Climate-Proofing Child Care: Emergency Preparedness for New York

On a June afternoon in 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south into New York, turning the sky orange and making outdoor air hazardous to breathe. Air quality index readings reached levels rarely seen in the Northeast, prompting widespread school and child care closures. Parents scrambled to find alternative arrangements; some had to miss work; others brought children to facilities that remained open despite questionable air quality. The disruption lasted days, and similar events occurred again in subsequent summers as wildfire seasons intensified.

This was not an isolated incident. In recent years, New York City and surrounding areas have experienced extended heat waves with temperatures exceeding 95 degrees, flash flooding that inundated basements and ground floors, and power outages that knocked out cooling systems during summer and heating during winter. Each event disrupted child care operations, forcing closures or creating unsafe conditions for children and staff. Climate scientists project that these extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe in coming decades, making emergency preparedness not a once-and-done planning exercise but an ongoing operational imperative.

As New York invests more than $2.2 billion in child care expansion, climate resilience and emergency preparedness must be designed into the system from the outset. Facilities built without adequate cooling will become unsafe during heat waves. Programs operating in flood-prone locations will face repeated closures. Facilities without backup power or air filtration will be unable to protect children during smoke events or power failures. As outlined in our comprehensive framework for health readiness in child care expansion, built environment resilience is one of three essential domains that determines whether programs can maintain safe, stable operations in a changing climate.

The Growing Threat of Climate-Related Disruptions

Climate change affects child care operations through multiple pathways. Extreme heat threatens health directly, particularly for young children whose bodies are less efficient at regulating temperature. Children can develop heat exhaustion or heat stroke when indoor temperatures become excessive, especially during physical activity. Staff working in hot conditions experience reduced alertness and increased stress, compromising supervision quality. Without adequate cooling, facilities may be forced to close or limit activities, reducing program quality and reliability.

Wildfire smoke creates another set of challenges. Even when fires burn hundreds of miles away, fine particulate matter in smoke can travel long distances, creating hazardous air quality across entire regions. This particulate matter penetrates buildings and irritates airways, triggering asthma attacks and respiratory symptoms particularly in young children whose lungs are still developing. Outdoor play becomes unsafe when air quality is poor, confining children indoors for extended periods. Programs without adequate air filtration cannot protect children even inside buildings.

Flooding poses immediate danger and lasting damage. Flash floods can inundate ground floors and basements rapidly, threatening children and staff and destroying equipment, supplies, and records. Even after water recedes, moisture creates conditions for mold growth that render spaces unsafe until thorough remediation is completed. Flooding also damages mechanical systems including heating, ventilation, and electrical infrastructure, requiring costly repairs before facilities can reopen.

Power outages compound other threats. When electricity fails during heat waves, cooling systems stop working and indoor temperatures rise to dangerous levels. During cold weather, heating systems fail. Emergency lighting may not function; refrigerators containing food and medications lose cooling; security systems may be compromised. Extended outages lasting hours or days make continued operation impossible and create safety risks if children are present when power fails.

Infectious disease outbreaks, while not directly climate-driven, interact with climate resilience in important ways. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how public health emergencies disrupt child care operations and how built environment improvements such as enhanced ventilation provide both climate resilience and infectious disease protection. Future pandemics or outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles will again test the system’s ability to maintain operations while protecting health. Maintaining robust infection control systems, including vaccination enforcement and hygiene protocols, reduces the likelihood and severity of infectious disease disruptions.

Emergency Planning: The Foundation of Preparedness

All licensed child care programs in New York are required to have written emergency plans addressing fire, weather emergencies, utility failures, and lockdown situations. These plans must include evacuation routes, assembly areas, procedures for accounting for all children and staff, methods for communicating with families, and protocols for reunifying children with authorized adults. Programs must conduct regular drills so that staff and children practice emergency procedures.

However, the quality and comprehensiveness of emergency plans varies widely. Some programs have detailed, regularly updated plans that address multiple scenarios; others have minimal documents that satisfy licensing requirements but provide insufficient guidance during actual emergencies. Plans developed years ago may not account for new threats such as wildfire smoke or extreme heat. Many plans do not address extended disruptions lasting days or weeks, when facilities may need to close but families still require care arrangements.

Strengthening emergency planning requires updated guidance from state licensing agencies, training for program administrators on emergency management, templates and tools to simplify plan development, and verification during inspections that plans are adequate and practiced regularly. Plans should address not only immediate safety during emergencies but also operational continuity, including how programs will communicate closures to families, whether and how they will provide backup care, and how they will recover and reopen after incidents.

Climate-Specific Emergency Protocols

Traditional emergency plans focused primarily on fire safety, with some attention to severe weather such as tornadoes in regions where they occur. Climate change necessitates expanded protocols addressing heat emergencies, air quality hazards from wildfire smoke, flooding, and extended power outages. Each threat requires specific responses that staff must understand and be prepared to implement.

For extreme heat, protocols should specify temperature thresholds that trigger modifications to activities and operations, procedures for monitoring indoor temperatures, strategies for keeping children cool including reducing physical activity and providing frequent hydration, and criteria for closure if indoor temperatures become unsafe despite mitigation efforts. Programs should identify cooling centers in their vicinity where children could be relocated if facilities become uninhabitable, though logistics of moving young children during heat emergencies are challenging.

For wildfire smoke and poor air quality, protocols should specify how programs will monitor outdoor air quality using resources such as EPA’s AirNow, procedures for canceling outdoor play when air quality is unhealthy, ensuring that buildings are sealed and air filtration systems are operating when outdoor air quality is hazardous, and criteria for closure if indoor air quality cannot be maintained at safe levels. As discussed in my earlier post on indoor air quality improvements, facilities with good ventilation and filtration systems are better positioned to remain open safely during smoke events.

For flooding, protocols should address advance preparation when heavy rain is forecast, procedures for moving children and critical supplies to upper floors if water enters the building, evacuation routes that avoid flood-prone areas, and post-flood inspection requirements before reopening. Programs operating in basements or ground floors in flood-prone areas face particular risks and may need to relocate or implement structural flood mitigation measures.

Built Environment Resilience: Designing for Climate Threats

Emergency planning is necessary but insufficient without physical infrastructure that can withstand climate stresses. As New York allocates capital funding for child care expansion, climate resilience should be an explicit criterion in facility design and site selection. New construction and major renovations offer the best opportunities to incorporate resilience features; existing facilities may require retrofits to address vulnerabilities.

Cooling and Heat Management

Adequate cooling capacity is becoming essential infrastructure in New York, not a luxury. Facilities should have cooling systems sized appropriately for occupancy and climate conditions, with particular attention to classrooms and sleeping areas where children spend extended time. Systems should be maintained regularly to ensure reliable operation during heat waves, when failures are most dangerous.

Passive cooling strategies can supplement mechanical systems and provide resilience if power fails. These include shading windows to reduce solar heat gain, using light-colored roofing materials that reflect rather than absorb heat, promoting natural ventilation through operable windows when outdoor conditions allow, and planting shade trees around buildings. While these measures may seem modest, they can reduce indoor temperatures by several degrees, potentially making the difference between safe and unsafe conditions during heat emergencies.

Backup power generation or battery storage systems can maintain critical cooling during power outages. These systems are expensive but may be justified for facilities serving vulnerable populations or located in areas with unreliable electrical service. At minimum, programs should identify nearby cooling centers where children could be safely relocated if facilities lose power during heat emergencies and have transportation plans to evacuate children if necessary.

Air Quality Protection

Indoor air quality protection, discussed extensively in our earlier post on ventilation improvements, serves multiple purposes including infectious disease control and protection during wildfire smoke events. HVAC systems with MERV-13 or better filtration remove fine particulate matter from smoke as well as airborne pathogens. Portable air purifiers with HEPA filters provide additional protection and can be deployed strategically during smoke events.

Buildings should be able to be sealed when outdoor air quality is poor, with doors and windows closed and HVAC systems set to recirculate rather than bring in outdoor air. However, this strategy only works if indoor air is filtered adequately. Buildings with poor filtration that seal out outdoor air may accumulate carbon dioxide and other indoor pollutants, creating different health risks. The solution is both sealing capability and high-quality filtration, allowing buildings to maintain indoor air quality when outdoor air is hazardous.

Flood Mitigation and Water Management

Site selection should consider flood risk, with preference for locations outside flood plains and above grade level. When facilities must be located in flood-prone areas due to limited available space, particularly in dense urban neighborhoods, structural mitigation measures become essential. These include elevating critical mechanical systems above expected flood levels, installing backflow preventers to stop sewage from backing up during floods, using water-resistant materials in areas likely to be affected by water, and ensuring drainage systems can handle heavy rainfall.

Basements present particular flood risk. While they can provide valuable space in expensive urban real estate markets, basement child care programs in flood-prone areas face repeated disruption and potential danger. Regulatory standards should specify conditions under which basement spaces can be licensed for child care, including flood history, available flood mitigation measures, and adequate emergency egress.

Workforce Preparedness and Support During Emergencies

Emergency preparedness depends on plans, physical infrastructure, and workforce capacity to implement protective measures under stress. Child care workers must know what to do during emergencies, have practiced procedures through drills, and have support to manage their own needs and family responsibilities when crises occur.

Training should include emergency procedures specific to different threats, recognizing signs of heat illness or respiratory distress and providing appropriate first aid, effectively communicating with frightened children in age-appropriate ways, and making rapid decisions under uncertainty when circumstances deviate from plans. Training should be scenario-based and hands-on rather than simply reading plans, recognizing that stress degrades performance and practiced skills are more reliably executed than knowledge held only abstractly.

During extended emergencies such as multi-day heat waves or smoke events, workforce fatigue becomes a significant concern. Staff working in difficult conditions without relief experience exhaustion that compromises judgment and increases risk. Programs need staffing depth to allow rotation and rest, though achieving this is challenging in a sector already experiencing chronic understaffing. As discussed in our earlier post on workforce health readiness, investing in workforce stability and wellbeing is integral to emergency preparedness. Workforce health infrastructure, including paid sick leave and mental health support, directly affects emergency response capacity.

Workers also have personal emergency needs including their own families and homes. When emergencies affect entire regions, child care workers face the same challenges as the families they serve. Expecting staff to prioritize program operations over their own family safety is unrealistic and unfair. Emergency plans should recognize these competing demands and include provisions for staff absences, backup staffing, and support for workers dealing with personal impacts from emergencies.

Communication Systems and Family Coordination

Rapid, reliable communication with families is critical during emergencies. Programs need systems to notify families quickly about closures, delayed openings, changes to pickup procedures, or emergency situations requiring immediate family response. Communication systems should include multiple channels including phone, text, email, and possibly social media, recognizing that no single channel reaches all families and some channels may fail during infrastructure disruptions.

Emergency contact information for all enrolled children should be maintained current, with multiple contacts in case primary contacts are unreachable. Programs should verify contact information regularly and update it when families report changes. During emergencies, programs should document all communication attempts with families and maintain records of when and how children are reunified with authorized adults.

Families also need to understand their responsibilities during emergencies, including having backup care arrangements for days when programs close, maintaining current contact information with programs, responding promptly when programs communicate urgent information, and picking up children as quickly as safely possible when early closure is necessary. Clear communication of these expectations during enrollment and periodic reminders help ensure families are prepared.

Coordination with Emergency Management Systems

Child care programs should be formally integrated into local emergency management and response systems. When local governments issue emergency alerts or activate emergency operations centers, child care programs should be included in notification systems and invited to participate in coordination meetings. Emergency managers need to understand that child care disruptions affect workforce participation and economic activity, making child care continuity a community priority, not just a private family concern.

Some communities have established child care emergency response networks where programs share resources, coordinate mutual aid, and collectively plan for emergencies. These networks can arrange temporary relocation of children when individual facilities become uninhabitable, share backup power equipment or air purifiers during regional emergencies, and pool information about closures and reopenings to help families find available care. State and local governments should support development of such networks through facilitation, funding for shared equipment, and integration with official emergency management structures.

Recovery and Resilience: Reopening After Disruptions

Most emergency planning focuses on immediate response, but recovery and reopening are equally important. After flooding, facilities require thorough drying and cleaning before they are safe for children, as discussed in our earlier post on environmental health standards. Mold growth begins within 24 to 48 hours, so rapid remediation is essential. Structural and mechanical systems must be inspected and repaired. Supplies damaged by water must be replaced. Environmental health standards for mold remediation and moisture control, detailed elsewhere in this series, are particularly critical during post-flood recovery.

After extended heat waves or power outages, facilities should verify that mechanical systems are functioning, refrigerated food and medications that lost cooling are discarded, and any heat damage to materials or equipment is identified and addressed before reopening. After smoke events, indoor surfaces may have deposited particulate matter that should be cleaned before children return.

Programs need financial reserves or insurance coverage to manage recovery costs without forcing permanent closures. Many small programs operate without significant reserves and lack comprehensive insurance, making them vulnerable to closure after even moderate damage. State and local governments should consider establishing emergency recovery funds that provide rapid grants or low-interest loans to help programs recover from climate-related disruptions, recognizing that child care closures harm communities and that public support for recovery serves public purposes.

Learning from COVID-19: Pandemic Preparedness

While not strictly climate-related, pandemic preparedness shares many features with climate resilience planning. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how infectious disease threats disrupt child care operations and how the sector’s response capacity depends on workforce health, built environment quality, emergency planning, and government support.

Key lessons include the importance of infection control infrastructure including adequate sinks, cleaning supplies, and personal protective equipment; ventilation and air filtration systems that reduce airborne disease transmission; paid sick leave and substitute coverage that allow staff to stay home when ill; clear communication systems to notify families of policy changes or closures; and flexible regulatory frameworks that can adapt quickly to new threats without compromising safety.

Many improvements made during COVID-19, such as upgraded ventilation systems and enhanced cleaning protocols, remain valuable for routine operations and future emergency response. Maintaining these improvements rather than allowing them to decay through deferred maintenance would leave the system better prepared for future infectious disease threats. As discussed throughout this series, particularly in our posts on infection control and indoor air quality, investments in health infrastructure serve multiple purposes and should be sustained as permanent features of the child care system rather than temporary pandemic responses.

Policy Recommendations for Climate-Resilient Child Care

Building climate resilience into New York’s child care expansion requires coordinated policy action across multiple domains. Capital funding criteria should explicitly prioritize climate resilience features including adequate cooling systems, high-quality ventilation and air filtration, flood mitigation measures for sites in vulnerable areas, backup power or battery storage systems where feasible, and use of building materials and designs that reduce heat absorption and improve passive cooling.

Licensing standards should require comprehensive emergency plans addressing heat, air quality, flooding, power outages, and pandemics, with regular updates and staff training; annual drills covering multiple emergency scenarios; and demonstrated capacity to communicate rapidly with all families. Inspection protocols should verify that plans exist and are practiced, and that physical infrastructure supports emergency response.

Programs should receive technical assistance including model emergency plan templates tailored to New York’s climate threats, training modules on emergency management accessible online or through regional workshops, and checklists and tools for facility self-assessment of climate vulnerabilities. State emergency management agencies should integrate child care explicitly into regional emergency planning, provide child care operators with direct access to emergency alerts and briefings, and support development of child care emergency response networks.

Climate vulnerability assessments should be conducted for child care deserts and high-need communities to identify areas where climate threats and child care access challenges overlap. These assessments should inform targeting of resilience investments, recognizing that communities with least access to care often face highest climate risks. Building resilient child care capacity in vulnerable communities serves both equity and climate adaptation goals.

The Path Forward: Integration and Implementation

This post concludes a seven-part series examining how health readiness must be integrated into New York’s child care expansion efforts. We have explored infection control and disease prevention, workforce health and stability, indoor air quality and ventilation, environmental health and facility safety, developmental screening and health monitoring, and now emergency preparedness and climate resilience. Each domain matters individually, but their power lies in integration.

A facility with excellent infection control but no workforce paid sick leave will experience outbreaks. A program with comprehensive screening protocols but unsafe physical environments harms children in different ways. A system with state-of-art ventilation but no emergency plans for heat or smoke cannot protect children when climate threats materialize. Health readiness requires simultaneous attention to children, workforce, and built environment, recognizing that weakness in any domain undermines the entire system.

Implementation will require sustained commitment from state and local government, adequate resources allocated through operating budgets and capital programs, coordination across agencies that currently operate in silos, and partnership with child care providers who understand operational realities and can help design workable policies. Some measures can be implemented quickly through regulatory updates and technical assistance; others will require years to fully realize as infrastructure is built and workforce capacity develops.

The alternative to proactive health readiness is reactive crisis management, where problems are addressed only after they cause harm, disruption, and loss of public trust. New York has an opportunity to learn from recent experience with COVID-19, climate disruptions, and workforce instability, and to build a child care system that is not only larger but more resilient, more equitable, and genuinely ready to protect children’s health and development regardless of what challenges emerge.

Climate change is not a distant threat that future generations will manage; it is a present operational challenge that disrupts child care now and will intensify in coming years. By embedding climate resilience and comprehensive health readiness into child care expansion, New York can create a system that weathers storms literally and figuratively, maintaining stability when families depend on care most. This is the promise of truly health-ready child care expansion, and it is within reach if policymakers and advocates prioritize health infrastructure alongside capacity and affordability in the years ahead.

Dr. Jay K. Varma is Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Fedcap, a large global nonprofit organization, and a Senior Health Fellow at the Community Impact Policy Institute. He is a physician-epidemiologist with extensive experience in infectious disease control, public health emergency response, and health systems strengthening across the United States and internationally. The full report “Protecting Health in Child Care Expansion” is available at the Community Impact Policy Institute.