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It happens. Likely more so today when you have eff tons of illegal basement housing that isn't well maintained.
Many homes with basements or cellars are prone to water getting in due to their being built near long covered creeks, ponds, streams, etc.... Such home have sump pumps designed to remove water before it floods a basement or whatever. This is obviously more of an issue if property sits in a flood zone or is low level, former wetlands, etc....
That being said when you have a water main or sewer pipe bust, heavy rain, etc... Then all bets are off. Water can (and often will) rise very quickly flooding not just basements but first/ground floor as well.
We saw this with Super Storm Sandy. Lots of people died on Staten Island, Queens, and Brooklyn by basically being drowned in their own homes.
Yep, the sump pumps didn't even help. My neighbor told us he has a pump and he still flooded. If there's that much water and no where for it to go, you're OOL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWiseShopper
Gosh, why can't people just stay home right now? People are nuts!
Here was my experience:
I was at work and it wasn't until later in the night that we started to get severe storm warnings. By then, it was already raining. Then the warnings were extended later and later.
My coworker and I were the only ones left in our department. We work the late shift. We ran to the train station. The water was coming in from everywhere. I thought to myself, since I need to take three different trains to get home, please, please do not flood out.
I just made it home in time---without warning, seemingly, the subway was shutdown. I have no idea what I would have done, as my employer had NO plans in place for this weather. I walked from the train station to my house, where I saw my neighbor a few houses down trying to remove belongings from his garage that was 1-2 feet under water.
My basement and garage were flooded but not too horribly compared to other people---not even compared to the attached house four houses down---just a few inches. After a previous incident, I purchased water sensors for my basement. They went off immediately. My husband went down there, started tossing water, throwing down towels, and using the shop vac, though there weren't really many places to put the water. I was lucky that the drains didn't stay completely full forever---a block up from me the manhole was shooting water back out---so I didn't know if we would be flooded out again. I couldn't really sleep, as I worried about water coming up through the toilets and tubs like other people.
I helped my husband clean-up as much as possible. It helps that we: (a) don't hoard, so we don't have tons of crap in the garage or basement and (b) my basement has a step (so one half is higher than the other) and everything on that lower part is either "elevated" or on legs, mostly by my own design.
I was exhausted but I still went into work the next day. As an essential worker, I woke up the next morning and ever-so-slowly made my way into work, only to find HALF of the department called out, even people who didn't have to do so. They sent an e-mail out AFTER the fact that people would be reimbursed for travel-related expenditures---how useless. Everyone was so behind the ball.
As I walk around my neighborhood and see people still removing water from their houses and dumping all of their possessions from their basement, I am thankful, as it could have been much worse.
And yet, Mr. de Blasio called for legalizing basement units by helping homeowners with regulations and costs for conversion. Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor who is favored to win in November, also has expressed support for legalizing those units.
Given that he lied about living in the basement of his home, I'm gonna need him to take a pass on opining on this.
Doesn't anyone here watch the Weather Channel or follow AccuWeather? The latter was referring to Ida's northward sweep into the Mid Atlantic as Nor-Ida for days.
Small businesses in Queens deal with new hurdles following extensive damage from Hurricane Ida
Small business owners in Queens either spent Wednesday night, Sept. 1, navigating rapidly flooding basements or woke up Thursday morning, Sept. 2, to calls of devastating damage to their shops, as remnants of Hurricane Ida brought unprecedented and deadly rainfall to New York City.
The storm — which brought a record-setting 7.13 inches of rain in the city on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service — left at least 10 people dead in Queens, 9 of whom were stranded in basements, according to authorities. While streets and subways flooded, businesses and their owners also suffered the brunt of the damage.
Lois Christie, owner of Christie & Co. Salon in Bay Terrace, said she woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday to calls from the cleaning crew, alerting her that her marble-floored salon was flooded and covered in mud.
Christie said that while there were loose cars floating along the large Bay Terrace Shopping Center’s parking lot, she was disheartened by what she said was a lack of communication and assistance from her landlord.
“We’ve never had a flood, not this kind, in years,” Christie said. “I haven’t seen one police officer or anybody else come. It’s disgraceful. I haven’t heard from our landlord … they didn’t notify tenants. I am more than frustrated and aggravated. I don’t excite easily, but the more I think about it, the more I think people could have gotten hurt here.”
Investigative-minded Brooklynites are searching for a delivery worker captured in a viral video wading through waist-deep flood water while delivering grub in Williamsburg during Wednesday night’s torrential downpour — hoping to give the hard-working hero a hefty $1,700 tip.
Johnny Miller shared the harrowing video on his Twitter account @UnequalScenes after he saw the delivery man’s extraordinary effort to push his e-bike through the water at Roebling and N. 11th streets just after 10 pm.
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