When the remnants of Hurricane Ida reached New York City last September, the trail of destruction it left in its wake did not hit all New Yorkers equally.
The natural disaster trapped the city’s least protected, particularly low-income residents who could only afford to live in tight, illegally zoned basement dwellings that quickly became death traps once the flooding started. Many of the 13 New York City residents who died were of Asian descent, spoke limited English and may not have received warnings about the severity of the storm in time.
The uneven fallout from the storm was just one of the most recent outcomes of a system that has long put at a disadvantage the city’s most vulnerable, especially those for whom English is not a second language.
So this week, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, pushed the National Weather Service to expand the number of languages it uses to send out severe weather alerts — which are currently sent in just English and Spanish — citing Ida’s devastating effects.
Ms. James called on the agency to begin sending its alerts in Chinese, Russian, French Creole, Bengali and Korean. She said increasing the number of languages used to warn residents of coming emergencies like flash floods could mean the difference between survival and death.
“Language should never be a barrier to critical information that could save lives,” Ms. James said in a statement.
The National Weather Service distributes its severe weather alerts over the radio, local TV news channels and through cell towers that ping all cellphone users in a targeted area. New York City has its own emergency alert system called Notify NYC, which alerts residents about everything from extreme weather to subway outages through email, text message, phone call, social media and a mobile app.
A spokeswoman for the National Weather Service said in a statement that although the agency has been working on ways to deliver alerts in more languages, it broadcasts its alerts through emergency alert systems run by the Federal Communications Commission.
These alert systems, the spokeswoman said, are not designed to support languages other than English and Spanish, and expanding language access would first require new rules from the F.C.C.
The destruction left behind by the storm cast a fresh light on ongoing language access barriers for the city’s non-English speakers, who make up almost 25 percent of the city’s population.
In interviews this week, advocates for the city’s immigrant communities welcomed the move by the attorney general, but said city and state leaders must go further in order to make real inroads against the deeper problems that contributed to the storm’s disastrous impact.
“The language access piece is just one piece of how to address inequities that ultimately led to the death of so many folks,” said Vanessa Leung, co-executive director of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families.
Other cities and states around the country have also tried to find ways to bridge the language gap for their public service announcements. In Minnesota, emergency weather alerts and other public safety information are broadcast in Hmong, Somali and Spanish on public access TV, while in Houston, emergency alerts are translated and broadcast by three Spanish-language TV stations.
New York City is home to speakers of as many as 800 languages, and the city currently requires that information about government services be made available in 10 languages besides English, including Chinese, Urdu, Bengali, Arabic and Haitian Creole. Notify NYC is available in 14, including Yiddish, Russian and American Sign Language.
But in order to receive Notify NYC alerts, residents have to sign up for the service themselves. Several advocates said their community members were unaware it even existed.
“That’s the sad part of these things, right?” said Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director of the Asian American Federation. “There has to be a tragedy before we realize where all the cracks are.”
Non-English speaking communities often disseminate information about government services internally, via media outlets in their own languages or through social media apps like WhatsApp and Line. Automated alerts, advocates said, would be much faster and more convenient.
But with emergency alerts come other challenges. Many older New Yorkers may not be familiar with technology such as smartphones. Some may not even be literate in their native languages. And understanding alerts would only be a first step; non-English speakers would also need to know where to evacuate to, or what to do if their homes or belongings were damaged.
Advocates said that they wanted city and state leaders to push for deeper changes, such as building more affordable, safe housing for low-income people to live in.
Many who died during Ida’s floods were living in illegally converted basement dwellings with only one exit and entrance; some advocates noted that if these homes were legalized, it would enable landlords to make them safer to live in.
These are changes, said Jennifer Sun, co-executive director of Asian Americans for Equality, “that we believe are more fundamental to minimize the level of risk those immigrant communities would face.”
Advocates also underscored the need for translated material beyond a warning system for severe weather. For instance, many non-English speaking residents often run into problems when it comes to obtaining housing or health care.
Sung Hee Jang, 66, immigrated to Queens from South Korea with her husband, Hio S. Jang, 73, almost 40 years ago. She and her husband, who has Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, speak very little English.
Navigating the health care system has been endlessly challenging, she said, especially when she has to call a doctor or a pharmacist over the phone.
“I try to go to Korean doctors as much as I can,” Ms. Jang said through a translator.
But given the extent of her husband’s medical needs, she has also had to go to English-speaking doctors or pharmacists at times. She has often felt discriminated against during these encounters, she said, and has refused to return.
“I felt very helpless and very uncomfortable,” she said. “Sometimes I felt actively disrespected by the doctors because I couldn’t speak the language.”
For the last five years, she and her husband have been getting help from Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York, a nonprofit group serving low-income immigrants, to translate everything from medical bills to insurance policies.
Without the organization, she said, she would never have known how to get insurance or Medicaid long-term care for her husband.
There are many non-English speakers with needs like hers, she said, calling on the state to invest in more community organizations to help them expand their translation capabilities and outreach.
“I’m thankful for it, but there are a lot of people who don’t know about this still,” she said.
Advocates said they also regularly get requests for help translating information on housing, such as how to apply for a new place to live.
“We get a lot of inquiries from NYCHA residents about the lease-renewal process,” Ms. Sun said, referring to the New York City Housing Authority. “And even though I believe that info should be available through translation, it isn’t.”
For now, advocates are hopeful that calling the public’s attention to language barriers in emergency weather alerts may help pave the way for other changes.
“This is just the first step. Let’s just address the low bar,” Ms. Leung said. “This has been a long time coming.”
Sooji Kim contributed translation.
