Everything We Know About Last Night's Deadly Storm

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Obviously, the first thing for us to talk about this morning is the big storm last night and the process of getting roads and mass transit back to normal, which is still going on, and so many people affected, so many people's homes and at least nine people died in the tri-state area. Michael Hill will join us from the WNYC newsroom in just a minute with the very latest.

I also want to open up the phones right from the start here. We invite you to call in and tell everyone how the storm has affected your life or your neighborhood at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. You're all deputized right now as WNYC hyperlocal reporters, to help us report the story of the remnants of Hurricane Ida, how it hit your life or your immediate area, 646-435-7280.

Give your fellow listeners the report from your own house or your own building, your own block, your own neighborhood, your own commute, or attempt to commute since yesterday afternoon. If you want to describe that, you're invited on the air at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Now, I know it broke the record for the most rainfall in one hour ever recorded in Central Park, more than three inches in one hour last night. The previous record was less than two inches, and that came last week, during Mayor de Blasio's welcome home concert in Central Park. Remember that, all the way back, more like 11 days?

The hourly rainfall record has been smashed twice in a week and a half. It was also the first-ever city-wide emergency flood watch declared in the five boroughs. It was certainly the first region-wide tornado watch that I ever remember seeing. I've never before had to look up tornado precautions, and figure out if my apartment has what they call an interior room to take shelter in, meaning away from windows, if the watch became a warning. Answer, not really.

This was some weather history. How did it affect you, or your neighborhood, or your commute? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Later in the show, we're going to talk with science writer, Matt Simon from WIRED, about how climate change could be making things wetter in some places, and so much drier in some places at the same time. That'll be later, but right now, let's get an update from Michael Hill in the WNYC newsroom about the latest attempts at getting things back to normal, and generally digging out. Hey, Michael, what is the latest?

Michael Hill: Hey, Brian. Since you just come on the air, we've confirmed now that the death count has gone up to 14, that includes 5 more folks in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Still getting details on that, but that's being confirmed by NJ Advance Media, and we're reporting that. The MTA is talking about getting at least some of the subway services restored sometime this afternoon. The executive editor of Gothamist, our Jen Chung was talking earlier to us about how they had to get water out of some of the subways and then check on some of the tracks.

She was at the 28th Street station with the number one line there, and she saw the operation taking place there. The city is trying to get back to, I'm not going to say normal, but trying to restore things so that folks can get about. There's still that advisory that if you don't have to go into the subways and so forth, and if you don't have to take the subway, unless it's for absolutely essential services or essential travel, then don't do it.

One of the things we're hearing, Brian, is that so many people are just stunned about how much rainfall we got. You mentioned the record amount that we got this time, and we broke a record just a few days ago, two weeks ago so it seems, with that concert in Central Park. Even in Newark, they got record amounts of rainfall as well at the airport there, record amount within the hour, and that caused the operation there to shut down. It's been brutal. Catastrophic rainfall, catastrophic flooding in this area and it stunned a lot of people.

Brian: Michael, the deaths, the new deaths that you were reporting from New Jersey, can you give us more of, or whatever you have on that, or even just repeat that little bit that you were getting from NJ Advance Media? I know that the previous concentration of deaths that was reported had been in Queens.

Michael: Right. This one, and I'm reading, this is from nj.com, NJ Advance Media. Five people found dead in the Elizabeth apartment complex, and a nearby fire station also was flooded with eight feet of water. The five people were found dead in an apartment building, bringing New Jersey's death toll now from Ida up to at least nine people, so it says, and that's just New Jersey alone. There may be more deaths that we don't even know about at this point.

The five residents were in an Oakwood Plaza apartment on Irvington Avenue in Elizabeth. The city spokesperson says that police were calling every enlisted resident, going door to door to apartments to check on other folks there. There's going to be a lot of that between now and whenever, Brian, when folks are still just checking on these reports of high water. There's a flood warning that just expired, but still, folks should be on the lookout that where that rain fell overnight, it means it has to drain somewhere, it can still drain and puddle into large areas, and cause flooding and so forth.

Again, the National Weather Service is already talking about people not driving through high water, and this is certainly one of those times when people should certainly heed that advice.

Brian: That's right. I know that part of the drama last night was in water rescues that were being undertaken on roadways where people's cars got stuck, and then they were up to their whatevers in actual water. Some people had to be rescued from their homes in those kinds of conditions, too. The Bronx River Parkway might have been called the Bronx Parkway River last night for a time. Any last reports from the roads about particular spots to particularly avoid still at this hour?

Michael: I have not heard that yet, Brian, but I do know as you were talking about the Bronx River Parkway, that certainly is one of those areas that's prone to flood even with a little bit of rain, believe it or not. I saw on Route 3 this morning, that it was really bad where my Uber driver did not want to go through and took an alternate route. I know that there are plenty of roads out there that still have water issues because the water really has nowhere to go.

When you mentioned that we had record rainfall last week and the grounds are still saturated, it's a system that we have in this area that doesn't seem to be able to handle this amount of rain, and certainly, not one week or two weeks after, the last record amount of rain that we had.

Brian: That's right. Another danger going forward is going to be trees, because the roots of trees are used to being in more solid ground. With all this rain, a lot of the ground has turned to mud, and that means when the winds come, the trees are more susceptible to being blown over more easily, and that's a danger to power lines in areas where the power lines are above ground, and obviously, it's a danger to individuals who could potentially get hit by trees if they're walking nearby. Mike, go ahead.

Michael: That's right, Brian. Pardon me, Brian. We're talking about gust of winds up to 25 miles an hour today, according to the National Weather Service. When you start talking about winds of that high, and grounds that are saturated with water, and trees that can easily come up, it is certainly a danger.

Brian: WNYC's Michael Hill. Thanks for the extra report to start the show, Michael, we really appreciate it and we'll talk to you again next hour.

Michael: Thank you, Brian.

Brian: Now, to some of your calls with how your life, your neighborhood, your commute, has been affected over the last day, 646-435-7280. Let's start with Svi in Passaic. Svi, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in today.

Svi: Hi, thanks for having me on. Had a crazy commute last night. I was on my way back from Central Jersey to North Jersey. I got on the turnpike from the Garden State at Exit 11, and after about me leaving less than a half a mile, how we came to a full stop, and it was literally a parking lot. I saw videos from further up ahead near Carteret, assuming there was a lot of flooding on the highway, but I was on the highway from 10:45 PM until the highway did not open up until 4:30, about six and a half hours. The highway was complete standstill. people were walking around. I slept a little in my car. It was crazy. It was not normal.

Brian: Pulling an all-nighter just to get home on the turnpike. Was there no alternative route like getting off at one of the exits and taking local roads?

Svi: I was wondering. We couldn't get to the exit. The state troopers didn't come by to open up the road to southbound. There was no one going because the highway was closed for the north. There was no one diverting traffic off the turnpike. it was just complete standstill.

Brian: Svi, I'm glad you're safe. Thank you very much for checking in today. Here's Gabriela in Jersey City. Gabriela, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling today.

Gabriela: Hi. Last night I looked out the window and there was about a foot of water outside of our apartment. Then I looked out 15 minutes later and there was probably two or three feet of water outside of our apartment. I went out down the steps of our place, and I looked down and our downstairs neighbors had had to climb out their window. We live on the second story and our first-floor neighbors had to climb up their window and it turned out later that they couldn't get their doors open, their front door or the back door because the water pressure was so intense pushing in, so they climbed out.

Our neighbor is a petite woman. She was actually chest-deep in the water because there's a well in front of their door, and they were able to flee to a nearby house.

Brian: Wow. That's a trauma. Did your downstairs neighbors fear for their lives?

Gabriela: I think they did. They said they were calling 911, and that they weren't able to get through because there were so many emergency calls. They're here right now with our landlord and my wife is helping them move all their stuff out, but they'd only moved in a day before, so they were completely not unpacking their boxes.

Brian: They were September 1st move?

Gabriela: Yes, their boxes were floating around.

Brian: Oh my goodness. September 1st move in, and this happened on September 2nd or the night of September 1st even.

Gabriela: Exactly.

Brian: Oh, how are things now right there?

Gabriela: It's quite dry. The streets are totally passable. There's garbage everywhere. Unfortunately, it was trash night last night and so all of the trash bins were floating down the street like boats lost and bags of garbage ended up in all sorts of unexpected locations.

Brian: Thank you, Gabriela. Thank you very much for checking in. I'm glad things are back to normal it sounds like, or getting back, and I'm glad everybody there seems like they're okay. Here's Governor Hochul talking about some of the challenges for subway workers.

Governor Hochul: What we experienced yesterday was literally something that experts say would not happen for 500 to 1,000 years. I'm not sure exactly how they know that, but they've said this is absolutely unprecedented. I would say that our system held up well. Clearly, we had to shut down. We could not jeopardize people's lives and leave the subway system open.

Brian: That was Governor Hochul speaking on WNYC earlier this morning on our local morning edition broadcast. Here, she talks even more particularly about what subway workers had to deal with.

Governor Hochul: The transit workers have to go through the tunnels and assess the damage and make sure there's pumps to mitigate the water and just really make sure that there's no compromising of the infrastructure before we can say it's safe to reopen our lines and that's going on, it has been going on through the night.

Brian: Governor Hochul on WNYC earlier this morning. Sam in Rockland County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sam.

Sam: Hi. Well, in Rockland County, many of the roads are closed. I had to take my daughter to work this morning. Usually, it's like an eight-minute jaunt and it took me to close to a half an hour just to maneuver around. I heard what the governor said, and I thought that was so interesting that the governor said 500 years or 1,000 years this hasn't happened, or it won't happen, or something to that effect.

Well, the BBC just had a little news thing before your show saying that what's going on in terms of rain, in terms of moisture is only going to increase, not decrease. Not only is it going to increase, but the infrastructure of the sewer system and the fact that everything is cemented and paved, there's no place for the water to go, it's only going to have an increasing effect over time. They used the word that New York is going to be in a situation of catastrophic proportions.

I've never heard that kind of a report before and I'm listening to the BBC, I'm not listening to some wild radio, but it really hit me. Living in this area, I have relatives in the New York City area. I'm in Rockland County, it's not as bad, but it really hit me, for the first time, that what we're really living in right now is a situation that's not going to get better.

Brian: Well, that's right.

Sam: The governor wants that things are rosy and it's going to happen every 500 years. Guess what? If you look around and you use your brain, you can see that the infrastructure can't handle this kind of rain. We're only going to get more storm coming up from the south.

Brian: I'm going to move on, Sam, and take some other callers in our remaining time with their stories, but you're absolutely right. I don't think the governor was meaning to suggest don't worry, this isn't going to happen for another 500 to 1,000 years, I think she was making exactly your point. That with climate change, this is likely to be a permanently more moist climate than it has been in the past.

I'm sure she would say too, that the next layer of that is exactly what they were saying on the BBC that in areas that are heavily cemented, urban areas like New York City, that there's the exact kind of infrastructure challenge for a lot of wetness that you were just describing there. Places are constructed with the present environmental conditions in mind. That's probably true at any place at any time. If those environmental conditions change dramatically enough, it's going to put great pressure on what we have come to consider normal and what we've come to consider safe.

How much adaptation are we going to have to do in New York City or anywhere else, as well as prevention of further global warming? They call it global weirding sometimes because it's wetter in some places, dryer in other places. We'll talk about that more in detail later in the show, but you're exactly right. I think that definitely is the context. Becky in Westchester, as we stay north of the city after hearing from Sam in Rockland there. Hi, Becky, you're on WNYC.

Becky: Hi, thanks for taking my call.

Brian: Thanks for making it. I see school was canceled for your kid today.

Becky: Not for my kid. I'm a teacher, and today was the first day of school for the students. The roads are just too impassable, so they are all waiting one more day.

Brian: Now you want to tell people what school or school district that is so they know not to try if they're still trying?

Becky: I teach at a private school in Mamaroneck, I live in Pelham, but all the roads around here are impassable that our neighbors, their basements flooded up to the first floor. We were lucky to keep it at bay at our own little shop back. The school itself is okay, but between the students and then the teachers coming from even further afield, there was just no way to get people to school safely today.

Brian: As far as you know, there are many roads that are still impassable in that Mamaroneck area?

Becky: I believe so. Honestly, I just drove. I took my dog to the dog park and there's a lot of roads that are still littered with abandoned vehicles that the water has receded, but the cars are still there.

Brian: I wonder if those cars are operable. I know Mamaroneck gets it so hard in situations like this every, 500 years, because it's on the sound. There's going to be obviously a big longer-term challenge for communities like that.

Becky: This wasn't so much the storm surge. We had a big problem after Sandy from the storm surge, but this was more local flooding. I live right next to the Hutchinson River and it was the banks of the local rivers that were overflowing more than the water coming in from the sound this time.

Brian: Do you have trees down around there? Have you seen any?

Becky: Yes, there are. It's not as crazy as it sometimes is. I don't think the wind was as much of a problem. I think the trees that came down were more just because the water or the ground was so saturated, that it didn't take much, but there doesn't seem to be a ton of tree damage, it's really more flood damage. Just down my block, basically every other house, you see people out pumping out their basement.

Brian: Becky, thank you for checking in with us. Don in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Don.

Don: Hi. How are you?

Brian: Good. Question is how are you?

Don: Well, I worked late last night. I'm a teacher and we're setting up the space for the kids coming in private school, Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn. I left around 8:00, 8:30. The commute was great. I'm staying at my friend's house in the basement because my wife does not want to get vaccinated and I am vaccinated, so I don't want to endanger her. I get to the neighborhood and the rain just came down unbelievably. Three down over a wire and there's huge sparks and I was trying to cross the street where the tree was down.

The sparks were continuous so I just was frozen. I didn't know what to do. I had somebody behind me who was just laying on the horn. Now, that person had to see the sparks in the tree but still, I proceeded. I get to the place, I walk in the front door. I go downstairs and my air mattress is floating in about six inches of water.

Brian: You're already living in the basement because your wife won't get vaccinated, and now you've got your basement flooded including your air mattress from Hurricane Ida. Not the best day of Don's life, but it sounds like you're okay so good luck. Let's go from Park Slope up to Pelham Parkway. Shake in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi Shake.

Shake: Good morning Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm also a teacher and my neighbor's walk-in apartment have flooded completely. I never saw that the mattress are floating. We have to call the 911, and the 911 came after a while. They didn't come promptly, maybe they're busy. I had to walk. I had to basically swim to the apartment to shut off the gas line, the electricity.

It has a huge rain. I never saw so much water into the walk-in apartment, my neighbors had to take them in upstairs.

Also one thing I would like to say I have the solar panel in my house. I didn't have any backup batteries, and the electricity also went out so we are really panicked. I could not sleep the whole night because I thought all the water going to the basement into the storage area is not pumping out. I didn't know what's going to happen but thanks God I'm fine, my neighbors are okay, but there's so much water. The mattresses are floating on the apartment. It was a huge chaotic situation.

Brian: Oh unbelievable. Are you right on Pelham Parkway? I know the area with the homes along the sides there, and the big grassy island with trees and everything in the middle. Are you right along there to know how that central area is holding up?

Shake: Yes. I'm exactly across from Jacobi Hospital on Pelham Parkway and his sister avenue. All the houses, the driveway is like little bit sloppy. All the rainwater going inside to the basement apartment or basement garage it is a really bad situation in the whole area. When I was driving in this morning in the Hudson River Parkway, I had never saw so many cars on the side. I said, "What happened? Why there's so many cars. A lot of people let there car in the Hutchinson river Parkway and it is really really bad situation here.

Brian: Shake thank you for checking in. I'm glad your house survived and you survive. Call us again. One more and we'll stay in the Bronx for Toshana in Soundview, you're on WNYC. Hi, Toshana.

Toshana: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you just fine.

Toshana: Okay, great. I live in Soundview and our area surprisingly was pretty unscathed. I live directly across from Soundview Park where the Bronx River is and we were fine surprisingly, and I took my husband to work. He works at Calvary Hospital and I drove up to Co-op City just to see how things were and to get some coffee up there. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There were cars abandoned everywhere in Co-op City. I had a difficult time getting back.

I'm coming back towards the I-95 South because there were so many entrances or exits really that were blocked. I couldn't get on because there were just so many abandoned cars everywhere so many cars that were spun out. There were cars on the hutch as well, lots of abandoned vehicles everywhere. I wasn't exactly sure what the damage was going to be, given my neighborhood, but clearly in other parts of the Bronx, they got hit harder.

Brian: Toshana, thank you for that report. Well, we're certainly learning from all our callers that abandoned cars is going to be one of the second-day stories and one of the second-day issues today. I'm going to throw in one extra caller and it's Abby in Patchogue. I see Abby was at the US Open last night and Abby, I'll tell you, the way it looked on television because I was watching the US Open last night. I was watching Sloane Stephens be so impressive.

Of course they could only play under the roof and Arthur Ashe the other matches on the other courts had to be canceled, but the way they were describing it on television, the players could barely hear each other or hear the sound of the ball being struck by the rackets. Then in the post-match interview it was hard for Sloane to hear the interviewer, because the rain was pounding so loudly on the roof. Was that your experience?

Abby: Yes, exactly. I was actually in Louis Armstrong, the other stadium, and watching Schwartzman and with the roof it was so loud and even the rain was still pouring in through the sides of the stadium, even though there was a roof so they had to cancel the match. Then my brother and I were running to the car. I was up to my knees running through puddles. Then on our way home, we got stuck into this crazy flash flood on the Cross Island, the water rose two feet in an hour, and we really thought we were going to be stuck there.

There were cars completely submerged under water. Eventually we got out. Luckily, the car turned on, but we were stuck out there for a while and took us about five hours to get home.

Brian: How close to the ocean are you?

Abby: I was on the Cross Island so we were right next to the water, which was not good. By the time I got back out to Patchogue, it was basically fine out here.

Brian: Right, but five hours to get from flushing back to Patchogue. Abby, thank you for checking in. Thank you to all of you who called. Some reports from around our area this morning after last night's unprecedented storm.

 

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