, as a group of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity brothers whom he mentors helped him to continue pumping out his property.

"It was a river," Echeverria said, "a river like whitewater rafting strength, how the water was just shooting down." 

Both he and the Nemeths, next door, said that the severe weather was made worse because of a problematic drainage basin, called a sump, on the other side of their property line. 

"It needs to be fixed," said Nemeth. "It's been fixed, [then] it's not fixed. It bursts and floods our house."

Issues like the overwhelmed sump were the focus of the county's official efforts on Tuesday. 

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine led a news conference late Tuesday morning with state and county legislators and county agency leaders. 

It was held at the docks of what had been Stump Pond, a body of water in a park in Smithtown created in the early 1800s when a dam was built on the site. The intense water pressure from Sunday night's storm caused the dam, which had last been upgraded 100 years ago, to breach, leaving the pond completely drained. 

"The old rule of thumb regarding the amount of water that can be handled," said Romaine, "is out the window."

He said that he was referring to water catchment facilities county-wide. "We're facing a new challenge with climate change," he said. 

Romaine called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency at the state level. He and other officials at the event said that doing so would help make parts of Suffolk County eligible for federal infrastructure funds that can go toward building new facilities that can handle more frequent, severe storms. 

A state-level state of emergency should also help individual homeowners and renters, the county executive said. 

"We're gonna see if we can qualify you for federal, state assistance," said Romaine. 

Echeverria, whose home was flooded, said that it's vital that that assistance come through. 

"Without any help," he said, "we don't have a home."

A representative of Hochul at the county's news conference said that the governor's office intends to do all it can. Meanwhile, Echeverria said he's relying on a GoFundMe effort that a relative set up to help him and his family defray the costs of dealing with the damage. 

He and his next-door neighbors, the Nemeths, said that Stony Brook University Medical Center, which is located very close to their property lines, owns the overflowing sump near their property. 

In a statement, Stony Brook University said that it "is reviewing the situation."