NYC begins to dry out after record rainfall brought it to standstill
NEW YORK — New York City began drying out Saturday after being soaked by one of its wettest days in decades, as city dwellers dried out basements and traffic resumed on highways, railways and airports that were temporarily shuttered by Friday’s severe rainfall.
While the fierce storm has moved on, some of its damage lingered into the weekend.
A power outage in a Brooklyn neighborhood caused by the storm prompted city officials Saturday to evacuate staff and about 120 patients from a city hospital, after the region’s power company, Con Edison, said the facility’s emergency power had to be shut down so the utility can make repairs.
City officials said the repairs could take several days before the hospital in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood can resume full operations.
Parts of Brooklyn saw more than 7.25 inches, with at least one spot recording 2.5 inches in a single hour, turning some streets into kneedeep canals and stranding drivers on highways.
Record rainfall — more than 8.65 inches — fell at John F. Kennedy International Airport, surpassing the record for any September day set during Hurricane Donna in 1960, the National Weather Service said.
More rain was expected over the weekend but the worst was over, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Saturday morning during a briefing at a transportation control center in Manhattan.
What could have been a life-threatening event was averted, she said, because many people heeded early calls to stay put or head for higher ground before it was too late.
The deluge came two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped record-breaking rain on the Northeast and killed at least 13 people in New York City, mostly in flooded basement apartments.
Some service interruptions continued Saturday throughout the city’s subway system, which had been in complete chaos the day before because of flooded tracks.
Kansas newspaper raid: The police chief who led a highly criticized raid of a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended, the mayor confirmed Saturday.
Marion Mayor Dave Mayfield, in a text, said he suspended Chief Gideon Cody on Thursday.
Mayfield declined to discuss his decision further and did not say whether Cody was being paid while on suspension.
The Aug. 11 searches of the Marion County Record’s office and the homes of its publisher and a City Council member have been sharply criticized, putting Marion at the center of a debate over the press protections offered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Cody’s suspension is a reversal for the mayor, who previously said he would await results of a state police investigation before taking action.
Vice-Mayor Ruth Herbel, whose home was also raided Aug. 11, praised Cody’s suspension as “the best thing that can happen to Marion right now” as the central Kansas town of about 1,900 struggles to move forward under the national spotlight.
“We can’t duck our heads until it goes away, because it’s not going to go away until we do something about it,” Herbel said.
Mexico migrant death: A migrant from Ecuador died and 10 others from Colombia and Guatemala were injured in a crash that occurred while they were being taken for processing in a van operated by Mexico’s immigration agency, authorities said Saturday.
Mexico’s National Migration Institute said the van was involved in a collision with a bus in the city of Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, California.
The institute said the injured migrants had been taken to hospitals for treatment.
The drivers of the van and the bus involved in Friday’s crash were also injured.
Ukrainian annexation: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday insisted that the residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed a year ago “made their choice — to be with their Fatherland.”
In an address released in the early hours to mark the first anniversary of the annexation, Putin insisted that it was carried out “in full accordance with international norms.” He also claimed that residents of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions had again expressed their desire to be part of Russia in local elections in September. Russia’s Central Election Commission said the country’s ruling party won the most votes.
The West has denounced both the referendum votes carried out last year and the recent ballots as a sham. The votes were held as Russian authorities attempted to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.
A concert was held in Red Square on Friday to mark the anniversary, but Putin did not participate.
Nagorno-Karabakh exodus:
An ethnic Armenian exodus has nearly emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of residents since Azerbaijan attacked and ordered the breakaway region’s militants to disarm, the Armenian government said Saturday.
Nazeli Baghdasaryan, the press secretary to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, said that 100,480 people had arrived in Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh, which had a population of around 120,000 before Azerbaijan reclaimed the region in a lightning offensive last month.
The departure of more than 80% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s population raises questions about Azerbaijan’s plans for the enclave, which was internationally recognized as part of its territory. While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, most are fleeing because they don’t trust Azerbaijani authorities to treat them humanely or to guarantee them their language, religion and culture.
Pakistan bombing: The death toll from a bombing in southwestern Pakistan as people celebrated the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday rose to 54 after two critically wounded patients died in hospitals overnight, officials said Saturday.
A suspected suicide bomber or bombers blew themselves up Friday among a crowd in the Mastung district. It was one of the deadliest attacks targeting civilians in Pakistan in months. Nearly 70 people were wounded, including five still in very critical condition, authorities said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Mastung, a district of Baluchistan province. But suspicion is likely to fall on the Islamic State group’s regional affiliate, which has claimed previous deadly bombings around Pakistan.
In Mastung, people kept their businesses closed to mourn the victims. In other parts of Pakistan, there were demonstrations protesting the attack and another on a mosque Friday in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.