Two people in New Jersey were killed after their vehicle was swept away in flood waters during a storm that moved to the northeast of the United States overnight, authorities announced on Tuesday.
Governor Phil Murphy noted that deaths had occurred in the north of the city of Plainfield, in the north of New Jersey, where there were two other Death linked to storms on July 3. A third person was killed in North Plainfield, in this previous storm.
“We are not unique, but we are in one of these types of high -mood, high temperature and high storm intensity models at the moment,” Murphy told journalists after turning storm damage to Berkeley Heights. “Everyone must remain vigilant.”
The names of the last two victims were not immediately released on Tuesday. Local officials said that the vehicle in which they was riding was swept away in a stream at the storm.
“The emergency staff responded quickly, but tragically, the two individuals were declared dead on the scene,” said a statement that the city published online.
The New York Metro was flooded
The heavy rains also caused sudden floods in New York and at the South Center of Pennsylvania on Monday evening on Tuesday, causing road closings and hindering service in the New York metro.
At a stop in Manhattan, viral videos published online showed that water flooded in a Manhattan metro station, immersing the platform while passengers inside a train watch. Another photo seems to show people standing on the seats of a train to prevent water from soaking the ground.
Janno Lieber, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), told ABC 7 in New York that the city’s sewer system had been overwhelmed by rain and fell into the metro tunnels and in stations. In several cases, he said, the safeguard “has blurred a man hole”, creating the dramatic “geyser” seen in certain videos.
Strong precipitation caused serious floods in New York and New Jersey on Monday evening. The New York public transport authority said that the service of its metro is undergoing significant delays, while the videos captured flood waters gushing in a station and on the platform.
“What happened last night is something that is, you know, a reality in our system,” he told the television channel, noting that backup occurs when more than 4.5 centimeters of rain fall in an hour. “We worked with New York City to try to increase the system’s capacity to these key locations.”
Lieber said there was now a full metro service, as well as the Full Long Island rail service and the Metro North Commuter rail service after hundreds of people worked during the night to restore operations.
Floods have turned out to be an obstinate problem for the New York metro system, despite years and billions of dollars in efforts to quench them.
Superstorm Sandy in 2012 caused years of metro repairs and flooding ideas, and some have been put into practice. In some places, transit managers have installed or install storm barriers at the metro station entrances, joints under the mounting vents and ventilation edges to raise the vents and the entries above the sidewalk level.
Meanwhile, summer thunderstorms and the remains of hurricanes have repeatedly flooded parts of the metro system. In 2021, the remains of Hurricane Ida killed more than a dozen residents of New York, largely in the apartments in the subsoil, and again returned the water in the case in the metros, renewing attention to the proposals of resilience.
The latter storm caused several water resumes in the county of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the streets and the basements flooded after 18 centimeters of rain fell. Some roads remained closed Tuesday in some parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Murphy said the sidewalk completed in certain places and that state officials and premises evaluated the level of damage in several counties, noting that the White House had contacted its office.
A large highway to the east-west of New Jersey has been closed to make emergency repairs while dozens of flights have been delayed or canceled at the region’s airports on Tuesday, including at least 173 total cancellations at Newark Liberty airport, according to Flightaware data.
Most of the watches and warnings of the flash floods had expired in parts of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania over the rain.
Outdated sewers
New York City officials said their venerable sewer system worked as well as possible, but that it was simply not built to manage the rain that fell at the second highest rate ever recorded at Central Park, only exceeded by the leftover IDA Hurricane of 2021.
“Imagine putting a bottle of two -liter water in a one liter bottle. Part of this will manage,” said Environment Protection Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala on Tuesday during a virtual press briefing.
The city does not manage the metro system – it is under separate MTA – but Aggarwala said that the two entities had collaborated to clean the sewers nearly 45 metro stations subject to floods. The city has also sketched plans to improve sewers to manage more water, believing that it would take dollars to do so in around 80 areas that need it most. The city is currently spending about $ 1 billion a year on rainwater management.
