State of emergency, flights cancelled as Storm Ida drenches New York City

A stunned US East Coast woke up on Thursday to a rising death toll, surging rivers and destruction from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which walloped the region with record-breaking rain days after hitting the Gulf coast as one of the strongest hurricanes on record to strike the US.

In a region that had been warned about potentially deadly flash flooding but had not braced for such a blow from the no-longer-hurricane, the storm killed at least 26 people from Maryland to New York on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Nine people died in New York City, police said, one of them in a car and eight in flooded basement flats that often serve as relatively affordable homes for low-income people. Officials said at least eight died in New Jersey and three in Pennsylvania’s suburban Montgomery County; one was killed by a falling tree, one drowned in a car and another in a home. An on-duty state trooper in Connecticut was swept away in his cruiser and later taken to a hospital, state police and local authorities said..

Outside Philadelphia, officials reported “multiple fatalities,” saying no additional details were immediately available. A 19-year-old man was killed in the flooding at the Rockville complex early on Wednesday, police said.

In Connecticut, an on-duty state trooper and his cruiser were swept away in floodwaters on Thursday morning in Woodbury, and the trooper was taken to a hospital, state police and local authorities said.

Deborah Torres, who lives on the first floor of a building where three people died in a basement flat in New York City’s Queens borough, said water rapidly filled her own flat to her knees. The landlord frantically urged her neighbours below to get out, she said.