NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — Shocking video showed water rushing into the subway system in Manhattan during Monday night’s downpours.
Video captured by an eyewitness at 23rd Street and 28th Street on the No. 1 train line showed the water even rushing into the subway car as riders stood on the seats to avoid the water.
Video from an eyewitness captured water gushing through the entrance and platform of the No. 1 subway train station at 23rd Street.
“What happened last night is something that is a reality for our system that when you hit, when you go north, an inch and three-quarters in an hour, the city sewer system, the storm water system gets backed up and gets overwhelmed and tunnels into the stations,” said MTA CEO and Chair Janno Lieber.
Lieber said it’s a symptom of an extreme amount of rain in a short amount of time and a need for increased capacity in the city’s sewer and storm drain systems.
“In a couple of cases it popped the manhole, actually that sewer geyser that you see there is actually a situation where the backup from the sewer system popped the manhole and you get that geyser condition,” he said. “So, we have been working with the city of New York to get them to increase the capacity of the system at key locations. That is what was particularly bad on the West Side last night.”
Janno Lieber spoke to Eyewitness News about how the MTA is working to keep subways moving despite extreme weather.
Riders marveled at the water, but seemingly took the flooding in stride. In fact, Lieber says the system handled the storm well.
“We only lost service on the West Side for about an hour and a half or so, we had delays, we had some big shutdowns intermittently because of track circuit failure because of signal issues, but the system ran pretty well starting at about 11 o’clock,” he said.
Lieber added that service was back to normal for Tuesday morning, not only on the subways, but for LIRR and Metro-North customers as well.
He credited the hard overnight work of the MTA employees for keeping the city transit system running.
Officials say Monday night’s rain was the second-highest one-hour rainfall ever recorded in Central Park at more than 2 inches, only surpassed only by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in 2021.
The city’s Department of Environmental Protection has significantly invested in maintaining the system, but expanding sewer capacity won’t happen overnight.
“The reality is we are going to do as much work as we possibly can, but number one we can’t protect against absolutely everything and this is a long term project – there’s no way around it,” said DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala.
ALSO READ: How much rain did you get?
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