Rat in nyc flood11/25/2023 ![]() The more diminutive black rat, which is arboreal, meaning it lives in trees, naturally heads upward. And once it gets into a building, it can chew into the walls and scale them. The Norway rat, the species abundant in New York City, makes its home in sewers, sidewalks and underground burrows. The rat carcasses likely came out of an overflow sewage pipe before ending up on the city beach, according to Phillip. “And if they have to, they’ll keep moving further up.” “They’re going to get to where they’re out of harm’s way,” Waldvogel said. “To put it scientifically, rats ain’t stupid,” said entomologist Michael Waldvogel, associate extension professor emeritus at North Carolina State University and an expert in “anything people find yucky and disgusting.” (They can even swim up your toilet.)Īnd rats are wily, apt to move to higher ground if they have the chance. They can swim a half a mile (0.8 kilometer) or more and tread water for three days straight. Rats are excellent swimmers, points out Michael Parsons, an environmental biologist and visiting research scholar at Fordham University in New York City. ![]() The same is true in Philadelphia, which was also ravaged by rain, according to health department officials there.īut rising waters alone are not enough to take down these gritty members of a city’s Rodentia. So far, reports have not increased since Ida passed through. The department uses complaints of rat sightings and inspection reports to track rodent activity. The New York City health department knows some rats drown when there is severe flooding, but as the city doesn’t take rat censuses, there is no data on how many, spokesperson Michael Lanza said. This photo was taken by Neal Phillip, a professor of environmental science at Bronx Community College. Post-Ida, dead rats washed ashore in Canarsie Park in Brooklyn, New York. Dead rats have been spotted washed up on city beaches. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of rats were crushed or drowned in the deluge, Bobby Corrigan, a foremost rat expert and former rodentologist for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, told Gothamist. In New York City, 3.2 inches (8 centimeters) of rain fell in a single hour on September 1 - about an inch shy of the normal monthly total. Experts agree that where Ida dropped record-setting rainfall, many rats living in storm sewers would surely have been killed by the sudden inundation. ![]() It’s impossible to know how many rats are in a city - probably on the order of millions - or how many were lost during a major storm. Less clear is what happened to the denizens of those cities’ subterranean depths: the rats. The devastating human toll is well known. While sewer rats are legendary swimmers, a handful of Metropolitan Transit Authority workers told Forbes they believe most of them drowned soon after Sandy's floodwaters breached the subway system.Ī mass rat exodus hasn't been spotted yet, and city officials haven't gotten a flurry of rat reports.īut other experts believe many rats did make it out alive, using the same subway steps people do, and now pose an infection risk as they scrounge for food amid overturned trash bins and flooded grocery stores, National Geographic reported.In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the pummeling rain that hit cities up and down the East Coast at the start of September overwhelmed storm drains, poured into subway stations and filled basements like bathtubs. The floodwaters killed thousands of lab rats marooned in basement rooms at a New York University research center in Kips Bay, The New York Times reported.īut what about the hundreds of thousands of rodents who call NYC's maze of underground tunnels home? Updated: SeptemPublished: November 2, 2012įears of a "Ratpocolypse" are growing among New York City residents after many of the city's subway tunnels were flooded by superstorm Sandy earlier this week.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |