NEW YORK (AP) — The remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped historic rain over New York City, with at least nine deaths linked to flooding in the region, as it swamped subway cars and submerged vehicles and homes.
Catastrophic weather came to the largest city in the U.S. after a grim two weeks across the nation that has seen 20 dead in flooding in a small Tennessee town, wildfires threatening Lake Tahoe, Tropical Storm Henri in the Northeast and Ida’s landfall in Louisiana, which left 1 million people without power, maybe for weeks.
Late Wednesday evening a state of emergency was declared in New York City and the rest of the state. Ida’s remnants were exiting the country, but not without tornadoes in other parts of the Northeast.
At least nine deaths were reported in New York City and New Jersey. A New York City police spokesperson says a total of eight people died when they became trapped in flooded basements.
New York’s FDR Drive, a major artery on the east side of Manhattan, and the Bronx River Parkway were under water by late Wednesday evening. Subway stations and tracks became so flooded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority suspended all service. Videos posted online showed subway riders standing on seats in cars filled with water.
Other videos showed vehicles submerged up to their windows on major roadways in and around the city and garbage bobbing down the streets.
“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 while declaring a state of emergency in New York City late Wednesday.
The MTA tweeted that subway service was operating with limited service for the Thursday morning commute.
Gov. Kathy Hochul also declared a state of emergency for New York state.
Video shot by WABC-TV showed firefighters carry a man from his vehicle to dry ground. The man’s SUV was one of a number of vehicles stuck in the water on the Bronx River Parkway.
The National Weather Service office in New York declared its first-ever set of flash flood emergencies in the region Wednesday night, an alert level that is reserved for “exceedingly rare situations when a severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage from a flash flood is happening or will happen soon.”
New York City put in place a travel ban until 5 a.m. ET Thursday for all nonemergency vehicles, and a travel advisory was in effect after it expired. All nonemergency vehicles were advised to stay off of streets and highways.
The National Weather Service recorded 3.15 inches of rain in New York’s Central Park in one hour Wednesday night, far surpassing the 1.94 inches that fell in one hour during Tropical Storm Henri on the night of Aug. 21, which was believed at the time to be the most ever recorded in the park.
Earlier Wednesday, the storm blew through the mid-Atlantic states with at least two tornadoes, heavy winds and drenching rains that collapsed the roof of a U.S. Postal Service building in New Jersey and threatened to overrun a dam in Pennsylvania.
Social media posts showed homes reduced to rubble in a southern New Jersey county just outside Philadelphia, not far from where the National Weather Service confirmed a tornado Wednesday evening. Authorities did not have any immediate information on injuries.
