Twelve Brooklyn neighborhoods, twelve different loss patterns

Brooklyn is not one building type. A brownstone in Park Slope with rubble-fill walls, a converted warehouse in Williamsburg with a timber roof, a 1950s detached house in Canarsie on a slab, and a pre-war apartment block in Flatbush with original risers all behave differently when water enters. The drying method, the equipment and the removal list change with the assembly, not with the ZIP code.

Grade matters as much as construction. The neighborhoods along Jamaica Bay and the East River take surge water at the door during coastal storms. Blocks on higher ground take water from above, through a roof, a riser or a supply line. Several neighborhoods take both in the same storm, and the two sources are different categories with different insurance treatment, so they have to be documented separately.

Each page below covers the housing stock, the way water travels in that stock, the failures we see repeatedly, and the access constraints that affect a crew on the block. Nothing on those pages is a template with a name swapped in.