When Hurricane Sandy fell on New York in 2012, up to 14 feet of water surged up the coast and into the Hudson River, driven by 80 mile per hour winds. It filled subways and submerged cars. Many people were forced out of their homes due to the damage including immunologist Ludovic Desvignes, who worked as a lab manager in Joel Ernst’s group at New York University (NYU) Langone Health and oversaw the university’s high containment facility at the time.
“We had some flood mitigation in place at the time of [Hurricane] Sandy, except no one was ready for the height that it reached,” said Desvignes, who is now the director of the high containment area at NYU Langone Health. “If you were to ask what keeps scientists up at night, it's always the failure of a −80°C [freezer].” He recalled how, as the institution’s basement vivarium flooded and the university lost power for multiple days, every scientist’s worst-case scenario became reality.
Millions of dollars and decades of work were lost in a matter of hours. However, “I would say the most distraught researchers I saw during [Hurricane] Sandy were the ones who lost animals,” Desvignes recalled, adding that some of these colleagues were too upset to come into work.
“Overall, it took us about four years to completely recover from [Hurricane] Sandy,” Desvignes said. “We lost things that we never got back.” Disasters of all kinds challenge researchers when they hit, oftentimes altering entire livelihoods. Three scientists across the US share their experiences from these events and what they learned to be more prepared for them in the future.
Research Recovery in a Hurricane Aftermath
After Hurricane Sandy, Ludovic Desvignes helped in recovery efforts and coordinated work in high containment facilities. Although he didn’t return to independent research, he found a new career path in biosafety and high containment research.
John Abbott
Desvignes was immediately involved in response and recovery efforts. His first priority was to secure the laboratory with a physical lock, since none of the normal electric-control measures worked. He joined other researchers in moving ultra-low storage freezers from labs into a central space. “We had to organize rotations of volunteers to walk up to the labs with bags of dry ice,” Desvignes recalled. “We basically walked up sometimes nine or 10 stories [to] pack the −80°C [freezers] and other cold storage units in order to preserve whatever could be preserved.”
In parallel, Desvignes reached out to nearby institutions with level three biosafety labs to coordinate protocols and training to get researchers using those spaces back to work. The science community also jumped in to help. “If we needed things that were lost, people reached out, not only just from New York City, but from all over the US and the world.”
Unfortunately, Desvignes lost two entire mouse lines that his research project on immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis—and the grants he was trying to write to launch his future as a principal investigator—depended on. Additionally, he said, “I was basically supporting the rest of my lab to try to help them find places and reorganize their research.” Between these efforts and helping to rebuild the high containment labs, Desvignes said he lost focus on his own research.
“[Hurricane Sandy] was the death of my academic career,” Desvignes said. “The good thing is I had multiple careers going on.” Following his effort in rebuilding the high containment labs, Desvignes became the facility’s director, leaving behind independent research.
More than a decade later, Camila Filgueiras, an entomologist and nematologist at the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNC-A), had a similar experience. In September 2024, when Filgueiras heard about the incoming Hurricane Helene, she cancelled an upcoming overnight class trip with her students to collect insects at night and observe these animals in their natural habitat. However, most people felt confident that the mountains around western North Carolina would shield the region from the storm like they usually did.
But that year, atmospheric events led to increased rainfall across southern Appalachia and along the east coast that helped the hurricane barrel into this terrain that would normally not accommodate it. Having previously lived in Florida, Filgueiras said that the communities in that area bounced back faster after hurricanes because they have preparation measures. “We don't have that [here] because we are not expecting something big like this,” she explained.
The UNC-A campus remained without power or water for several days and, because of unsafe driving conditions, faculty weren’t permitted to return to their labs. Filgueiras, who before the hurricane studied nematode diversity and soil composition, knew that her animals likely didn’t survive. As a result of the hurricane damage, she lost her entire collection of more than 25 species from locations ranging from Canada to Florida. Although she intends to try to rebuild part of the collection, she said, “I'm not going to be able to go to those places again anytime soon.”
Filgueiras recalled feeling discouraged when she finally reentered her lab and found that all of her animals had died. She even considered quitting working with these animals. But, she said, “Then, I started thinking about all the impact that the research could do for everyone.”
Instead of abandoning the research, Filgueiras pivoted her focus to help her community with testing local water sources for contamination. Her group also now studies how the hurricane affected the invertebrate diversity in the area’s soil. “Of course, if we collect some good nematodes there and some other things that will be useful for biological control, we are going to try to restart our bank,” she said. However, she said that it will still take time to fully restore her collection. “It will be at least five or more years for me to get back and be able to do what I was doing before.”
Climate Change Spurs New Approaches to Preparedness
In January 2025, wildfires broke out in Los Angeles, prompting evacuations across the county. David Eisenman, a physician and public health scientist at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was involved with safety and communication efforts across the university.
While the wildfires did not directly affect the physical campus of UCLA, Eisenman said, “A lot of people who are researchers felt the need to get involved in the response at some level.” For example, Eisenman currently works alongside atmospheric scientists to study the effects of smoke exposure on individual mental health outcomes and lung function. “We need to know that so we can better prepare people who are going to stay behind to fight the fire and take better care of them afterwards,” he said.
Like hurricanes, the risks and intensities of wildfires are increasing because of climate change. This reality affects how communities and research institutions are rebuilt after these natural disasters.
“People recognize that they need to build back in a way that creates more resilience against future climate change induced disasters,” Eisenman said. UCLA is working with climate scientists to identify strategies to mitigate fire risks in their future developments.
Another element to emergency preparedness is creating strategies for people to respond faster and more efficiently. Eisenman is helping develop a heat warning system that will alert emergency response teams and hospitals to prepare for adverse events from heat. However, he said, “What's novel about this system is that it's not going to be simply based on the temperature.” Because heat affects people differently based on the geography, for example living near the coast versus inland, Eisenman and his team compiled a decade of health effects from heat across different California communities.
Camila Filgueiras studied soil biodiversity and management strategies for insects and other invertebrates. When Hurricane Helene destroyed her animal collection, she shifted her research to help her community recover.
Denis Willet
At UNC-A, the university installed more generators and a new water treatment system to expedite everyone’s safe return to campus. For her own group, Filgueiras reflected on how she adapted at the start of COVID-19 when Cornell University, where she was working at the time, gave researchers 24 hours to close their labs. “I basically moved my lab to my basement,” she said. “[That] was fantastic to be able to do that.” Going forward, she plans to make a similar preemptive move if there is another severe weather event forecasted so that she can keep her animals alive. She is also creating a better emergency contact system with her students. “I like to take this as a learning opportunity,” she said.
NYU has also updated their preparedness measures based on their experience from Hurricane Sandy. They installed more generators and moved these and the vivaria out of the basements. The administration started a program to store mouse line embryos off-site so that these rare lineages can be recovered. They also initiated a protocol that covers contingency plans for an emergency response in a five-day window. However, because storms are becoming more unpredictable, this countdown was accelerated to three days. “What a lot of places are going to have to do, including research institutions, is be ready for the unexpected,” Desvignes said.
Additionally, he said, “We are basically taking a page out of the textbook of our hurricane responsiveness to start mitigating other things.” In the past, New York City experienced blackouts due to strains on the electric grid, especially in hot months when people ran air conditioners. With climate change increasing the number and intensity of hot days, these sorts of strategies can help plan responses to power outages before they happen.
