Kaye Blegvad On Wednesday afternoon, New Yorkers encountered a fully submerged subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. One commuter tweeted out a photo of the flooded stairs, asking the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to explain themselves. The MTA responded that it had flooded the platform for four hours to test the efficacy of a new flex gate that would "seal off a subway entrance." The MTA added: "We're doing this because climate change is real. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy flooded nine subway stations and two inter-borough tunnels, causing billions of dollars' worth of damage.