New York City has undergone a torrential storm that left six people dead and stranded close to a million residents without power. The city’s transportation system is crippled.
The storm surge was made worse by a higher full-moon tide, with the peak of the flooding lower Manhattan and other low-lying areas by 8 PM.
Large parts of Manhattan below midtown are now in the dark after a reported explosion that may have been at a Con Ed building, reported The Gothamist. “Huge explosion at 14th St. All of downtown is now dark,” tweeted the website’s correspondent. Another witness saw a “massive explosion here in LES then all went dark.”
As of early Tuesday morning, there are numerous reports of residents trapped in their homes facing the high waters that submerged many parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Rockaways. The Fire Department is forced to reach those trapped by boat.
According to the NY Post, water gushed into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and cars were floating in the streets. There was no dry land anywhere in the Rockaways, where cops in the 100th Precinct station house were trapped on the building’s second floor.
A 29-year-old man was killed in his Flushing, Queens, home when a tree fell into the building. Three children were killed when a tree fell in North Salem. A woman was electrocuted after stepping into a puddle on 105th Avenue in South Richmond Hill.
NYU Langone Medical Center is dark after the backup generators failed. Patients had to be moved to nearby facilities.
All MTA trains and buses are down.
