Gov. Kathy Hochul urged New Yorkers to “stay put” in the wake of unexpected heavy rainfall that hit the tri-state area Wednesday evening that “paralyzed the region” and claimed eight lives.
“Right, we’re hoping that people will stay home, at this point,” Hochul said on 1010 Wins Thursday morning.
“So [if] you’re one of our millions of commuters, we encourage you to just stay put for a little while. Let us make sure that everything is going to be restored safely, that there hasn’t been any infrastructure that’s compromised, and we’ll let you know when it’s safe to get back out there.”
Hochul will be joining Mayor Bill de Blasio and Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams in Queens for a briefing Thursday morning.
The majority of transit service remained completely or partly suspended across the MTA’s subways and commuter rails Thursday morning, with normal service not expected to return until the afternoon.
On Wednesday night, New York City subway stations were submerged in water, as flash floods that brought about six inches of rain to the city in a matter of hours, converting stairways and platforms into waterfalls, halting the public transit system. What remained of Hurricane Idea, which made landfall in Louisiana earlier in this week, tore through buildings in New Jersey and New York, submerging vehicles on several roads in the area.
Several subway trains got stuck between stations and needed to be evacuated, according to the MTA. The agency said Wednesday that service is expected to remain “very limited” Thursday morning due to historic rainfall.
At least four people died in Brooklyn and Queens after getting trapped in their residential basement units when the floodwater surged, law enforcement sources previously said.
“The amount of rain that came down during that one hour period is what really paralyzed the region, that was just — we knew there was a storm coming, but that was absolutely unprecedented, and now we’re still dealing with the aftermath and the loss of life,” said Hochul Thursday morning.
On WCBS 880, Hochul said that “limited service” is available in the Empire State’ public transportation networks in the early hours Thursday.
Asked if she should have pre-emptively shut down public transit ahead of the deluge, Hochul said, “I think people could not have seen the scale,” and insisted the state was “prepare” for the storm.
“We were prepared. We had our MTA officials on board every minute. But this came without a lot of notice,” said the newly sworn-in governor. “We’ll be assessing all this, but right now, we’re concerned about making sure the subways are back up and running but we’re safe for people.”
“This is still very much a live event.”
Meanwhile, Borough President Eric Adams — the Democratic mayoral nominee — said the storm came as a surprise.
“It caught everyone off guard,” he said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“For the first time, I saw complete flooding on the outbound outbound side of the Brooklyn Bridge. I’ve never witnessed that before, while I lived in the city.”
The likely next mayor called the storm a “wake-up call” reminding New Yorkers of the havoc climate change can wreak on the city.
“It just was a real devastation, the number of lives that were lost and it’s just a real wake-up call to all of us, how we must understand how this climate change is impacting us,” Adams said on CNN.
The NYPD captain turned politician implored Big Apple residents to touch base with seniors.
“We need to make sure we check on them, because the flooding has been extremely intense last night, and you know some basements in other places where we saw real electrical outages,” he said. “It’s important for us to look after each other, as the water recedes, but we need to understand we need to be there for each other as New Yorkers.”
