Flash floods from ‘training thunderstorms’ leave 2 dead in Connecticut
OXFORD, Conn. (AP) — Torrential rain flooded parts of Connecticut and New York’s Long Island, washing out roads, trapping people in cars and a restaurant, and sweeping two people into a river. Two women died in the storms, which also caused problems in New Jersey late Sunday and early Monday, authorities said.
As much as 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) of rain fell on some parts of western Connecticut, coming down so fast that it caught drivers unaware as roads quickly turned into rushing rivers.
The bodies of two women who disappeared during the storm were recovered Monday in Oxford, about 35 miles southwest of Hartford, officials said. Both were Oxford residents.
The storm system that hit Connecticut on Sunday and then moved on to Long Island was separate from Hurricane Ernesto, which on Monday was over the open Atlantic Ocean but still expected to cause powerful swells, dangerous surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast.
William Syrett, a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State University, referred to the Connecticut-New York system as “training thunderstorms.”
“It’s like each thunderstorm is a car on a train track, and so they just keep going over the same place,” he said.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said more than 100 people were evacuated by search and rescue teams Sunday evening. In Southbury, a bystander filmed as Lucas Barber waded through chest-deep water to help a man whose car had become largely submerged in a flash flood.
“I pulled over, grabbed some rope that’s in the back of my car for emergencies, and threw my phone and wallet on the seat and ran out there,” Barber told The New York Times.
Barber pulled the trapped driver, Patrick Jennings, out of the floating car along with his golden retriever.
“He got me all the way out of the water, the dog comes swimming up and the rest is history,” Jennings told the Times.
The two women who died were stranded in separate cars, Oxford Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said at a news conference with other Connecticut officials.
Firefighters were acting to get the first woman out of her car and take her to safety when a rush of water swept her away, he said. The second woman got out of her car and made it to a roadside sign that she tried to cling to, but “the racing water was too much” and swept her away, too, he said.
A dramatic rescue took place at a restaurant in Oxford, where the Brookside Inn became surrounded by a rushing torrent of water. Eighteen people trapped inside the building were rescued by firefighters who stretched a ladder across the floodwaters to reach them.
The water was “literally enveloping this whole restaurant,” Jeremy Rodorigo, a firefighter from the neighboring town of Beacon Falls, said Monday. “And we were worried about the structural integrity of the restaurant because there were literally cars floating by and large objects hitting the building.”
The firefighters also rescued a woman and a small dog from an apartment next to the restaurant, Rodorigo said.
Ed Romaine, the executive of Long Island’s Suffolk County, said that hundreds of homes were affected by flooding and that mudslides covered the roofs of cars in some areas.
“We are dealing with damage reports throughout this county,” said Romaine, who joined other officials at a news conference near a pond in Stony Brook where a dam breached and destroyed a section of a major road and flooded homes.
Town of Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico called the flooding “an environmental and economic disaster.”
“Millions of gallons of water, turtles, fish, everything is downstream along with the personal belongings of many of the houses that were flooded,” Panico said, adding that repairs to Harbor Road alone would cost $10 million.
Dozens of flights were canceled at Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports.
The storms dropped about 2 to 4 inches of rain on most of northern New Jersey, causing minor to moderate flooding on roads including the Garden State Parkway and other major highways that left some motorists stranded. No deaths, injuries or property damage were reported in New Jersey.
Amtrak halted service between Philadelphia and New York’s Penn Station for several hours Sunday evening because of flooding on the tracks in New Jersey. Service was restored by Monday morning, though several trains between Washington and New York were canceled because of unspecified “equipment unavailability.”
Flooding also suspended service on a branch of the Metro-North Railroad in Connecticut. And delays of up to 30 minutes were reported Monday morning on some New Jersey Transit train lines due to weather-related signal issues.
Syrett, the Penn State professor, cited “perfect conditions” for the storms, thanks to the amount of moisture in the air and a slow weather system.
The unusual part was the amount of rain that fell over several hours, Syrett said, not the thunderstorms.
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This story has been corrected to show the last name of the Oxford fire chief is spelled Pelletier. Earlier versions misspelled it as Pellitier.
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Matthews reported from New York. Associated Press journalists Suman Naishadham in Washington, Julie Walker in New York and Bruce Shipkowski in New Jersey contributed.
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