Hurricane Joaquin is now seen as blowing out to the Atlantic and skipping landfall in the city, which means that this week's preparations for the storm was something of a test run. It's also raising the question of how ready the city is nearly three years after Hurricane Sandy. NY1's Josh Robin filed the following report.

In the Rockaways, crews filled in gaps between dunes. Subway vents are in 12 flood-prone Manhattan stations.

The storm may never land. Still, City Hall says it has a plan.

"Since Hurricane Sandy, we've been doing a lot to make sure that we are becoming better prepared for a number of storm impacts that we can see. And Hurricane Joaquin really helped us assess where we are," said Daniel Zarrilli, director of the Mayor's Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

And any fair assessment shows that since Sandy, 10 miles of dunes are in place and two miles of bulkheads are repaired. Plus, new building codes are on the books that is leading vulnerable equipment to be raised in private buildings.

"We've done a lot of work on the infrastructure," Zarrilli said. "The transit authority, for instance. We've got two new pumping trains."

But Bud Griffis of the New York State Resiliency Institute for Storms and Emergencies is troubled by the pace of bigger projects, the reshaping the city's map. It would dot it with projects like an East River park to turn back rising sea levels and harsher storms.

"I like to see projects move faster," Griffis said. "A lot of times, when we're dealing with a lot of bureaucracy, that tends to slow it up."

Others note the pace of Build it Back, the city-run program to renovate Sandy-damaged homes. With thousands no longer in the program, about 10,000 remain. Five thousand have been reimbursed. Seventeen hundred have homes in construction, and about 1,100 homes have been completed.

The wait for repairs may be most glaring at public housing complexes. Sandy knocked out heating boilers at 16 different locations. Nearly three years later, none have been replaced, leaving residents to rely on temporary boilers. Sparse and slow-moving federal funds are blamed for the delay.

So what happens if the next big storm doesn't blow out to sea?

"We're safer today than we were than when Sandy hit, but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be any impact," Zarrilli said.

In the meantime, the building continues.