New barriers are currently being built to protect the area, but with this weekend's Nor'easter bearing down, many residents say they are worried.
In one home, a 1950s jukebox to a vintage tape recorder and a fully functioning slot machine are not just a few items collected over a lifetime -- they are now up for sale inside a Brooklyn building. The items have weathered the storm.
Resident Lokedeo Bisniuta said the water came up very high during Sandy and went right through the whole building.
In fact, the building sits right across the street from the city's $218 million Red Hook Coastal Resiliency Project. The city says it will save hundreds of millions of dollars for residents in property damage.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection released renderings of the project, with a series of floodgates and floodwalls designed to protect from extreme weather events -- like the storm surge expected this weekend.
"This is exactly the kind of store it's gonna help, which is the more moderate but more frequent storms that we're seeing because of climate change," said DEP Deputy Commissioner Beth DeFalco.
"Our infrastructure is really designed to handle rainfall about 1.7 inches of rain an hour. We're now seeing multiple storms now where we're seeing 2 plus inches of rain an hour," said NYC Emergency Management Commissioner Zach Iscol.
The problem is, the project broke ground two weeks ago and will not be finished until 2028. So, in the meantime, storm preps are underway and all hands are on deck starting Friday.
DEP crews were out cleaning catch basins in low-lying areas like Red Hook.
"Before a storm we take a look at about a thousand catch basins all around the city and proactively clean ones that we know tend to be more problematic," DeFalco added.
Officials are also asking residents to proactively clear catch basins and to be patient if there is severe flooding. Crews cannot start pumping flood water out until it first starts to recede back into the ocean.
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