The New York City region is reeling from devastation caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which unleashed catastrophic flooding that left at least 20 people dead, triggered tornadoes and paralyzed transport services.
The waters swamped highways, airport terminals, baseball stadiums and subway stations. Nine people died in Brooklyn and Queens. At least 11 others were killed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Tornadoes hit Maryland and New Jersey.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said help was on the way from all levels of government after the catastrophic storm caused unprecedented flash floods.
In an earlier phone call, President Joe Biden offered “any assistance” the state needs, Hochul said. She said she would be calling on a report to be made to detail where New York City may have gone wrong in its response.
Speaking in Queens, she said she had directed the state’s Department of Financial Services to work with insurance companies to help file homeowners’ claims expeditiously. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents New York, said he had been in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator as well.
Nearly all of the officials at the briefing nodded to the role climate change played in the storm. “Woe is us if we don’t do something about it quickly,” Schumer said.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said storms like Ida call for an entirely different approach and the city will need help from the state and federal government to prepare. Forecasters had initially reported that there would be 3 to 6 inches of rainfall in the city all day, de Blasio said, and instead the city experienced more than that in an hour.
“This is the biggest wake-up call we could possibly get. We’re going to have to do a lot of things differently and quickly.”
The flooding has pushed the storm’s overall economic losses and damages into the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, according to an estimate from Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research.
This would place it fifth on the list of the most costly hurricanes to hit the U.S., behind Katrina, Harvey, Maria and Sandy.
Almost 170,000 customers on the U.S. East Coast had no power Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us. Pennsylvania had the largest number of outages with about 78,000, followed by smaller numbers in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
Flooded streets were complicating efforts to restore electricity. “It’s very dangerous. Our trucks can’t move on these roads that are blocked by floodwaters,” Jamie McShane, a spokesman for New York utility Con Edison, said Thursday morning. “There were cars everywhere that have been abandoned, so it’s really hard to get around.”
