Hurricane Ida killed at least 45 people in New York and its environs, according to Agence France-Presse. The disaster led to a historic flood in New York. As a result of the natural disaster, the largest city in the United States was under water: in just one hour the city was hit by rainfall equal to the monthly norm, also affecting the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency and criticized meteorologists for failing to predict exactly how devastating the disaster would be.
For the second day in a row, the subway in New York was almost blocked, and the streets turned into rivers. The victims were mostly people who took refuge in basements or were locked in their cars. Many flights at Kennedy Airport have been canceled.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told reporters he was upset that Ida had killed at least 23 residents of the state he runs. In New York and its suburbs, the death toll from the disaster is 15 people. Three people died in the Philadelphia area.
After hitting Louisiana, Ida brought bad weather with torrential rains and tornadoes to the area from Virginia to New York, near Washington – in Annapolis, Maryland, a second-degree tornado uprooted trees and felled power lines. According to police, at least 11 people in New York died after their house on the ground floor was flooded. A record amount of rainfall turned the streets of New York into rivers and closed the subway. Hundreds of flights were canceled from LaGuardia, JFK and Newark airports.
US President Joe Biden will visit Louisiana today. It was this state that Hurricane Ida struck on Sunday night, destroying buildings and leaving millions without electricity. Biden said both the devastation after Ida and the fires in California show that we are in a time of climate crisis.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, also spoke on the issue, warning that “global warming is palpable and will get worse and worse if we do nothing about it.”