(Change wording with new details. Change signature authors and provenance -previously in WASHINGTON)
By Barbara Goldberg and Nathan Layne
MAPLEWOOD, Sept. 2 (Reuters) – Flash floods have killed at least 26 people in the northeastern United States, where debris from Hurricane Ida unleashed torrential rains that washed away cars, submerged New York City subway lines. and grounded airline flights, authorities said Thursday.
In large areas of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, residents spent the day dealing with flooded basements, power outages, damaged roofs and calls for help from friends and family stranded by flooding.
At least 12 New York City residents lost their lives, along with nine in the New Jersey metropolitan area. Among the deaths, three people died in a basement in the Queens borough of New York City, while four residents of Elizabeth, New Jersey, perished in a public housing complex that was inundated by nearly eight feet of water. .
Roads were transformed into river-like torrents in minutes when downpours fell Wednesday night, trapping drivers under the rising waters. In Somerset County, New Jersey, at least four motorists were killed, authorities said.
“Sadly, a few more people have died as a result of this,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said at a briefing in Mullica Hill, in the southern part of the state, where a tornado destroyed several houses.
The damage came three days after Ida, one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the US Gulf Coast, made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, destroying entire communities.
But the loss of life in the Northeast eclipsed the confirmed death toll of nine related to the storm in Louisiana.
In Conshohocken, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the Schuylkill River flooded hotels, warehouses and condos that are on its edge. Emergency squads were waiting for the waters to recede Thursday before beginning evacuations of possibly hundreds of people living in nearby apartments, authorities said.
Four people died in suburban Philadelphia as a result of the storm, according to county spokeswoman Kelly Cofrancisco. And a Connecticut state trooper died after his patrol car was washed away by flooding in the city of Woodbury early Thursday morning, state police said.
RECORD RAINS
The remnants of Ida brought 6 to 8 inches of rain to a northeast swath from Philadelphia to Connecticut and set an hourly rainfall record of 3 inches for Manhattan, breaking one set less than two weeks ago, the National Weather Service said.
The 18 centimeters of rain that fell in New York City on Wednesday was the fifth highest daily amount in the city, the service said.
New York officials attributed much of the flooding to high volumes of rainfall in a short period, rather than the daily total, which was within predictions.
“Unfortunately, due to climate change, this is something that we will have to deal with on a very regular basis,” said Kathy Hochul, the newly inaugurated governor of New York.
The number of disasters caused by climate change, such as floods and heat waves, has increased fivefold in the past 50 years, according to a report released this week by the World Meteorological Organization, a UN agency.
US President Joe Biden said Thursday that the federal government was ready to provide “all necessary assistance.”
The governors of New York and New Jersey, who declared emergencies in their states on Wednesday, urged residents to stay home as crews worked to clear roads and restore service to the subway and commuter rail lines that serve to millions of residents. (Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in Maplewood, New Jersey, and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru, Maria Caspani and Peter Szekely in New York, Jarrett Renshaw in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, and Nandita Bose in Washington, Daniel Trotta in San Diego and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Written by Maria Caspani and Steve Gorman; Edited in Spanish by Manuel Farías)