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Ida flooding shuts down the Major Deegan

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More rain fell in just a couple hours on Sept. 1 in the Bronx than we would get in an entire month thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ida. 

Flooding hit key parts of New York City into the late hours, primarily subway stations that shut down many of the lower Manhattan stops for lines like the 1 train.

Also coming to a halt was traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway, which was flooded with waist-deep water through its Kingsbridge stretch, pulling out a number of onlookers from the overpasses at West 231st, West 233rd and West 234th streets. A number of vehicles were stranded, included tractor-trailers from companies like Amazon, and even tour buses.

All of New York City remains under a state of emergency declared by Gov. Kathy Hochul, and even President Joe Biden talked about the record-breaking flooding in the city while at the White House on Thursday.

When talking to reporters in Queens on Thursday, Hochul asked for patience as work crews tried to restore transit and other parts of the infrastructure damaged by the rains and wind.

"This is what happens first — everything has to settle down, stabilize, make sure we're protecting life and property," Hochul said. "Job number one. Number two, within a few days, we'd go out there with FEMA crews, literally add up the extent of the damage, file for our declaration with the federal government. President Biden assured me. He said, 'Kathy, I'm going to do this for you. You tell me what you need.' So we're prepared to take all those steps starting right now."

Biden is scheduled to visit Louisiana on Friday to view damage from Ida, which made landfall there as a Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 150 mph, on the 16th anniversary of the state's devastation by Hurricane Katrina. Nearly a million people in that region are still without power, as federal and state officials there work to rescue people and assess damage.

Hurricane Ida, Major Deegan Expressway, Kathy Hochul, Joe Biden, Michael Hinman, Hurricane Katrina,

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