All night underground: hundreds of people stuck on the subway due to floods in New York

Camilla Akbari boarded a New Jersey transit flight at 19:43 pm on Wednesday August 1 from New York Penn Station, hoping to get to her mom's home in Princeton, New Jersey. The journey usually takes about an hour. However, on that day, the trip lasted for almost 14 hours. CNN.

Amid torrential rains and floods, a 24-year-old New York University law student was stuck staring on a train overnight. The toilets were unusable and she had to sit without electricity, ventilation, food or water. At night, she said, she heard false promises that help was on the way.

“We sat literally and figuratively in the dark for hours,” she told CNN.

Akbari was one of thousands of people stranded on the public transportation system in the New York subway area. Traffic came to a standstill on Wednesday night due to flash floods caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. Not a single mode of transport survived. Streets, subways, ground trains and airports were flooded by the storm.

Early Thursday morning, September 2, New York declared a state of emergency. The city has declared a flood emergency for the first time. And the city has imposed a travel ban until 5 a.m. ET. However, these claims came too late for many passengers stranded in tourist centers far from home.

Flooding at 46 metro locations

The Metropolitan Department of Transport identified problems early Thursday morning, September 2. The metro system was flooded in 46 places, about 65 buses were blocked or stuck. Two Metro North Line trains are stuck. In addition, all New Jersey Transit rail services, with the exception of the Atlantic City rail line, have been suspended due to flooding.

According to spokesman Frank Dwyer, the New York City Fire Department had to rescue hundreds of people from subway stations. According to the head of MTA, between 15 and 20 subway trains were stuck.

“The most important thing is that we got the people out safely,” stressed MTA Acting Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber.

New York Governor Katie Hockle told CNN on Thursday, September 2, that New York was paralyzed by an unprecedented storm.

“Literally all night, city transport workers walked on the rails to make sure they were safe,” she said. - There were many floods. Nobody died in them. "

Trapped in NJ Transit

NJ Transit reported that train 3881, which departed from New York to Trenton at 19:43 pm, was carrying about 200 passengers. According to NJ Transit spokesman Marilus Garcia-Diaz, the train went out of order around 20:30 pm due to excessive flooding on tracks east of Newark International Airport.

Akbari, Jan Wolsten, Ilya Rivera and Alexandra Patino were among the passengers on one of the flights. They talked about a horrible journey that was tiring most of all because of the lack of information.

After a couple of stops, the train stopped on the tracks, it started raining, and a flood began. Passengers were informed that there was a mechanical problem on the train and a rescue team was on the way. But hours after hours passed, and there was still no additional information. And so they sat.

Rivera, 30, a fashion industry expert, said the water level had risen almost to the train window.

“I was literally sitting by the window and saw the water almost at my level,” she said. "Then I thought I'd have to swim out."

According to García-Diaz, the three carriages at one end of the train had up to 10 cm of water, so the passengers were moved to other, unaffected carriages.

After a few hours of waiting, the electricity went out. That is, there was no light, no air conditioning, no ventilation. Neither windows nor doors could be opened due to the pouring rain. Eventually the passengers realized that they would have to sit here overnight and tried to fall asleep.

Lack of information

Wolsten, a 27-year-old passenger on his way to his home in East Brunswick, New Jersey, said the passengers were initially moved by the situation.

But it soon got dark, Wolsten remarked.

“As soon as the electricity was cut off from the trains, he became completely helpless. It's one thing when it's pitch-black, because we fell asleep anyway. It was quite different that there was no air conditioning or ventilation. In a situation reminiscent of COVID-19, you start thinking, "What the hell will happen to us if the air does not circulate?" It's just that the situation quickly turned alarming. "

Patino, a 30-year-old woman who traveled from Queens to visit her boyfriend in Edison, New Jersey, said she was frustrated by the lack of information from the train conductors.

“The updates were just terrible and no one let us know what was going on,” she lamented.

The rain eventually stopped, but the doors and windows of the train remained mostly closed. By early morning, people were worried. Akbari said that she saw masks fall from people, and sniffed the smoke of cigarettes and "weed". One woman was on the verge of a panic attack. However, there was no reliable information about when they would be able to move again.

Passengers were safer on the train

García-Diaz, a spokeswoman for NJ Transit, said rescue services and Newark's firefighters were on site with two rescue vehicles. But in the end, they decided that the passengers and the crew would be safer on the train. Therefore, no one was hurt.

“The decision to leave passengers on the train was the safest choice as the carriages were sufficiently raised above the flood streams,” she wrote in an email.

At about 4 am, the transport police arrived with bottled water and opened the doors for fresh air.

“I think I started to panic a little,” Akbari admitted. “By the time I got to the door that the transport police opened, I was shaking a little. Tears filled my eyes as the situation was dire. This was really scary".

Nobody got hurt, everybody returned home

The rescue train arrived about an hour later and towed the idle train to Newark Airport Station. There the passengers were told to get out and wait on the platform of the regular train.

As a result, all passengers, CNN reported, made it home safely.

Patino took the next train to Edison. She got to her boyfriend's house at about 7 am. Rivera drove to Elizabeth and was also at home at about 7 am. Wolsten took the train to Metro Park and returned home at about 6:45 am.

Akbari took a train to Trenton and arrived there at 7:30 - almost 12 hours after departure. Then her mother took her by car. It took them another two hours to reach Princeton through the closed and flooded streets.

“It was kind of an adventure,” Akbari says. "Of course, it is much easier to perceive the situation now than when it was unfolding."

Trapped at a subway station

CNN's Shimon Prokupets spent the night at the Times Square subway station in Manhattan. He ended up there along with dozens of people stranded by a broken system. At the station there was train number 1 from 21:45, and only after seven in the morning it passed only one stop.

“Many of these people have no way to return home. The subway is saving their lives. This is how they return home, ”said Prokupets.

He stressed that many stranded people drove from work and hoped to reach their homes in Brooklyn.

"I didn't expect it to be so serious."

Beverly Price was among the flood victims.

She said she left her home in Queens on the evening of September 1st. Beverly was trying to get to the office where she works as a nurse. She took an Uber taxi to the bus stop. But the buses didn't run because of the flood, so Beverly got stuck at the station. According to her, she took another bus to try another route to get to work. Unfortunately, this path was also blocked due to flooded streets.

She then took train 7 and got to Times Square station at 23:30 pm - and got stuck there overnight. There were no buses or trains anywhere. She said she had lived in New York for 30 years and had "never seen anything like it."

“I didn't expect it to be so serious,” she lamented. "I would not leave the house."

Robert Hedglin left work in Manhattan around 9pm and took the subway to his home in Queens. But his train was stuck underground for more than an hour between two stations. As soon as the train reached the next stop, the rest of its journey was canceled.

There were no taxis, no trains, no buses to get home. So he had a couple of drinks at the bar before 12:30 and was at the diner until about 3:00. He ended up driving home in Lyft for $ 104.

“I am exhausted, disappointed, but I made it home safely,” he summed up. "Some were less fortunate."