After being saturated by one of its wettest days in decades, New York City started to dry out on Saturday as residents dried out their basements and traffic resumed on the roads, trains, and airports that were briefly closed by the heavy rain on Friday.
Despite the storm’s fierceness having passed, some of its damage persisted throughout the weekend.
City officials were forced to evacuate staff and some 120 patients from a municipal hospital on Saturday due to a storm-related power loss in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Con Edison, the area’s power company, said the facility’s emergency power had to be shut down so the utility could perform repairs.
Before the hospital in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood can resume full operations, city officials warned the renovations could take a few days.
More than 7.25 inches (18.41 centimeters) of rain fell in several areas of Brooklyn, with at least one location receiving 2.5 inches (6 centimeters) in a single hour. This caused some streets to become knee-deep canals and left motorists stranded on the roads.
The National Weather Service reported that John F. Kennedy International Airport experienced record rainfall of more than 8.65 inches (21.97 centimeters), breaking the previous mark for a September day established during Hurricane Donna in 1960.
During a briefing on Saturday morning at a transportation control center in Manhattan, Governor Kathy Hochul stated that although more rain was anticipated over the weekend, the worst was already behind us.
She claimed that many people followed the early warnings to remain put or go to higher ground before it was too late, which prevented what may have been a life-threatening situation.
Thus, according to Hochul, “no lives were lost.” However, the governor said that 28 people needed to be saved from the “raging water” by emergency personnel in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island.
Hochul remarked, “We’ve seen a whole lot of rainfall in a very short period of time.” The storm will pass, so there should be some clearing of the rivers today and tonight, according to the good news.
The disaster occurred two years after Hurricane Ida’s leftovers dumped record-breaking rain on the Northeast and killed at least 13 people, largely in flooded basement apartments, in New York City.
Despite the fact that no fatalities or serious injuries have been recorded, Friday’s storm brought back dreadful memories. Three of Joy Wong’s neighbors were murdered by Ida, including a young child.
And on Friday, water started pounding against her Woodside, Queens, building’s front door. She remarked, “Outside was like a lake, like an ocean.” Within minutes, the basement of the structure was virtually completely submerged in water.
The cellar was transformed into a recreation area following the family’s passing in 2021. It is now obliterated. Six flooded basement flats were reported to the city on Friday, but all residents were okay.
Mayor Eric Adams and Hochul proclaimed states of emergency and urged people to remain indoors if at all possible.
Additionally, the flood occurred fewer than three months after a storm that flooded Montpelier, the state’s capital, and produced fatal floods in the Hudson Valley of New York.
Hochul attributed the increase in storm frequency and power to climate change.
“This is the scale in terms of the amount of water that fell from the sky during this period of torrential rain, which was comparable to Hurricane Ida. The good news is that we were spared the wind that followed Hurricane Ida. However, I still vividly recall that incident, the governor stated on Saturday.
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