Neighbors Rescue Woman In Wheelchair From Flooding Home: Report

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Claire Adams, 88, was sitting in a wheelchair with water up to her neck when her home health aide, Obianuju Okoro, and neighbor, Michael Lettieri, rescued her from her rapidly-flooding Forest Hills apartment.

“It was just her head that was out of the water,” Okoro told the New York Times. “She was screaming, ‘I am cold!’”

Shortly before, Essence Crockett, Adams’ daughter, was finishing a visit with her mother when her garden apartment began to flood. As the water rose, sealing both of the apartment doors shut, Crockett and Okoro pushed air conditioners out of the apartment windows and climbed to the street, leaving Adams, who cannot walk, in the apartment, the Times reported.

“I thought, it doesn’t make sense for us to all perish. I thought my mother’s aide should not sacrifice her life. And then I turned and said goodbye to my mother,” Crockett told the Times, recalling the horrific scene with tears in her eyes.

Okoro, however, waded through the building’s flooded lobby and climbed up to the second floor, where Lettieri and another man agreed to go with her back into Adams’ apartment.

Once inside, the three hoisted Adams onto her then-floating mattress, until the police broke down the apartment’s garden door. Adams was taken to a local hospital for care, and was resting on Friday, the Times reported.

Adams was one of many New Yorkers whose homes flooded last Wednesday when the remnants of Hurricane Ida pummeled the city with torrential rain. She, however, was among the lucky who escaped their apartments.

At least 13 New Yorkers died in the floods, 11 of whom drowned in their basement-level homes in Queens and Brooklyn, when water rushed in and trapped them inside, according to the police department.

Darlene Hsu, 48, was at home near Adams, in the basement unit of a Forest Hills apartment complex, when flood water burst through her door on Wednesday night. Hsu, unlike Adams, never made it out of her home alive.

Ten other people in Queens died in their flooded basement-unit homes last week including Yue Lian Chen, 86, in Elmhurst, Darlene Hsu, 48, in Forest Hills, a trio of family members in Woodside, three people in Auburndale, and a mother and son in Jamaica, according to the NYPD. The youngest victim was a two-year-old boy.

Wednesday's deadly storm was the city's latest incident of catastrophic flooding amid climate-change-induced natural disasters, which city officials warned will continue to disproportionately impact Queens unless more infrastructure is invested in the borough — especially in southeast Queens.

Critics, however, pushed back against city officials' response to the storm, suggesting that local officials also could have done more to alert New Yorkers about the flooding and ensure their safety.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who stood by his administration's response, still plans to revamp the city's disaster notification system, especially for at-risk residents of basement apartments, and issue more travel bans, during future storms.

Over Labor Day weekend, President Biden, who visited flood-ravaged neighborhoods of Queens on Tuesday, made federal funding available for people in Queens affected by last week's torrential rains and flooding.

The President told reporters that he's optimistic about how federal aid will help the devastated areas of New York that he visited this week.

"I'm hoping to see the things we're going to be able to fix permanently with the build that we have in [place] for infrastructure," he said shortly before boarding a plane to Queens on Tuesday.

As for Adams, her home of 43 years has been "destroyed," Crockett told the Times, but they hope to rebuild — and see a bright side in that.

“We are here; mother is still here,” Crockett told the Times. “This was a miracle. And I will forever be grateful for our neighbors and my mother’s aide, who was an absolute champion.”

Read the full New York Times story here.