Hurricanes killed people from Maryland to Connecticut on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
A stunned United States East Coast faced rising death tolls on Thursday, as the remnants of Hurricane Ida engulfed the region wall with record-breaking rain, drowning at least 46 people in their homes and cars.
In an area that had been warned about potentially fatal flash floods but was no longer prepared for such a tremor from the storm, the storm killed people Wednesday night and Thursday morning from Maryland to Connecticut.
Read also | Hurricane Ida Remains Pounds Northeast With Rain, Flooding, Tornadoes
At least 23 people died in New Jersey, said Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. At least 13 people died in New York City, police said, 11 of them in flooded basement apartments that often serve as relatively affordable homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. Suburban Westchester County reported three deaths.
Officials said at least five people died in Pennsylvania, including one after a tree fell and another who drowned in his car after helping his wife escape. Brian Mohl, a Connecticut State Police sergeant, died after his cruiser was swept away. Another death was reported in Maryland.
Sophie Liu said she tried to use towels and garbage bags to stop the water getting into the first floor of her New York City apartment, but the flood reached her chest in just half an hour. He woke his son from the bed, put him in a life jacket and swimming ring and tried to run away, but the door got stuck. He called two friends who helped loosen his jar.
“I was obviously scared, but I had to be strong for my son. I had to calm him down,” she recalled Thursday when medical examiners pulled three bodies from a house down her Queens street.
In another part of Queens, water rapidly filled Deborah Torres’s first-floor apartment to her knees as her landlord urged her neighbors below – a child among them – to get out, she said. But the water came so loud that he felt that they were unable to open the door. Three residents died.
“I don’t have words,” she said. “How could something like this happen?” Meteorologists said the wet remnants of Ida merged into a storm front and soaked the Interstate 95 corridor. Similar weather has followed the storm before, but experts said it was intensified slightly by climate change – warmer air brings more rain – and urban settings, where wide pavement prevents water from seeping into the ground. .
The National Hurricane Center warned Tuesday about the potential for “significant and life-threatening flash flooding” and major river flooding in the mid-Atlantic region and New England.
Still, New York Governor Cathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the storm’s strength took them by surprise.
“We had no idea that between 8:50 and 9:50 p.m. tomorrow night, the sky would literally open up and bring the waters of Niagara Falls to the streets of New York,” said Democrat Hochul, who became governor last week. Andrew Cuomo resigned after the former government.
De Blasio, who is also a Democrat, said he expected 3 to 6 inches (7.5 to 15 cm) of rain a day on Wednesday. The city’s Central Park grew by 3.15 inches in just one hour during Tropical Storm Henry on August 21, surpassing the previous hour’s high of 1.94 inches (5 cm).
Wednesday’s storm eventually recorded more than 9 inches (23 cm) of rain in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and nearly as much as New York City’s Staten Island.
In Washington, President Joe Biden assured residents of the Northeast that federal first responders were in the fray to help with the cleanup.
In New York, nearly 500 vehicles were abandoned on flooded highways, littered streets and the city’s subway tunnels inundated, at least 17 trains stuck and service disrupted throughout the day. Online videos showed riders standing on seats in packed cars. Harrison said all were evacuated, police helped 835 riders and people elsewhere, including a 94-year-old man on a highway.
In a Queens development, neighbors tried unsuccessfully for an hour to save a 48-year-old woman when water broke through the glass patio door of her basement apartment, leaving her trapped in 6 feet (2 m) of water .
“She was screaming, Help me, help me, help me!’ We all came to his aid, trying to get him out,” said the building’s assistant superintendent, Jason Jordan, but “the thrust of the water was so strong.” Department chief Rodney Harrison said police were going door-to-door in flooded areas on Thursday evening and did not have an unaccounted number of people.
In Elizabeth, New Jersey, rain and river floods killed four people in an apartment complex and forced 600 from their homes, Mayor J. Christian Bolvez said.
Greg Turner, who lives elsewhere in northern New Jersey City, said his 87-year-old mother began calling 911 when the water in her apartment started rising at 8 p.m. He and his brother couldn’t get there because of the deluge.
As the midnight approached, the water reached his neck, he said. Rescuers eventually cut through the floor of the upstairs apartment and escorted it safely.
“He lost everything,” Turner said as he went to the bank for money to buy his mother’s clothes and shoes.
In the Milford borough of New Jersey, officials said they found the body of a man in a car, buried in dirt and rocks up to his hood.
On Sunday, Ida struck Louisiana as the fifth-strongest hurricane to hit the US mainland, leaving 1 million people without power, perhaps for weeks.
.