For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne says there were no re­ports of in­juries or ca­su­al­ties among Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als liv­ing or vis­it­ing New York, af­ter a state of emer­gency was de­clared fol­low­ing wide­spread flood­ing in the city yes­ter­day.

Ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing, heavy rains and winds lashed New York City, dump­ing as much as sev­en inch­es of rain­fall in some ar­eas and re­sult­ing in flood­ing in sev­er­al bor­oughs.

Dr Browne con­firmed around 3.49 pm yes­ter­day that lo­cal of­fi­cials were keep­ing their eyes on the sit­u­a­tion.
“Our team at the Con­sulate Gen­er­al in New York is mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion very close­ly on our be­half,”
he promised.

“They will re­main in con­tact with di­as­po­ra groups and in­di­vid­u­als in the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties. Thus far, we have had no re­ports of in­juries amongst our peo­ple.”

Browne said he had re­quest­ed reg­u­lar up­dates from of­fi­cials in NY and would up­date the me­dia and pub­lic as they were re­ceived.

New Jer­sey Gov­er­nor Phil Mur­phy de­clared an SoE around 3 pm yes­ter­day, as rain­fall was ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue through­out last night and over the week­end.

The stormy weath­er, which some de­scribed as “hur­ri­cane-type” in its in­ten­si­ty, was said to be the rem­nants of Trop­i­cal Storm Ophe­lia, which was fore­cast to con­tin­ue chug­ging across the re­gion.

A T&T na­tion­al hol­i­day­ing in the res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hood of Car­nasie in the south-east­ern por­tion of Brook­lyn, said she had been forced to re­main in­doors to avoid get­ting trapped out­side due to the ad­verse weath­er.

While they were pum­melled with blis­ter­ing rains and gusty winds ear­li­er in the day, the na­tion­al, who asked not to be named, said it had less­ened af­ter noon, though they con­tin­ued to ex­pe­ri­ence a slight driz­zle and over­cast skies.

She shared that by 1.30 pm, the sit­u­a­tion had wors­ened.

“The train sta­tions were flood­ed. Bus stops were flood­ed. The FDR (Franklin D Roo­sevelt East Riv­er Dri­ve), which is the bridge you would take to go over to Man­hat­tan, was flood­ed. It is hor­ri­ble,” she said.

NY May­or Er­ic Adams had ap­pealed to peo­ple to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion and height­en alert­ness as he urged them to re­main at home, and for those al­ready out to shel­ter in place.

An­kle-high flood­wa­ters at Ter­mi­nal A at La­Guardia Air­port al­so forced the clo­sure of the fa­cil­i­ty, as fran­tic pas­sen­gers tried to flee – while flight dis­rup­tions were re­port­ed at JFK In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice in NY said yes­ter­day that pre­lim­i­nary checks showed it was the wettest Sep­tem­ber day on record at JFK Air­port, eclips­ing the record from Hur­ri­cane Don­na in 1960. It al­so ranked as the sec­ond-wettest air­port day of all time.

The T&T na­tion­al said a red alert was is­sued around mid­day yes­ter­day, which came in the form of a text mes­sage via cell phone an­nounced by four siren-like blares.

“Schools were closed. There were some hos­pi­tals in Man­hat­tan whose doors had to be closed as they were flood­ed, while oth­ers con­tin­ued to op­er­ate,” she said.

In­di­cat­ing that they had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing cold­er than usu­al tem­per­a­tures for the month of Sep­tem­ber, she ex­plained that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in NY had warned that a bit­ter win­ter was al­so ahead.

She said au­thor­i­ties were not sched­uled to turn on the heat un­til Oc­to­ber 15.

“I re­al­ly don’t know what they have planned for right now, as the weath­er is chang­ing. The most we can do now is to keep our­selves warm.

“The home­less peo­ple used to go down to the trains, as they would have got­ten some heat from it, but with the train sta­tions be­ing flood­ed out now, we don’t know where these peo­ple will go.”