The American city of New York City was ravaged last night by a torrential deluge that flooded streets, subway tunnels and parts of airports.
Also elsewhere in New York state and the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, sudden rainfall, linked to Tropical Storm Ida, caused a heavy nuisance. At least 14 people have been killed.
This morning around 9 am local time, the weather was beautiful again, but the hours before that, the city of New York, among others, got an absolute downpour. “It has been raining here for 6.7 hours straight. I have never heard or seen so much water falling from the sky,” testifies correspondent Björn Soenens, who lives in the city himself. “It was really chaos.”
The heavy rainfall flooded parts of New York City. Metro stations and streets where the water flows meters high, cars and citizens trying to make their way through the water at a walking pace resulted in hallucinatory images.
Bill de Blasio, the city’s mayor, declared an emergency over the “record” rainfall. According to De Blasio, the disaster would leave about 5,300 New Yorkers without power.
De Blasio advised the city residents not to go out on the streets and not to use the metro system. The flooding has severely disrupted the metro. Half of the metro lines are still out of use.
Air traffic at two airports in New York and one airport in the neighbouring state of New Jersey has also been temporarily suspended. In addition, due to the lingering danger, a travel ban was issued that prohibited residents from using their cars. The ban lasted until 5 am this morning (11 am our time).
The US Open tennis tournament is also affected by the storm. As a result, several matches were delayed or postponed.
