2 dead in New Jersey after floodwaters carry away vehicle during heavy
rains that hit Northeast
[July 16, 2025]
By SUSAN HAIGH and JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — Two people in New Jersey were killed after their vehicle
was swept up in floodwaters during a storm that moved across the U.S.
Northeast overnight, authorities said Tuesday.
Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, noted the deaths occurred in the northern
New Jersey city of Plainfield, where there were two storm-related deaths
July 3. A third person was killed in North Plainfield during that
previous storm.
“We’re not unique, but we’re in one of these sort of high humidity, high
temperature, high storm intensity patterns right now,” Murphy told
reporters after touring storm damage in Berkeley Heights. “Everybody
needs to stay alert.”
The names of the two latest victims were not immediately released
Tuesday. Local officials said the vehicle they were riding in was swept
into a brook during the height of the storm.
“Emergency personnel responded quickly, but tragically, both individuals
were pronounced dead at the scene,” according to a statement the city
posted online.
The heavy rains also caused flash floods in New York and south-central
Pennsylvania on Monday night into early Tuesday, prompting road closures
and snarling some service on the New York City subway.
It was the second-highest one-hour rainfall ever recorded in Central
Park at more than 2 inches (5 centimeters), surpassed only by the
remnants of Hurricane Ida in 2021, according to local officials.
Flooding in the New York City subway
Viral videos posted online showed water flooding down into one Manhattan
subway station, submerging the platform while passengers inside a train
watched on.
Janno Lieber, chair and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority, told ABC 7 in New York the city’s sewer system got
overwhelmed by the rain and backed up into the subway tunnels and to the
stations. In several cases, he said, the backup “popped a manhole,”
creating the dramatic “geyser” seen in some videos.
“What happened last night is something that is, you know, a reality in
our system,” he told the TV station, noting the backup happens when more
than 1 3/4 inches of rain falls in an hour. “We’ve been working with the
city of New York to try to get them to increase the capacity of the
system at these key locations.”
City officials said their venerable sewer system worked as well as it
could, but it simply was not built to handle that much rain.
“Imagine putting a two-liter bottle of water into a one-liter bottle.
Some of it’s going to spill,” Environmental Protection Commissioner
Rohit Aggarwala said at a virtual news briefing Tuesday.
Lieber said full service was restored to the subway, as well as commuter
rails, after hundreds of people worked overnight to restore operations.
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Flood-damaged cars litter a street in North Plainfield, N.J.,
Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Flooding has proven to be a stubborn problem for New York’s subway
system, despite years and billions of dollars’ worth of efforts to
waterproof them.
Superstorm Sandy in 2012 prompted years of subway repairs and
flood-fighting ideas, and some have been put into practice. In some
places, transit officials have installed or are installing storm
barriers at subway station entrances, seals beneath subway air vents
and curbs to raise the vents and entrances above sidewalk level.
Meanwhile, summer thunderstorms and the remains of hurricanes have
repeatedly flooded parts of the subway system anew. In 2021, the
remnants of Hurricane Ida killed more than a dozen New York City
residents, largely in basement apartments, and sent water cascading
again into subways, renewing attention to resiliency proposals.
The storm's effects in New Jersey and Pennsylvania
The storm prompted multiple water rescues in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, where streets and basements flooded after roughly 7
inches (18 centimeters) of rain fell. Some roads remained closed in
parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey on Tuesday. Murphy said the
pavement buckled in some locations and state and local officials
were assessing the level of damage in several counties, noting the
White House had reached out to his office.
A major east-to-west highway in New Jersey was closed to make
emergency repairs while dozens of flights were delayed or canceled
at area airports Tuesday.
Most flash flood watches and warnings had expired in parts of New
Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania as the rain moved on.
In one flooded North Plainfield neighborhood, a house caught on fire
and collapsed amid the storm. Murphy said there was an explosion at
the house but the family was not home and there were no injuries.
The cause was under investigation.
___
Haigh reported from Connecticut.
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