Hurricane Ida, The Aftermath

by CrownHeights.info

The remnants of Hurricane Ida whipped New York City Wednesday night, doing incredible amounts of damage and taking at least eight lives.

Following the night of record rain and flash flooding, a New York City police spokesperson said a total of eight people had died when they became trapped in flooded basements. Videos from across the Jewish communities of Brooklyn showed water pouring into basements and coming up through toilets and drains. In one such flooded basement which was being used as a shul, multiple sifrei torah were rescued by Hatzalah volunteers, but still sustained heavy water damage.

The National Weather Service recorded a total of 3.15 inches of rain in New York’s Central Park in one hour, far surpassing the 1.94 inches that fell in one hour during Tropical Storm Henri on the night of Aug. 21, which was believed at the time to be the most ever recorded in the park.

The New York City area and Long Island saw over 25,000 customers without power Thursday morning due to the storm, while New Jersey had over 60,000 customers experiencing outages.

The damage from Ida was significantly less in magnitude to Hurricane Sandy but was also more wide-ranging as many high elevation areas also got flooded.

In Crown Heights, the damage was relatively minor, with only the area of Rutland Road near Kingston Ave collecting enough water to submerge cars. Homes and buildings fared significantly worse, as old and leaky construction leading to interior damage in tens of homes. Many basements were also partially flooded.