NYC migrants brave storms in tents at Floyd Bennett Field
BROOKLYN - So much rain fell Sunday overnight and Monday morning, New York City officials were prepared to evacuate the migrants staying inside tents at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.
There was always concern about putting migrants in tents in New York City during the winter. Sunday night was one of the first winter storms they experienced. And while it wasn’t pleasant, the city is confident it’s safe.
Wet and windy conditions felt worse at Floyd Bennett Field, where 2,000 asylum seekers huddled in large tents as the storm hit Sunday night into Monday morning.
"The night did not go well. All of the tents lifted off the ground because of the wind," a woman said to FOX 5 in Spanish.
She said her kids couldn’t sleep the entire night.
The Twitter page of the Immigration coalition posted video from inside the massive tents, claiming the tents were coming apart and flooded with 3 inches of water.
They said staff was doing nothing to calm the fears of scared migrants, a claim backed up by the woman who spoke to FOX 5, who said the social workers couldn’t help because they didn’t have a solution for the storm. That’s when the city got involved.
"If you look up at the roof, if you look at the floor, it’s dry the tents are still standing," said New York City emergency management commissioner Zach Iscol, in a post on Twitter.
Iscol said he visited the tents around 4 a.m. Monday morning to ensure the thousands of migrants inside were safe.
"No one from the city thinks it’s ideal to have families with children out here at Floyd Bennett Field," Iscol said. "But that was what’s given to us by the state and the federal government."
He explained the heavy-duty tents are incredibly strong and designed to handle severe weather. The roof is created to flex in the wind.
"The way the roof is designed it can make loud noises and be very scary for folks," Iscol said. "At no point in time were they endanger of collapsing or people in danger out here."
The city did have an evacuation plan ready to go in the case the storm got worse.
But the weather last night, and this morning, never met that threshold.