{"id":24582,"date":"2025-10-31T21:21:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24582\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:21:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:21:23","slug":"how-rapidly-rising-floodwaters-killed-two-in-record-breaking-nyc-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24582\/","title":{"rendered":"How rapidly rising floodwaters killed two in record-breaking NYC storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

One braced the rising floodwaters in his Brooklyn apartment<\/a> apparently to save his beloved dogs.<\/p>\n

The other was trapped in the boiler room of the Washington Heights apartment building where he worked.<\/p>\n

Both men died Thursday as a violent downpour pummeled the city, swamping the five boroughs under nearly two inches of rain within 20 minutes<\/a>, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand how he didn\u2019t make it out of there,\u201d Michael Caban said about his friend Aaron Akaberi, who died with one of his pets as rainwater filled his basement apartment on Kingston Ave. and Rutland Road in Prospect Lefferts Gardens Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\"FirstFirst responders found Aaron Akaberi, 39, unconscious and unresponsive in an inundated basement in a building near Kingston Ave. and Rutland Rd. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens around 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The flood waters filled Akaberi\u2019s basement apartment. Leaves meant for the sewers were found stuck to the ceiling on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201c(He) was a very athletic and fast person. I can\u2019t see him getting sucked down there and drowning,\u201d Caban said, looking down at the basement apartment Friday, the fatal flood waters now receded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just confused. I wish somebody could tell me how this happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey definitely need to do a deeper investigation into this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"FirstFirst responders found Aaron Akaberi, 39, unconscious and unresponsive in an inundated basement in a building near Kingston Ave. and Rutland Rd. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens around 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The FDNY had to send in a scuba team to pull Akaberi, 39, out of the apartment after they were called to the scene at about 5 p.m. He died at an area hospital a short time later.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked like what you see in a movie,\u201d his roommate Akiva Shulman told the Daily News Thursday. \u201cHe looked like a dead body that had been fished out of the river. His body was covered in leaves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The basement apartment \u201cwas flooded right up to the first floor, and then three more feet,\u201d Schulman said.<\/p>\n

\"FirstFirst responders found Aaron Akaberi, 39, unconscious and unresponsive in an inundated basement in a building near Kingston Ave. and Rutland Rd. in Prospect Lefferts Gardens around 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

A similar scene played out moments earlier in Manhattan, on W. 175th St. near Broadway in Washington Heights, where Juan Carlos Montoya Hernandez, 43, drowned in an apartment building boiler room at around 4:45 p.m.<\/p>\n

Hernandez worked in the building as an assistant super, tenants said. It was not immediately clear how he ended up in the flooded boiler room.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt rained really hard yesterday, so there\u2019s a chance that the drain got clogged and the basement started flooding, and he went out there trying to unclog the drain, and probably got electrocuted in the process, you know, because there is electricity down there,\u201d one tenant, who would only identify himself as Lasha, speculated.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe seemed like a pretty chill guy,\u201d Lasha continued. \u201c(He) did whatever he had to. I\u2019ve always seen him like carrying garbage bags, buckets, renovation stuff, whatever help the super asked him to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe building on W. 175th St. near Broadway in Washington Heights, where Juan Carlos Montoya Hernandez, 43, drowned in an apartment building boiler room at around 4:45 p.m.. (Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

A man who would only identify himself as Jevahn said that Hernandez \u201calways looked out\u201d for him \u2014 and was stunned that Thursday\u2019s storm turned fatal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was heavy rain for a little bit, but not like a Katrina,\u201d he said. \u201cThat just shows you that the infrastructure in this neighborhood also needs to be looked into.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA picture of Juan Carlos Montoya is pictured on a memorial at 701 W. 175th St. Friday, Oct. 31, 2025 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

As the rain pounded Brooklyn, Akaberi had already exited his basement apartment in the small, three-story building. But he ran back in to rescue his dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got one out and went back to rescue the other. He was electrocuted, and then he drowned,\u201d his friend Aymen Kadri, 35, said.<\/p>\n

Akaberi had brought out Luna, a 6-month-old mixed Cane Corso Pitbull. He ran back in to grab Yalla, his 8-year-old Mastiff, but \u201che never come back,\u201d his landlord, Oates Kenneth said.<\/p>\n

The two died together, friends said. On Friday morning, Yalla\u2019s body remained in the water-logged basement apartment, a harness wrapped around the dog\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were the sweetest, kindest dogs you would ever want to meet in your life,\u201d Caban, 39, said about Akaberi\u2019s dogs. \u201cIt felt like they were cats. They would get out and walk themselves block after block. Then they would come back and go inside. They wouldn\u2019t bother people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AaronAaron Akaberi died trying to save his 8-year-old mastiff from a flooded basement after rescuing Luna (pictured), a 6-month-old mixed Concorde from the flooding. (Kerry Burke \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

It rained all day Thursday, but the biggest onslaught took place within a 20-minute stretch, city officials said.<\/p>\n

As the storm raged, the city\u2019s 311 system received 4,401 calls involving flooded apartments, buildings, streets and highways, clogged sewers, fallen trees and rising waters, a spokeswoman for the Office of Emergency Management said.<\/p>\n

More than 800 of the calls were about flooding<\/a>, New York City\u2019s Department of Environmental Protection said on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cNYC\u2019s sewer system was built to handle 1.75\u2033\/hour but yesterday\u2019s storm brought the equivalent of 6\u2033\/hour in some areas,\u201d the agency said. \u201cThat\u2019s four times what the system can handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur crews worked overnight to respond and are continuing today,\u201d DEP said.<\/p>\n

Nearly 40% of the calls, or 1,679, came from Brooklyn. An additional 1,283 calls came from Queens, officials said.<\/p>\n

\"SevereSevere flooding at the corner of Fulton St. and Tompkins Ave. in Brooklyn, on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (Shawn Inglima\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

A flash-flood warning<\/a> was issued for Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx until 5 p.m. Thursday by the National Weather Service as record-breaking rains and gusty winds whipped through the New York City metro area.<\/p>\n

Central Park was swamped with 1.8 inches of rain, beating the previous record of 1.64 inches set in 1917, according to the NWS.<\/p>\n

LaGuardia Airport was hit with 1.97 inches, smashing the 1955 mark of 1.18 inches. Wind gusts up to\u00a050 mph<\/a>\u00a0accompanied the storm, according to the NWS.<\/p>\n

The city Office of Emergency Management warned residents to expect sudden bursts of heavy rain, reduced visibility and possible power outages from downed trees or power lines.<\/p>\n

Several subway lines were suspended or suffered delays right before rush hour because of the storm, but service returned to normal once the rain subsided, MTA officials said.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s deaths were eerily similar to another storm that hit the city in September 2021, where 11 people, including an 84-year-old woman and a 14-month-old boy<\/a> perished in flooded Queens apartments during an onslaught from Tropical Storm Ida.<\/p>\n

At least 10 of those killed in 2021 died in illegally converted basement apartments, city Department of Building residents said at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One braced the rising floodwaters in his Brooklyn apartment apparently to save his beloved dogs. The other was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,12,63,261,265],"class_list":{"0":"post-24582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-city","9":"tag-county","10":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-manhattan","14":"tag-manhattan-headlines","15":"tag-manhattan-news","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-new-york-county","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-nyc-crime","22":"tag-sub-county-region"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}