Governor Hochul: "We gather on this one day, this momentous occasion to say, remember the lives lost during this horrific weather event. 18 cherished lives gone too soon. We also paused to honor the heroism and to just say, 'Thank you, thank you for being there for all of us.' For in the worst of times you showed us the best of humanity and indeed the very best of New York."

Earlier today, on the one year anniversary of Hurricane Ida, Governor Kathy Hochul honored seven New Yorkers for their heroic actions in the aftermath of the storm, which flooded homes and roads, caused billions of dollars in damages and killed 18 New Yorkers. Governor Hochul also issued a proclamation honoring September 1, 2022 as Hurricane Ida Remembrance Day. The event took place at Elmcor Youth & Adult Activities in Queens alongside local community leaders and partners in government.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format. AUDIO of the event is available. PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page. Click Here

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good afternoon, everybody. So happy to be here to see all of you and have a chance to reflect on how far we've come in this extraordinary year. First of all, I want to thank Elmcor for hosting us here. Saeeda Dunston, you've done an extraordinary job during truly some tough, tough circumstances. I want to a give you a special shout-out. Thank you, Saeeda, for all you've done. I know the senior center in particular, your main senior center was damaged and closed for over 10 months. I kept asking about it because I knew that there were seniors who needed that sense of connection, that sense of place. I see a lot of you nodding heads. So, how does it look after 10 months? Glad to be back? Alright.

Also, to our Borough President, who was there during an extremely troubling time with the aftermath of Ida. I want to thank Donovan Richards for his incredible leadership. Thank you.

We'll also be hearing from our Congressmember, Grace Meng. We walked many streets together and did a lot of collective hugs of people that were just wearing with the pain and devastation. They could not have foreseen what they had to go through. It was so unexpected. So, I want to thank Congressmember Grace Meng for being there on the ground from the very beginning and being a voice for this community in the aftermath. You did an extraordinary job.

Also, Senator Jessica Ramos, again, we walked the streets. You knew the people, you brought them food, you took care of them in such a profound way. I want to thank you at this one year anniversary and thank you for your leadership.

Same with Senator Toby Stavisky. Again, we were there. You did all of this. Your heart was just filled with anguish to see what your constituents had to go through. So, I want to thank you for being there in a personal way, and making sure we understood there needs in taking care of them.

And also the same with Catalina Cruz. Thank you for your leadership during this, but also during the aftermath. Both of you, all of you for bringing the attention of the needs of individuals who are not eligible for FEMA, that we had to actually ensure that there was money to help make them whole. Simply because they did not have the same documentation as another person living in the community. So, we made some real differences in people's lives and thank you for that.

Also, I do want to give a shout-out to my administration. They're often the unsung heroes. They're the ones who show up, assess a situation, and then work on solving problems. And I want to start with our Secretary of State Robert Rodriguez, who oversaw the program to get money out to the undocumented families who really had nowhere to turn. And you stood up and tried to just lift them up and get them the resources that were available. So, Secretary of State Robert Rodriguez, let's give him a round of applause.

Our Superintendent of Financial Services, Adrienne Harris. Once again, you don't think of all the agencies that are involved, but we needed you to step up and make sure that there was insurance coverage, that FEMA money was being spent in the proper ways. So, I want to thank you for that as well, Superintendent Harris.

Commissioner Jackie Bray, boy, she has her hands in everything. I want to thank her for what she does all the time. We're going to be leaving here to head up north and observe the response to a wildfire that's going on in the Catskills right now. And other times a year, she is with me during ice storms. So, we're always in the middle of disasters together, but to be in the foxhole with someone with your experience gives me a great deal of confidence. Jackie Bray as well.

Rory Christian, making sure that the utilities did the right thing, the Chair of our Public Service Commission, to let them know we have high expectations when crises occur. When unexpected weather events occur, they should not be unexpected to the utilities. So, get your job done. And I thank you for being the voice of our administration on behalf of all of our constituents.

And Janno Lieber. Is Janno here? Well, let's give him a shout-out anyhow because it is a tough thing when you're witnessing our subways flooded with raging waters like a river heading down the stairs and flooding them. And it's all about saving lives in the moment, but also restoring service, making sure that they're safe afterward despite the damage. So, I want to thank Janno Lieber for all he has done as well. So, these are the people who I just want to take this opportunity to applaud as well, as well as many others we'll be recognizing in a few minutes.

This storm, Ida, was Mother Nature at her fiercest and unsparing. As we've seen too often in the State of New York, all these 100-year events or 500-year events or thousand-year events, they seemed to be occurring with more regularity. And that was supposedly a 500-year event, 11 days earlier, unprecedented flooding from Tropical Storm Henri. Every 500 years that's supposed to happen. So we were good for a while. Oh, 11 days later, we got hit with another one. So just so you know, I'm not buying that analysis anymore. I'm not buying these 100-year events.

I'm saying our climate has changed. Whether we want to accept that fact or not, it all has changed. And so we always had to be prepared for the very worst. It's a tough way to live, but we have to be prepared to be able to take care of people and respond quickly and literally save lives because that's what we were called to do this time last year.

But we saw a wall of water come, turning our highways into rivers and people, a lot of people were watching Serena last night. Anybody watching Serena last night? That's our girl, the queen. You know, people were watching the U.S. Open and having to flee there for their lives, as the raging waters were coming there and throughout this community. It was unprecedented. The amount of rainfall was extraordinary. Something you're going talk about for generations. And the violent winds were impossible to escape, power outages, down trees, falling on cars, falling on houses, billions and billions of dollars in property damage.

Ida stole so much from New Yorkers, but worst of all, it stole the lives of 18 New Yorkers, 11 in Queens alone. We're here today to remember them, to honor them, to let their families know they're not forgotten. They are victims of a gut-wrenching tragedy. We mourn their loss every single day.

So, in the aftermath, I went to the streets with many people here. We spoke to the families. We tried to console them. How do you console someone when they've lost a family member to something so wild you hadn't expected you wake up in the morning, you think it's an ordinary day. And by the next day, your world is forever changed.

So there's a lot of pain out there. It was hard. And also the families, the individuals who did survive, everything they had amassed in their lives was gone. We went into the alley, went downstairs, saw homes where the water, the flood waters had gone so high, the marks on the wall were shocking way over my head. Seven feet, eight feet in someone's home. Literally having to break a window to escape. The stories were horrific. And when I looked out on the street and I saw the raging mud and people sitting there on street corners, trying to go through the mud and find pictures of their babies and wedding pictures, and maybe a birth certificate. Their lives were literally washed away.

And Congresswoman Meng, and I saw this image that'll be with us forever. A mother and a daughter, she couldn't have been more than five, maybe even younger, sitting on a curb in front of a wash base filled with dirty water. And she had a little toothbrush and she was scrubbing her little sneakers to try to get the mud that was caked up so she'd have something to wear on her feet because she was standing there barefoot, she had one pair of sneakers and she almost lost them. Those images never leave you.

It was my first week on the job as Governor. I will never forget what I saw in this community at that time, every day I think of them. And so we spent the days, the weeks showing up, talking to people. What do you need? How can we help? It was very real. We needed water, we needed food. We needed a place to stay, you know, hotels, find some place to give people a shelter over their heads. But I want to say in the midst of all this trauma and stress, I saw something extraordinary in the face of all that devastation. We've witnessed countless acts of heroism from that community.

I watched people put aside their differences, roll up their sleeves, come together, step up to help their neighbors and friends and strangers. And the heroes of this community, yes always the first responders, we honor them every single day, the firefighters, our police, our EMTs, who put their lives on the line to rescue people during unknown circumstances. And whenever there's a crisis, they always show up for us.

But in New York, it's not just the men and women in uniform who step up and save lives. It's every day heroes like Junior and Jenny Moreno from East Elmhurst. Could you raise your hands?

I met them last year. Their own house was flooded. Their car, destroyed. They didn't sit there, wallowing in self-pity saying, "Oh my God, this happened to me." They immediately sprung into action, and they were out there in the street checking on their neighbors. Was that you cooking the barbecue out there, too? There were barbecues going on the streets, someone rolled out the grill, "We're making hot dogs to feed people and taking care of them."  

They dedicated themselves to people who were hurting even more than they were. Went door-to-door, checking on people, providing, helping them fill out paperwork, helping the Red Cross identify people in need. These are the people that I honor today. People like the two of them, who just truly made me so proud to be the Governor of a State with people like Junior and Jenny. So, thank you.  

We also were served by so many religious leaders who stepped up. They're the heart and soul of communities. People turn to them when they have their spiritual needs, but also their physical needs. Religious leaders like Reverend Patrick Young of First Baptist Church, mobilizing action. Please stand up, Reverend Young, please stand up. Basic things like food and water, mattresses. I mean you realize you don't want to sleep on the street or in your house that's covered with mud. A mattress meant the world to people. You stepped up and met their needs. Reverend, I am grateful to have you and our state and the way you served God, but also serve our people.

So, thank you. We also want to recognize the people from the building trades, the community organizations. Any labor in the house? Thank you.  

People like Tafadar Sourov of Laborers Local 97. Would you stand up please, Mr. Sourov? Please stand up. They provided free assistance, clearing the debris, and there was so much debris. It was incredible how much was in the streets. Rebuilding homes that were destroyed in the storm, they went up above and beyond once again to help their neighbors when they needed them. And Yoselin Genao-Estrella, did I say that right? Probably not. I'm really sorry, Estrella. Okay. I'll give you another chance. From Neighborhood Housing Services. Wow. What a powerhouse you were when people needed you the most. They didn't just tell people to figure out the housing. They provided direct financial assistance and grants for home repairs and connected people with NYSERDA and how to get the power back on and heat pumps and all those basic things.  

I remember going to one street and we're bringing them food. I said, "Well, why aren't they able to cook in their houses?" Well, there's no clean water. The power is not on, just basic things that you take for granted every single day that we never will take for granted again. So, thank you for what you and Neighborhood Housing Services did.  

And then there's here like Saeeda Dunston, who, and everyone right here at Elmcor, you became the FEMA command center right here. And what you did, distributing cleaning supplies and helping seniors return to their homes and just feel that sense of we're going to be okay. That sense of normalcy. There's people looking out for you.  

I'm so honored for what you did every single day, but when you really stepped up a year ago and you and your team, I am grateful. I'm so grateful. And so many small businesses, my gosh, they were hit so hard. They get slammed with the pandemic shut down because of that hard-to-find workers. Then you throw on a 500-year hurricane. To leaders like Tom Grech and the Queens Chamber of Commerce. Stand up, Tom, stand up.  

You provided assistance, you gave them a lifeline. You gave them hope. And every single person I've recognized, represents hundreds more who did something that is profoundly simple in their minds. But to us, it made all the difference in the world. And I'm here to say to all of us: you're our heroes, you're our heroes.  

And I know there's so much more to do. There's still individuals that are hurting. The community has suffered for far too long. We're trying to rebuild people's homes. And we also, as I mentioned, we had to be prepared for the, if cometh, if something like this happens again. So literally in July, I announced our 2022 Hurricane Preparedness Plan, because we're never going to be caught off guard.  

And we talked about how we're putting utilities on notice all over the state. We're all watching the weather when you start seeing that bad forecast, and I'm watching the Atlantic right now, because we are in the peak of hurricane season. You start deploying people early, you get ready, you get on the ground because otherwise you're going to have to deal with me and that's not going to be good for either one of us because I'll take care of the people I represent. I'll make sure that you get the job done.  

So, let's have those conversations now while the skies are sunny. So when the rains fall, there's no question that the people in the State of New York will be in very, very good hands. And that is what we're going to continue to do.  

As long as there's climate change, we have to keep doing our best to fight the effect to that. We'll fight all those forces, but history will judge us and how we respond to this post-pandemic world. All those challenges that we, as human beings, have had to endure how we deal with extreme weather events like the fact that New York State had more hurricanes last year than Florida did because daily storms are becoming a regular occurrence. But we gather on this one day, this momentous occasion to say, remember the lives lost during this horrific weather event. 18 cherished lives gone too soon. We also paused to honor the heroism and to just to say, "Thank you, thank you for being there for all of us."

For in the worst of times you showed us the best of humanity and indeed the very best of New York.

Now we have the opportunity to honor the most incredible individuals and they'll be recognized and called up.