Over 100 Damage Complaints Filed In Forest Hills After Storm

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — After the remnants of Hurricane Ida inundated the city with torrential rains and deadly flooding last week, officials asked New Yorkers to call 311 to report damage to their homes or streets.

In Forest Hills, where the storm killed one person and flooded roadways to the point of ocean-like conditions, residents appear to have heeded that call.

During the past week — from the evening of Sept. 1 when the storm rolled in, through Wednesday, Sept. 8 — neighbors in Forest Hills filed over 100 complaints to 311 about sewer backup, flooding, and utility outages, city records show. The week before only 9 complaints came in about those same issues.

Patch mapped the complaints to show which parts of Forest Hills suffered damage from the storm. Click through the map below to explore each damage report. (Brown markers indicate flooded sewers; purple markers are drainage and flooding issues; blue are street flooding, and yellow are utility outages.)

Mapping storm-related 311 complaints in Forest Hills

Over 80 residents reported sewer backups to 311, making that issue the most common storm-related complaint in Forest Hills.

A cluster of sewer backup reports came from the neighborhood’s southwest corner, and a number of complaints were filed from buildings along Grand Central Parkway, a roadway which shut down last Wednesday night after major flooding.

Notably, just before 8:00 p.m., one person reported sewer issues from an apartment complex at 61-20 Grand Central Parkway — the same building where, later that night, Darlene Hsu, 48, drowned when water flooded into her basement-unit apartment, trapping her inside.

A handful of drainage and flooding issues were reported in the vicinity of Queens Boulevard, another major thoroughfare that flooded beyond use, prompting dozens of people to abandon their cars on the water-clogged street.

Residential buildings reporting water damage — including leaks and fully flooded basements — included a number of buildings off Yellowstone Boulevard near St. Johns Cemetery, an area that bore the brunt of the flooding a couple of weeks ago, when Tropical Storm Henri hit central Queens.

Damage in Forest Hills prompted arguments among local residents about basement units, where at least 11 New Yorkers were trapped during the storm and drowned.

All told, the hurricane is now linked to the death of at least 13 New Yorkers, most of whom lived in Queens.

Government response to the storm

In the week after the storm, city officials and President Biden alike, have called for action to address climate change and invest in climate-resilient infrastructure, especially in frontline, low-income communities, like those in southeast Queens where a mother and son died last Wednesday night.

"The threat [of climate change] is here, and it's not going to get any better. The question is if it's going to get any worse," said the president on Tuesday, speaking from a block in East Elmhurst, a community where one elderly woman died during the storm.

Critics, however, pushed back against the city and the federal governments’ responses, suggesting that local officials could have done more to alert New Yorkers about the flooding and ensure their safety, and that the president should focus on the Green New Deal and building “fossil free” infrastructure.

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. The de Blasio Administration 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.