How to Profit From Hurricane-ProofingBy Joel Litman, chief investment officer, Altimetry
 NYU Langone's hurricane-proofing was no match for 15 million gallons of water...
The hospital's main campus sits on Manhattan's East River. While that gives doctors quick access to one of the densest neighborhoods in America, it also puts the campus in a flood zone. In 2011, Hurricane Irene was a wake-up call. One of the buildings took on 2 feet of water. And though the hospital could have managed to keep running, officials knew they couldn't afford to leave its operations up to chance again. So they spent millions of dollars hurricane-proofing NYU Langone... They moved emergency generators from street level to the rooftop, high above the reach of floodwater. And they built a flood-resistant pump house to send fuel from an underground tank up to the generators. Their main goal was to protect the backup power system from flooding. That way, if New York City's power failed, the hospital could make its own electricity. And if a storm flooded the streets, the generators would stay dry on the roof. But Hurricane Sandy revealed this plan's hidden weakness... By almost every measure, Sandy was a monster...It damaged or destroyed more than 650,000 homes and left 8.5 million people without power. New York City took a direct hit from the surge. Flooding reached 17% of the city's land. The storm caused $19 billion in damage and lost economic activity. And 43 New Yorkers died. At NYU Langone, the water moved with terrifying speed. More than 15 million gallons filled the basement in roughly 30 minutes. When the main power failed, its rooftop generators survived, and its fuel pumps kept water out – all according to design. But its backup power still failed because of one small oversight...
You see, a portion of the hospital's power-distribution circuits still lived in the basement. Those circuits were the bridge between the rooftop generators and the parts of the hospital that needed electricity. The generators could make power... The pump house could feed them fuel... But the electricity wasn't able to pass through the circuits sitting in the worst possible place. Inside the hospital, crew members took matters into their own hands...They helped patients evacuate through dark stairwells. Teams carried the sickly down from as high as the 17th floor. Four babies in intensive care lost access to respirators, so nurses manually pumped air into their lungs. More than 300 patients were evacuated, thankfully without injury. And NYU Langone survived the night. But if it wasn't for the hospital staff's quick thinking and determination, those same patients could have died... despite millions of dollars of hurricane-proofing. The hospital learned from its mistakes. It reengineered the basement to work more like a vault, addressing the circuit oversight. A new system was built to withstand a 14-foot surge of water. As Sandy taught NYU Langone, a building's disaster plan ages quickly. Every storm and outage reveals a new weak point. The work never really ends, because critical buildings need to function when everything around them fails. That's true for more than just hospitals...Universities, data centers, factories, and more need to stay on line to help society keep afloat. The systems that keep these buildings alive are hidden from view. Equipment like boilers and electrical panels gets relegated to basements or rooftops, with miles of infrastructure tying it all together. They need planning and constant maintenance to function. And that need creates an opportunity in the businesses offering mission-critical behind-the-scenes building work. When trouble strikes, customers can't go without these specialty contractors. And that necessity creates a compelling opportunity for investors, too. Regards, Joel Litman
July 23, 2026
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