SURFIN’ MTA

Flood nearly washes man into subway train

This is the terrifying moment that f l oodwaters f rom Wednesday night’s thunderstorm burst through a construction wall in Long Island City, knocking a man off his feet and almost into a subway train.

Stand clear of the rushing waters, please.

A massive wave of rainwater came close to causing a deadly wipeout in a Queens subway station Wednesday after flooding from a heavy thunderstorm broke a construction wall and swept one unlucky straphanger perilously close to an oncoming train, according to witnesses and a video of the incident.

“It’s nuts. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. It was up to your shins,” said Luke Power, a Manhattan man who witnessed the deluge and helped the unidentified flood victim at the Court Square-23rd Street subway stop in Long Island City.

“I jumped over and grabbed the guy’s hand and helped him up. I’m not sure he spoke English — he was very disoriented.”

Power said that he could see the flooding was getting bad as he entered the station Wednesday around 8:30 p.m.

“When I walked over to the overpass, there was all this water starting to come up at the mezzanine level,” he said. “I walked down [to] the Manhattan platform. It was all starting to come out of that blue wall . . . The M train was coming.”

He added that the water smelled worse than normal rain water, as if a pipe had broken. “I had to throw out my shoes.”

The MTA claimed the subway tsunami — video off which was first posted by the @SubwayCreatures Twitter feed — was the fault of a private construction site near the station.

“This was an absolutely unacceptable and avoidable incident caused by a contractor working on a residential development project that could have put lives at risk,” said MTA rep Shams Tarek.

“A private developer building a residential tower adjacent to the subway station, as well as a new entrance and elevator for the station, allowed their construction site to become inundated with water,” he said.

Straphangers at the station were floored by the footage.

“I’ve always thought they should have a barrier up,” said Raphaella Baek, 27. “I mean, the MTA’s always been terrible. It’s just so old. You go to other places, they have a barrier between the trains, so God forbid if a flood comes, nobody’s hurt.”

The unidentified contractor couldn’t be reached for comment.