Storm Victim Found In Burnt Car On Parkway Near Astoria: NYPD

ASTORIA, QUEENS — A person in Astoria burned to death when their car went up in flames, following an accident that's reportedly linked to Wednesday's historic storm, police said.

At around 10:45 a.m. on Sept. 2, hours after New York City was inundated by rain in the wake of Hurricane Ida, police were called to the intersection of the Grand Central Parkway and Brooklyn Queens Expressway where they found the remnants of a horrific car accident, the NYPD reported.

On the road, near Astoria Heights, police said they found an incinerated car, and an unconscious and unresponsive person inside it — who was shortly later pronounced as dead by EMS.

Police reportedly said that the person, who still wasn't identified by Thursday evening, was burned beyond recognition.

The NYPD is investigating the incident, but think that during Wednesday night's storm, the person got into an accident on the Grand Central Parkway — a roadway that intensely flooded to the point that drivers abandoned their cars along the parkway, reports show.

On that same night, further south at an apartment complex in Forest Hills located on Grand Central Parkway, Darlene Hsu, 48, died when water flooded into her basement unit, trapping her inside.

Hsu and the person in the car are two of the at least 11 people in Queens who died during the flood, including Yue Lian Chen, 86, in Elmhurst, a trio of family members — including a 2-year-old boy, the city's youngest confirmed victim — in Woodside, three people in Auburndale, and a mother and son in Jamaica, according to reports and the NYPD.

All told, at least 13 New Yorkers lost their lives during the storm, city records show.

Wednesday's deadly storm, which prompted the National Weather Service to issue its first-ever flash flood emergency for New York City, caused devastating flooding across Queens — the borough's latest incident of catastrophic flooding amid climate-change-induced natural disasters, which city officials warned will continue to disproportionately impact southeast Queens unless more infrastructure is invested in the area.

Critics, however, pushed back, at the news conference suggesting that local officials could have done more to alert New Yorkers about the storm and ensure their safety.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who stood by his administration's response, admitted that the city's weather predictions were "made a mockery of in a matter of minutes" and warned New Yorkers to assume the worst going forwards.

"From now on what I think we do is tell New Yorkers to expect the very, very worst. It may sound alarmist at times, but unfortunately, it's being proven by nature," he said.

Area flooding and a tornado watch in New York City occurred after Post-Tropical Cyclone Ida hit Louisiana on Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane.

The hurricane, which knocked out power to hundreds of thousands in Louisiana and beyond, is now linked to more than a dozen deaths, NBC reported.

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