Two people have died from their basements flooding in New York City after an intense rainstorm occurred on Thursday.
Emergency crews in Brooklyn found a 39-year-old man, Aaron Akaberi, inside the basement of a three-story townhouse around 4:30 p.m after it was flooded. He had reportedly gone back in to rescue a dog after already saving another but he and that second dog never made it back out alive.
“He was just a very pure, simple person,” Akaberi’s friend said. “Didn’t really need much at all. He was a giver, he wasn’t a taker.”
At around the same time in Manhattan, firefighters discovered a 43-year-old man, Juan Carlos Montoya Hernandez, dead inside the boiler room of a basement in an apartment building. He was a building worker and known to people as Carlito. It’s believed he was electrocuted while trying to pump out the water that was pouring into the boiler room, flooding it.
The storm set a new record for rainfall for some spots in the city. Preliminary data show about 1.8 inches of rain fell in Central Park which went past the previous record set in 1917 (1.64 inches). Meanwhile, LaGuardia Airport recorded nearly 2 inches which broke the record from 1955 of 1.18 inches.
Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, acknowledged the issue with the rainwater in a statement to radio station 1010 WINS.
“When you look at the amount of water that was coming down, our sewer systems are just not built to handle that,” Mayor Adams said. “It was a steady rain throughout.”
The New York City Environmental Protection office said the system was made to handle about 1.75 inches of rain per hour. The storm caused quite a bit of flooding, resulting in more than 800 calls.
These tragedies represent the ongoing danger for basements in areas of the city that are more prone to floods.
