Forest Hills Woman Among At Least 13 Dead In NYC After Flood

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — At least 13 people across New York City were killed, including a Forest Hills resident, when the remnants of Hurricane Ida brought historic flooding to the region Wednesday night, according to the NYPD and multiple sources as of Thursday night.

Around 10:40 p.m., the NYPD said police responded to a call for flooding at a Forest Hills apartment complex located at 61-20 Grand Central Parkway — a roadway which shut down Wednesday night after major flooding, prompting drivers to abandon their cars along the parkway, reports show.

After getting to the Forest Hills apartment complex, officers found Darlene Hsu, 48, unconscious and unresponsive, police said. The woman, who had reportedly been trapped in a flooded basement unit, was pronounced dead by EMS at a nearby hospital, according to the NYPD.

Police found at least nine other Queens residents dead in their homes, after they couldn't escape their flooded apartments: 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.

One other person in Queens died after a car accident on the Grand Central Parkway, city officials said Thursday.

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.