Remnants of Hurricane Ida flood the city, killing more than a dozen
Record rainfall overwhelmed streets and basement apartments, drowning residents across Queens and Brooklyn in a catastrophe that exposed the city's vulnerability.
The remnants of Hurricane Ida unleashed catastrophic flooding across New York City on Wednesday night, dumping record rainfall that turned streets into rivers, inundated subway stations and drowned more than a dozen people, many of them trapped in basement apartments.
The storm shattered rainfall records, with more than three inches falling in Central Park in a single hour, overwhelming a drainage system never designed for such deluges. Water cascaded down subway staircases, stranding trains and riders, and submerged highways and homes across Queens and Brooklyn.
Most of the victims died in illegal basement apartments that flooded so fast there was no time to escape — a tragedy that laid bare the dangers faced by residents, often immigrants, living in such informal housing across the city. The governor and mayor declared states of emergency.
The disaster, coming days after another storm and amid a summer of extreme weather, drove home how climate change was overwhelming the city's aging infrastructure. Officials acknowledged that systems built for a different era could not cope with the intense, sudden downpours becoming more common in a warming world.
In the aftermath, the city pledged to improve flood warnings, crack down on dangerous basement dwellings and invest in resilience. But for grieving families and residents who watched the water rise with terrifying speed, the storm was a devastating warning that the next deluge was only a matter of time.