Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Heavy rain left roads flooded and people stranded Tuesday in North Jersey.
The National Weather Service extended its flood warning to 7 p.m. However, the New Jersey Department of Transportation said all state highways were open by 5:15 p.m.
Thereafter they climbed into rafts and river boats, Humvees and the bucket of a front-end loader to escape the rapidly rising water, as heavy rain lashed the northeast on Tuesday.
Flash floods snarled traffic and upended transportation across the New York region, leaving some fire departments overwhelmed by calls for assistance.
More than six inches of rain inundated swaths of Connecticut on Tuesday, flooding streets and college campuses and making for a challenging evening commute for many in the region. Parts of New York and New Jersey were also swamped by more than four inches in the past 24 hours.
Sections of Routes 1 and 9 in northern New Jersey, roadways that provide a key link to the George Washington Bridge and to the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, were closed because of flooding.
The northbound lanes of the Pulaski Skyway were also closed after traffic backed up from the Routes 1 and 9 shutdowns.
In the Bronx, certain portions of the Mosholu Parkway were flooded near Interstate 87, and a portion of the Bronx River Parkway looked like a calm shallow river by late Tuesday.
Earlier during the day, flooding also blocked a segment of Riverside Drive in northern Manhattan.
Interstate 95 near Norwalk, Conn., flooded, causing lane closures and congestion. About 10 miles away, in Stamford, fire department officials reported having to make “dozens of water rescues” because of the rain and urged drivers to stay off the road.
With much of the area inundated and normal access roads blocked, rescuers around the region resorted to some creative vessels to ferry stranded commuters across the flooded streets.
In Stamford, students who were on a school bus that stalled out in the floods were rescued in a large white canoe, pulled through the water by a rubber-booted rescuer.
In the New Jersey town of Fairview, nearly a hundred workers in a local warehouse were trapped by the sudden flash flood and unable to get to their cars. The local fire department asked Eddie Smith, 56, if they could use his front-end loader to carry people across the water in the front bucket.
Mr. Smith said he rescued about 45 people.
Bus service throughout New Jersey was subject to delays because of the weather and the PATH train system was allowing bus passengers to use their tickets to board trains in Newark.
Flights into Newark Liberty International Airport were subject to delays of up to an hour and 24 minutes, as per the official feed in a certain microblogging site.
In the town of Hackensack, N.J., fire officials said they had conducted multiple water rescues and had advised residents to stay off all roads.
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