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At least 44 people have died due to flash floods and incessant rain caused by Hurricane Ida in Northeastern states of the United States, including 13 people in New York City, along with three in suburban Westchester County.
At least 23 people died in New Jersey, Democratic Governor Phil Murphy said, news agency AP reported.
11 of the 13 people who died were in flooded basement apartments, which often serve as relatively affordable homes.
Police sources told AFP that this has been a record-breaking downpour in New York.
Dangerous high-end Category-4 Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana on 29 August, has wreaked havoc in north-east United States (US), including New York.
New York governor Kathy Hochul had declared an emergency in the state on Wednesday. Streets of Brooklyn and Queens have been massively inundated, while airports and subway lines had to be shut down.
Hochul was reported as saying, "Because of climate change, unfortunately, this is something we're going to have to deal with great regularity," Reuters reported.
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled at Newark, LaGuardia, and John F Kennedy airports. Several subway lines are flooded as well.
Visuals of submerged subway stations and public transport have gone viral on the internet, with the NY Subway issuing an advisory against non-essential travel until further notice.
Meanwhile, transit officials said that Subway services in New York City remained "extremely limited", and commuter rail services to the suburbs were largely suspended. Moreover, about 370 flights were canceled at New Jersey's Newark Liberty Airport, Reuters reported.
According to PowerOutage.US, which gathers data from utility companies, close to 1,70,000 people citizens were without power on Thursday, mostly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
(With inputs from AFP and Reuters)
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