United States: chaos in New York, at least 44 dead after floods
Audio 01:21
Men watch a car drenched in flood water after Ida's remains brought torrential rains, flash floods and tornadoes to parts of the northeast in Mamaroneck, New York, the United States on September 2 2021. REUTERS - MIKE SEGAR
Text by: RFI Follow
6 mins
The human toll of storm Ida is growing.
US authorities speak of 44 dead on the northeast coast.
In New York, residents suffered significant damage from the flooding.
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With our correspondent in New York
,
Loubna Anaki
In his Brooklyn home, Andy spent his day emptying the basement flooded by the rains that Ida poured out.
“
The amount of water that fell was too much for the sewers and drains,” he
says
.
I have more than 30 cm of water in my cellar.
And it's the same with neighbors at different levels.
"
Streets, avenues and expressways
were suddenly turned into torrents
, both in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens.
In Westchester, dozens of vehicles were still submerged to the roof on Thursday and basements of pretty traditional houses on the East Coast devastated by water sometimes rising to two feet.
Not far from there, Noëlla's house was also flooded.
“
Water literally flooded everything up the stairs to the cellar, through the front door and the back door!
I
've lived
here for 25 years and I've never seen it,
”she says.
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“Our way of managing our pollution is a real problem!
"
Faced with so much water, Noëlla was quickly overwhelmed, despite the alerts issued by the authorities before the storm arrived: “
I knew that we had to take precautions, but I did not expect at all to such a situation.
"
Ida passed only 10 days after the storm Henri which had already brought heavy rains.
For New Yorkers, this is a sign that, from now on, we must be ready for increasingly intense phenomena, and that climate change must be taken seriously.
"
This is proof that climate change, environmental disturbances, the way we manage our pollution, is a real problem!"
»Exclaims Noëlla.
Emergency state
That night, thousands of homes were still without electricity on the northeast coast.
Airports and public transport were still severely disrupted.
The White House has declared a state of emergency at the federal level in the states of New York and New Jersey, ordering federal agencies to
"identify, mobilize and provide at discretion the necessary equipment and resources
."
“
We are all together.
The nation is ready to help,
”declared President Joe Biden, who was due to travel to Louisiana on Friday, September 3, the
first state to have suffered the ravages of Ida on Sunday.
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United States
Natural disasters
Climate change
Joe biden