Two people died after lower rooms flooded in New York City on Thursday as heavy rain drenched the region, authorities said.
In the first incident, firefighters responded to the call of a person trapped in a flooded basement in the East Flatbush neighborhood around 4:25 p.m., police and the fire department said. The cause of death has not been determined.
In the second, a 43-year-old man died after reports that a person was unresponsive in a flooded boiler room in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan around 4:44 p.m., police said.
The identities of the two people who died were not immediately released Thursday.
The deaths occurred while a flash flood warning was in effect for Brooklyn, Queens the Bronx and parts of Manhattan.
A strong frontal system produced the storms that dropped the rain over the city, the National Weather Service said.
Around 3:30 p.m., 1 to 2 inches had fallen, with a rainfall rate expected of 1 to 1¼ inches in an hour, the agency said in an alert.
Flooding closed the Long Island Expressway in both directions in Queens, and the westbound lanes of the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn on Thursday, city officials said.
Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, got got 2.79 inches of rain Thursday, the weather service said, and Midtown Manhattan saw a little over 2 inches of rain. Central Park recorded 1.85 inches, and LaGuardia Airport in Queens got 2.09 inches of rain.
Water was reported above car tires in part of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, some cars were stranded around the region, and in the Riverdale section of the Bronx floodwaters reached the bottom of doors of sedan-style cars, the weather service said in a summary of storm reports.
There was also a wind advisory for New York City through midnight Friday, the National Weather Service for the region said.
Winds of 20 mph to 25 mph, with gusts of around 40 mph, were expected, the agency said, which could bring down tree limbs and blow away Halloween decorations and other objects.
