NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — Authorities have identified the two men who died in flooded basements in New York City on Thursday afternoon.
So much rain fell in such a short period that streets became flooded, pouring into buildings and overwhelming some subway stations.
Aaron Akaberi, 39, went back into his basement apartment in Brooklyn to try to save a dog, police said. He had rescued one dog when he went back to save the other. He never made it out of the Kingston Avenue apartment.
FDNY divers pulled out his body, and he was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital. The second dog also died.
“He was just a very pure, simple person,” a friend of the victim said. “Didn’t really need much at all. He was a giver, he wasn’t a taker.”
The apartment is being investigated as an illegal apartment.
Around the same time in Washington Heights, officers found Juan Carlos Montoya Hernandez, 43, inside a flooded basement boiler room.
Hernandez was a longtime building worker and was known to residents as Carlito. It is believed he was electrocuted while trying to pump out water as it flooded the boiler room of the building on West 175th Street.
The effects of rainstorms have become progressively catastrophic for New York City residents.
The city responded to more than 800 calls to 311 for flooding on Thursday. Work continued on Friday cleaning out drains.
The sewer system was built for a maximum 1.75 inches of rain an hour, New York City Environmental Protection office said. Thursday’s storm brought the equivalent of 6 inches an hour in some areas.
The city has been messaging residents of basement apartments about the dangers of flash flooding in the years since the remnants of Hurricane Ida killed 13 people in New York City, including 11 who drowned in basement homes, in September 2021.
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