NEW YORK — Police went door to door in search of more possible victims and drew up lists of the missing as the death toll rose to 49 on Friday in the catastrophic flooding set off across the Northeast by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.
The disaster underscored with heartbreaking clarity how vulnerable the U.S. is to the extreme weather that climate change is bringing. In its wake, officials weighed far-reaching new measures to save lives in future storms.
More than three days after the hurricane blew ashore in Louisiana, Ida’s rainy remains hit the Northeast with surprising fury on Wednesday and Thursday, submerging cars, swamping subway stations and basement apartments and drowning scores of people in five states.
Intense rain overwhelmed urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much water in such a short time — a record 3 inches in just an hour in New York.
On Friday, communities labored to haul away ruined vehicles, pump out homes and highways, clear away muck and other debris, restore mass transit and make sure everyone caught in the storm was accounted for.
Some communities on Long Island were even working to remove sewage from their homes after plumping pipes malfunctioned during the storm.
The death toll from Ida's historic flooding was highest in New Jersey, where dozens of people perished in heavy rains. A majority were people who drowned after their vehicles were caught in flash floods, some dying in their submerged cars, some getting swept away after exiting into fast-moving water.
Gov. Phil Murphy said on the "Today" show Friday morning that New Jersey's death toll had risen from 23 to 25 overnight, with at least six people still missing across the state. The governor said all of the deaths were flood-related and that he expected the death toll to rise further.
"While the weather may be good, and while the floodwaters may have receded, we're still not out of the woods. We still have a lot of damage that we're dealing with, we still have floodwaters that are significantly higher than normal," Murphy said. "We're going to cleanup and we're going to stay together, and we'll get back on our feet, but it may be a long road."
In New York City, where the death toll was at least 13, 11 people died when they were unable to escape rising water in their basement apartments.
Ida's intense rain overwhelmed urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much water in such a short time — a record 3.15 inches in just an hour in Central Park.
Even after clouds gave way to blue skies, some rivers and streams were still rising. Part of the swollen Passaic River in New Jersey wasn't expected to crest until Friday night.
“People think it’s beautiful out, which it is, that this thing’s behind us and we can go back to business as usual, and we’re not there yet,” Gov. Murphy warned.
While the storm ravaged homes and the electrical grid in Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving more than 800,000 people without power as of Friday, it seemingly proved more lethal over 1,000 miles away in the Northeast, where the death toll outstripped the 13 lives reported lost so far in the Deep South. Ida stands as the deadliest hurricane in the U.S. in four years.
Leaders in some states pledged to examine whether anything could be done to prevent a catastrophe like this from happening again.
New Jersey and New York have both spent billions of dollars improving flood defenses after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, but much of that work was focused primarily on protecting communities from seawater, not rain.
On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new plan to respond to extreme rain in the wake of Ida; the NYC Climate-Driven Rain Response plan includes the potential for more frequent travel bans and the evacuation of basement apartments in New York City during severe storms.
President Joe Biden late Thursday approved disaster declarations for both New York and New Jersey. The federal action was issued to mobilize agencies to provide assistance to areas hardest-hit by the storm.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday the region needed to turn its attention to storm systems unprepared to handle a future of more frequent inland flash flooding due to global climate change.
“One thing I want to make clear: we’re not treating this as if it’s not going to happen again for 500 years,” she said.
Ida came ashore in Louisiana on Sunday, then moved north as the fifth-strongest storm to ever hit the U.S. mainland, then moved north and east dumping torrential rain all week.
Forecasters had warned of potentially dangerous hazardous flooding, but the ferocity of the storm caught the nation's most densely populated metropolitan corridor by surprise.
In a second wave of calamity for the Northeast, fires broke out in swamped homes and businesses, many of them inaccessible to firefighters because of floodwaters. Authorities suspected gas leaks triggered by the flooding fed the flames.
A banquet hall in Manville, New Jersey, exploded in flames around 2 a.m. Friday. Its owner, Jayesh Mehta, said he felt helpless and heartbroken looking at pictures and videos of his burning business.
“I don’t know what to do and how to deal with something like this,” Mehta told NJ Advance Media.
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