The Association for a Better New York breakfast is a mandatory pit stop on the road to higher office for local politicians, and for weeks, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, had been planning to use her moment to talk about education proposals to help the middle class.

But then Hurricane Sandy arrived and swept aside those plans.

So on Tuesday, Ms. Quinn took the stage and, before some of the city’s business, labor and political elite, outlined a series of steps to reduce damage from future storms. She talked, for instance, about pushing for legislation that would require utility wires in flood-prone areas to be buried underground. She talked, as well, about accelerating a host of city and federal studies on the feasibility of storm surge barriers, which she said could cost $16 billion.

While all of the expected 2013 mayoral contenders have talked about the devastating impact of the storm, Ms. Quinn was the first to deliver a major speech on the subject. In so doing, she reinforced the growing sense in political circles that the hurricane has upended the city’s public conversation and once-little-discussed issues like climate change and disaster preparedness have become central to the mayor’s race.

“Two weeks ago, we were reminded that our city is vulnerable to the forces of nature, that the reality of climate changes puts our homes and our safety at risk,” Ms. Quinn said. “What we do in this moment — it will determine whether we let that reality define us, to hold us back, or to inspire us, to push to do what we know is hard.”