At least 44 people were killed in the New York area by flash flooding triggered by Hurricane Ida’s remnants overnight and into Thursday, including dozens who died in basements during the “historic” weather disaster that officials blamed on climate change.
Record rains converted streets into rivers and shut down subway services as water cascaded down platforms onto tracks in New York City, prompting an unprecedented flash flood emergency warning.
“I’m 50 years old and I’ve never seen that much rain ever,” said Metodija Mihajlov whose basement of his Manhattan restaurant was flooded with three inches of water. “It was like living in the jungle, like tropical rain. Unbelievable. Everything is so strange this year,” he told AFP.
At LaGuardia and JFK airports, as well as at Newark, where video showed a terminal soaked by precipitation, hundreds of flights were cancelled.
“We’re all in this together. The nation is ready to help,” President Joe Biden said this ahead of a trip to Louisiana on Friday, where Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on structures and knocked out electricity to over a million people.
Flooding submerged cars and forced the fire service to rescue hundreds of people across New Jersey and New York boroughs, including Manhattan, The Bronx, and Queens.
Governor Phil Murphy told reporters that at least 23 individuals perished in New Jersey.
“The majority of these deaths were individuals who got caught in their vehicles,” he said.
In the neighbouring state of Connecticut, a state trooper was killed.
Thirteen died in New York City, including 11 who could not escape their basements, police said. The victims ranged from the ages of two to 86.
“Among the people MOST at risk during flash floods here are those living in off-the-books basement dwellings that don’t meet the safety codes necessary to save lives,” lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
“These are working class, immigrant, and low-income people & families,” she added.
Three people perished in the New York suburb of Westchester, while four more died in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, according to a local official.
After crashing into Louisiana over the weekend, Hurricane Ida left a trail of devastation to the north, bringing devastating flooding and tornadoes.
“We’re enduring an historic weather event tonight with record-breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Wednesday.
New York and New Jersey declared state emergencies, and the National Weather Service issued the city’s first-ever emergency flash flood warning, encouraging residents to seek higher ground.
“You do not know how deep the water is and it is too dangerous,” the New York branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a tweet.
In Central Park, the NWS recorded 3.15 inches (80 millimetres) of rain in less than an hour, breaking the previous record set just last month during Storm Henri.
The US Open was also suspended due to howling winds and rain that blew under the Louis Armstrong Stadium roof’s corners.
As the city slowly came back to life on Thursday, New Yorkers awoke to brilliant blue sky, but evidence of the previous night’s carnage remained: residents pulled fallen tree branches from roads as subway service slowly resumed.
According to the website poweroutage.us, roughly 38,000 houses in Pennsylvania, 24,000 in New Jersey, and 12,000 in New York were without power by Thursday evening, a considerable decrease from earlier in the day.
It’s unusual for such storms to hit America’s northeastern seaboard, and it’s happening as the ocean’s surface layer heats due to climate change.
Scientists warn that as the world warms, cyclones will get more powerful and transport more water, posing a greater hazard to coastal towns around the world.
“Global warming is upon us and it’s going to get worse and worse and worse unless we do something about it,” said Democratic senator Chuck Schumer.
A tornado ripped through trees and destroyed electrical poles near Annapolis, Maryland, about 30 miles (50 kilometres) from Washington.
As Ida moved north through New England, the NWS cautioned that the possibility of tornadoes would persist, issuing tornado watches for regions of southern Connecticut, northern New Jersey, and southern New York.
On Thursday evening, a tornado hit the renowned vacation resort of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
