Several subway stations were flooded and major arteries cut Thursday in New York, where new flooding threatened Friday with the expected arrival of Storm Elsa.
Between 2 and 4 inches of water fell during a series of thunderstorms over New York and surrounding areas Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service (NWS) said, “causing extensive flash flooding in some places“.
Subway riders posted video footage of some particularly impressive flooded stations at the 157th Street station north of Manhattan on Twitter.
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We see people with waist-deep water, somehow crossing a blackish pool to reach the docks.
“Lines 1 and A have really taken a hit, with a lot of flooding in the stations“, recognized Thursday evening Sarah Feinberg, patron of the MTA, New York public transport authority, during a press briefing.
Some major roads, especially in the Bronx, have been temporarily closed, disrupting traffic when leaving the office. New York police tweeted footage of her rescuing motorists stranded by the waters.
Flooding in metro stations
The NWS warned of possible new flooding by Friday morning, with the expected arrival in the northeast of heavy rains brought by storm Elsa, which came from Florida.
Despite work undertaken to fortify the city in the face of flooding since Hurricane Sandy of October 2012 – which killed 44 people and paralyzed the American economic capital for days – New York, a city surrounded by water, remains very vulnerable to flooding, the frequency of which must increase with climate change.
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Several officials, including Eric Adams, president of Brooklyn and big favorite for the November municipal election since winning the Democratic primary this week, called Thursday night for urgent investments to fortify infrastructure.
“Extreme weather episodes like this won’t go away“, warned one of her opponents in the primary, Kathryn Garcia, who supervised the pumping of water after Sandy.”We must invest in strategies to protect the city“.
We must invest in strategies to protect the city
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