City Drenched

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. (AP) – A fierce nor’easter continued to drench the New York City region on Monday, sending water pouring through streets and into homes, disrupting travel and causing parents to cope with an unexpected day off from school.The storm was especially harsh in the Westchester County suburbs north of New York City, where flooding led two communities along Long Island Sound – New Rochelle and Mamaroneck – to declare states of emergency. The National Guard was called into the area overnight to help with rescue and evacuation efforts.Some 300 people slept on cots in an emergency shelter set up in the Mamaroneck High School gymnasium, and officials were considering opening a second shelter. Local police and fire departments spent the night rescuing residents from about 60 to 70 homes, said Mamaroneck Town Administrator Stephen Altieri.Several homeowners were pumping out basements near the Mamaroneck River. Homeowner John Vitro, whose basement at one point had water five feet high, said he was stunned to see the havoc caused by “this innocent little river.”“There was debris flowing down the river like you wouldn’t believe – refrigerators, I mean, you name it, it was going down the river,” Mr. Vitro said.Some 7.81 inches of rain was recorded in Central Park on Sunday and early Monday, the National Weather Service said. The previous record for April 15, measured in Central Park, was 1.8 inches in 1906. In New Rochelle, 6.75 inches of rain was recorded.Kathleen Reale, 41, was brought to the Mamaroneck shelter with her twin boys after firefighters plucked them from their window using a front-loader. She said in the 10 years she has lived in the town, the flooding has never been this bad.“I mean everything will be ruined,” she said, adding that furniture was destroyed when flooding reached her knees in her garage and basement. “Everything will be gone. It’s unbelievable.”More than two dozen members of the National Guard, bringing military trucks and Humvees, assisted transporting residents in flooded areas of Mamaroneck.Roads along rivers were severely disrupted. Portions of the Saw Mill, Bronx River and Hutchinson River parkways were closed. A guard rail along the Saw Mill Parkway in Ardsley was under water, and traffic crawled even on roads that were open.In Croton-on-Hudson in northern Westchester, half of the commuter train station’s parking lot was under water. It was a combination of unusual high tides and water causing the Croton River to spill its banks.Even people not directly affected by the flooding had an unexpected day home. All Westchester County schools were closed. Kathy Pfiefer of Croton, who taking care of first-grader Lauren, said it “never even entered my mind” when she went to bed Sunday that she’d have to stay home from her job at a White Plains law firm.“I have to take the day off, in addition to all the other snow days and days off,” she said. “It definitely takes away my vacation time.”Phil Grunes of Croton spent much of a water-logged Sunday clearing drains to keep water moving in a stream that runs through and under his property. He’s expecting a great deal of erosion. But it was his daughter’s day off – not worries about water – that kept him home on Monday.The unusual spring storm also grounded flights Sunday and Monday at the region’s three major airports, shut down some suburban trains, caused power outages to more than 10,000 households, and forced some Queens residents to take to the streets in boats.The Metro-North Railroad in Westchester suspended service on two of its branches for several hours.New York City also opened nine emergency storm shelters in flood-prone locations, and on Long Island ferry service to Fire Island was canceled.There were sustained winds of 30 to 35 mph and gusts of up to 48 mph at Kennedy International airport.The Port Authority, which runs the three major metropolitan airports, said that on Monday morning, there were delays of up to two hours at LaGuardia Airport; 36 cancellations and some delays at Kennedy; and scattered cancellations and 30-minute delays at Newark Liberty.Spokesman Steve Coleman said that was better than on Sunday, when a total of 600 flights were canceled at the three airports.Some stranded passengers slept on cots at LaGuardia.“We came up to see the city,” one passenger, Amby Lewis, the leader of a girl scout troop from North Carolina, told WNBC-TV. “And the lovely weather rolled in and we’ve been stuck ever since.”Mayor Bloomberg, in a briefing at the city’s emergency management office, advised residents to stay out of the streets because of the potential for falling trees or branches and downed power lines. He suggested staying home during the storm and reading a good book or catching up on sleep.“Stay inside and relax,” he said.Gorman said there was significant erosion at several Long Island beaches, including Jones Beach, Robert Moses State Park and beaches in Montauk, said George Gorman, regional state parks director. Orient Beach State Park will be closed for a couple of weeks, he said.At Robert Moses, Mr. Gorman said, “A couple feet of dunes actually collapsed into the water.” He said there were “significant” pools of water at Jones Beach.Residents and authorities on Long Island said the storm had not hit that area as severely as predicted.“Long Island kind of lucked out,” LIPA President Richard Kessel said Sunday night to a Newsday reporter. “We kind of fell into the middle of the storm. We were spared a lot of damage.”The Long Island Power Authority said about 7,500 customers lost power across the island Sunday, mainly because of tree limbs falling on power lines, but most were restored. The peak number of outages was more than 3,000.About 800 customers were without power still on Monday morning.The rain turned many streets, driveways and parking lots into pools. Fire Island ferries were suspended Monday.“For us the big problem is tide,” said George Hafele, president of Fire Island Ferries on Sunday after service was first shut down. “We’re sitting here watching the tide come up dramatically.”A Con Edison utility spokesman said there were about 3,000 households in Westchester County and New York City on Monday morning without power; of those, 2,500 were in Westchester. Power had been restored to 1,000 customers in the Elmhurst neighborhood in Queens.In New York City, the mayor’s Office of Emergency Management opened shelters at nine public schools in the five boroughs Sunday morning, the first time such a step had been taken since 1999. But only a few people showed up.“The good news is that while it was a minor inconvenience for most people, and certainly was a major problem for some people, we went through yesterday without one fatality that was weather related,” Bloomberg said Monday morning.By Monday, the American Red Cross had closed three shelters it had opened in Nassau County because no one needed them.New York Governor Spitzer said he had deployed 3,200 members of the National Guard to areas that might be affected by the storm. The governor had warned on Saturday that the storm could cause the most flooding New York has seen since a December 1992 nor’easter, which washed away beach and sand dunes, knocked out power and left thousands of people temporarily homeless, their houses standing in feet of water.

City Drenched

City Drenched

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