Latest news with #cleanup
CBS News
16 hours ago
- Climate
- CBS News
New York cleaning up after flash floods make mess of roads, subways and more
New York is cleaning up and trying to dry out after Monday night's torrential rains caused flash flooding and damage. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is giving remarks on cleanup efforts and storm damage in the Big Apple. Some spots of the Saw Mill River Parkway are slowly reopening, but side streets in Yonkers were still drenched, with cars surrounded by water. Crews are working to pump out the water with an eye toward reopening the roadways in time for the evening rush hour. Rush hour Tuesday morning was a mess for drivers along the Saw Mill River Parkway, which was inundated with more than a foot of water in some spots, turning the parkway into a river. "Everything is flooded and I've never seen it this flooded in my life and I grew up here," Yonkers resident Tiffany Perez said. "Actually it's kind of concerning." At the Odell Avenue overpass, drivers could hardly make out the lane markers on the road due to flooding. The Bronx River Parkway in Elmsford was also hit hard. Crews were trying to clean up the mess. "We've had our crews out there since 5 o'clock in the morning trying to clean out storm drains. The challenge right now is because of the heavy rains and how quickly it came down, it was significant debris that has gotten put into different places, so we're really trying to work as hard as we can," Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said. Floodwater drenched the industrial section of Elmsford. It's an issue businesses there like Brookfield Resource Management deal with regularly. "It came faster than most, but all in all it's about a six out of ten," Ed Malone of Brookfield Resource Management said. "We went from 'Eh, it looks OK' to 'Oh, we're in trouble.' It happened quick." Malone said the water came up to about 18 inches in his building. They have shelves in place to get supplies off the floor, and diamond-plate aluminum sheets on lobby walls to make cleanup easier. "We're second generation, so, used to happen when our dads were here. We're always on the lookout and if there's even a slight chance we start going to high ground," Malone said. In Rockland County, flooding snarled Route 59 near the Palisades Mall. A tree smashed into a home in Branchville. While work continues to recover roads in the area, residents told CBS News New York they were having flashbacks to Superstorm Sandy and what it left behind. "I think Sandy and a couple of hurricanes where the Saw Mill River Parkway was covered in water so it's about the same," one man said. "Going north it's like a lake. Up further it's still deep."
RNZ News
a day ago
- Climate
- RNZ News
Clean up continues for Tasman District in wake of widespread flood damage
Jim Papps standing in front of one of his tractors following bad weather in Tasman District. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ Throughout the Tasman District, the clean up continues after two floods caused widespread damage to homes, businesses, farms and orchards. For Jim Papps, that's meant scraping mud off the driveway of his Dovedale home and out of his sheds, for the second time in as many weeks. Papps and his wife Maureen built their home near the Dove River in 1954 and said they've never seen anything like what happened in the last three weeks. They've experienced flooding before, but this was on a different scale. "[It's] the biggest flood that we've ever seen, we've had some big floods that have come over the paddock here a few times but this one was the biggest one. Well, it was two floods." Papps' collection of 14 old tractors are surrounded by silt and sludge. His workshop has a layer of mud through it and there is wood and other debris still strewn across the yard. One of Jim Papps tractors stuck in the mud at his Dovedale home following the floods. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ The couple have spent the last few days scraping mud and silt off their property, retrieving items that floated downstream and clearing up debris. During the first flood, just over three weeks ago, Papps said he woke in the early hours of the morning and went to check on the river level. "I got up and shone a spotlight out the toilet window and I couldn't believe what I was seeing, the water was flowing through the yard... and I knew darn well then that it would have been going in our carport down the bottom." He then went to check on his neighbour, Paul Harper, who for the last 20 years or so had lived in a house bus between the couple's home and the river. "[Harper] was standing on the porch at the back of his house bus and he was panicking because he couldn't get out, the water was that swift and deep between the shed and his house bus," Papps said. Papps said the volume of water rushing through the property made quite a lot of noise. Jim Papps and his neighbour Paul Harper on their property next to the Dove River, in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ "I shouted out to him and said, 'I'll get the tractor and come round and bring you out on that', which I got in the bucket of the loader and I brought him out." Harper said when he awoke and opened the back door of his house truck, he wondered if he was going to get swept away. "I looked at that water and I thought, there is no way I can step into force of it was just absolutely frightening. "If it wasn't for the neighbours and for the family here, I reckon I could have bloody died." Papps and Harper moved the truck away from the river the following week when further heavy rain was forecast and Harper then missed the second flood last Friday, as he'd left in the morning to get some milk and by the time he came back, the roads were closed. The flood also washed out the approach to the nearby Cowin Bridge, and has left a huge lagoon in part of the nearby Dove River that was once a paddock. Mud and silt at Jim Papps home in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ On both occasions, Harper said was fortunate not to get water inside the truck, with it flowing only an inch or so below the floor. But his tool shed and wood store had been completely washed away and since Friday, he'd been cleaning up, non-stop. He was feeling, tired, burnt out and frightened. "Every time it rains, my cat disappears, I'm wide awake, and it's like, oh no, not again and it could only be just a few spits." Harper already had plans to move to Oamaru next month, but said the floods had pushed that out as he needed to dig his truck out and get it going again. "I won't park beside a river ever again, bloody way." Debris by the side of the Dove River in Dovedale. Photo: Samantha Gee / RNZ A helicopter landed in the paddock beside the couple's home on Tuesday, with Nelson Tasman Civil Defence checking in on their welfare. Civil Defence visited about 300 properties in Tasman on Monday as they continued to survey flood damage. Teams on Tuesday were focused on Graham Valley, Rocky River, Mārahau, Thorpe, Golden Downs, Tapawera, and Ngātīmoti. The state of emergency in Nelson Tasman will be lifted on Thursday, as the battered area moves into a one-month transition period. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
The Independent
2 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Armies of Texas volunteers dig out, clean up, after fatal floods
It began with a stranger asking 'Do you need help?' 'Yes,' Paul Welch told the man in a pickup truck, 'I desperately need some help." A day later, dozens of people pulled up outside the modest cabin where Welch and his partner lived overlooking the Guadalupe River until Texas' July 4 floods. The devastated property looked like a construction site Saturday after operators started clearing debris with mini-excavators and skid steers. An Army unit from Fort Hood scraped mud out of the cabin while other people tore down drywall. A Bible study group from San Antonio hand-washed tools from Welch's barn. His niece carefully wiped old negatives, hoping to preserve some of the couple's memories. Texans are leading flood recovery even as more flooding hits and the search for the missing continues. Mass cleanup across Kerr County — about 1.5 hours northwest of San Antonio — came Saturday before heavy rain pelted the region again on Sunday. For Welch and Elizabeth Hastings, the July 4 floods sent water to their ceiling, wiped out their RV and ruined most of the items in their barn. "Up until yesterday, it was pretty bleak,' he said. Then, Welch said the man in the truck — Huntly Dantzler of Fredericksburg, 20 miles away — 'he showed up.' 'I thought that is just too good to be true," Welch said. "We have hope now.' One ruined home In many places, volunteer labor includes debris removal and remediation often done by hired contractors and out of reach for households lacking insurance. Many survivors said it was simply too expensive. 'It's impossible here in the floodplain,' Welch said. 'Paying $10,000 a year for flood insurance doesn't make sense.' The survivors who spoke with The Associated Press said they didn't have insurance but had already applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That money is rarely enough to cover all the costs of replacing, remediating and rebuilding and only 116 FEMA applications were approved as of Sunday. Meeting post-disaster Many of those working together didn't know each other before the disaster — they've connected over social media, in public spaces or just by driving around looking for places to help. 'There's thousands of volunteers out here, more than needed, honestly. It's wild, and everyone is just lending a hand,' said Dave Isaacs, who came from San Antonio with his wife and daughter to help. Three people arrived at Daniel Olivas' home in Guadalupe Street in Kerrville last week with a skid steer and an excavator to clear debris. Water from the Guadalupe River overtook his house on July 4, leaving fish and crawdads floating in the bedrooms. Soon after, "33 angels descended' onto the property, said Olivas, removing furniture, scrubbing floors, and tearing out drywall. 'It's just amazing because I didn't ask for it,' said Olivas. 'They just showed up.' Some even insisted on leaving him cash, stuffing it into his pocket when he resisted. The help has come from businesses, too. The RV seller Camping World donated a pre-owned RV for Welch and Hastings to sleep in as long as they need. A plumbing company installed a new water treatment system for their neighbor for free. 'We're all heartbroken, and everyone's just pitching in,' said Monica Watson, a hopsice worker helping Olivas' neighbor, an older man who depended on a wheelchair. 'He was just waiting for help,' she said. She said she had no connection to her collaborators other than a shared desire to contribute. 'One guy just said 'I'm Ben, I have a Bobcat (tractor),' and that was it,'' she said. A woman drove by asking if they needed another trailer to haul away trash, and returned with one minutes later. Volunteering helps everyone Volunteering can help people cope with trauma, said Dr. Adrienne Heinz, a clinical research psychologist at Stanford University and an expert in post-traumatic stress. 'When something awful happens, a powerful human response can occur called 'purposing,'' said Heinz. 'This is when we rise to meet moments of sorrow and adversity with action that is meaningful and values-aligned.' Purposing 'offers a buffer against hopelessness and despair and can set the stage for post-traumatic growth and transformational resilience,' said Heinz. For those impacted, seeing the care flow in from all over the world is also healing. 'I cannot express how much I appreciate everything that they have done for us,' said Colleen Lucas of Ingram, as staff with the international charity Operation Blessing helped her husband, Dave, repair one of their cars that had been submerged in water. The staff members from Mexico, Honduras and Chile, along with 42 members of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, hauled out Lucas' destroyed belongings and packed and stored their salvageable items. She is unsure whether her home will need to be demolished, or how and when they will rebuild. But she's already thinking about how to pay forward the help they got. 'We lost a lot but we're going to be donating when we're up and going,' she said. —— Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit
Associated Press
2 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
Armies of Texas volunteers dig out, clean up, after fatal floods
COMFORT, Texas (AP) — It began with a stranger asking 'Do you need help?' 'Yes,' Paul Welch told the man in a pickup truck, 'I desperately need some help.' A day later, dozens of people pulled up outside the modest cabin where Welch and his partner lived overlooking the Guadalupe River until Texas' July 4 floods. The devastated property looked like a construction site Saturday after operators started clearing debris with mini-excavators and skid steers. An Army unit from Fort Hood scraped mud out of the cabin while other people tore down drywall. A Bible study group from San Antonio hand-washed tools from Welch's barn. His niece carefully wiped old negatives, hoping to preserve some of the couple's memories. Texans are leading flood recovery even as more flooding hits and the search for the missing continues. Mass cleanup across Kerr County — about 1.5 hours northwest of San Antonio — came Saturday before heavy rain pelted the region again on Sunday. For Welch and Elizabeth Hastings, the July 4 floods sent water to their ceiling, wiped out their RV and ruined most of the items in their barn. 'Up until yesterday, it was pretty bleak,' he said. Then, Welch said the man in the truck — Huntly Dantzler of Fredericksburg, 20 miles away — 'he showed up.' 'I thought that is just too good to be true,' Welch said. 'We have hope now.' One ruined home In many places, volunteer labor includes debris removal and remediation often done by hired contractors and out of reach for households lacking insurance. Many survivors said it was simply too expensive. 'It's impossible here in the floodplain,' Welch said. 'Paying $10,000 a year for flood insurance doesn't make sense.' The survivors who spoke with The Associated Press said they didn't have insurance but had already applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That money is rarely enough to cover all the costs of replacing, remediating and rebuilding and only 116 FEMA applications were approved as of Sunday. Meeting post-disaster Many of those working together didn't know each other before the disaster — they've connected over social media, in public spaces or just by driving around looking for places to help. 'There's thousands of volunteers out here, more than needed, honestly. It's wild, and everyone is just lending a hand,' said Dave Isaacs, who came from San Antonio with his wife and daughter to help. Three people arrived at Daniel Olivas' home in Guadalupe Street in Kerrville last week with a skid steer and an excavator to clear debris. Water from the Guadalupe River overtook his house on July 4, leaving fish and crawdads floating in the bedrooms. Soon after, '33 angels descended' onto the property, said Olivas, removing furniture, scrubbing floors, and tearing out drywall. 'It's just amazing because I didn't ask for it,' said Olivas. 'They just showed up.' Some even insisted on leaving him cash, stuffing it into his pocket when he resisted. The help has come from businesses, too. The RV seller Camping World donated a pre-owned RV for Welch and Hastings to sleep in as long as they need. A plumbing company installed a new water treatment system for their neighbor for free. 'We're all heartbroken, and everyone's just pitching in,' said Monica Watson, a hopsice worker helping Olivas' neighbor, an older man who depended on a wheelchair. 'He was just waiting for help,' she said. She said she had no connection to her collaborators other than a shared desire to contribute. 'One guy just said 'I'm Ben, I have a Bobcat (tractor),' and that was it,'' she said. A woman drove by asking if they needed another trailer to haul away trash, and returned with one minutes later. Volunteering helps everyone Volunteering can help people cope with trauma, said Dr. Adrienne Heinz, a clinical research psychologist at Stanford University and an expert in post-traumatic stress. 'When something awful happens, a powerful human response can occur called 'purposing,'' said Heinz. 'This is when we rise to meet moments of sorrow and adversity with action that is meaningful and values-aligned.' Purposing 'offers a buffer against hopelessness and despair and can set the stage for post-traumatic growth and transformational resilience,' said Heinz. For those impacted, seeing the care flow in from all over the world is also healing. 'I cannot express how much I appreciate everything that they have done for us,' said Colleen Lucas of Ingram, as staff with the international charity Operation Blessing helped her husband, Dave, repair one of their cars that had been submerged in water. The staff members from Mexico, Honduras and Chile, along with 42 members of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, hauled out Lucas' destroyed belongings and packed and stored their salvageable items. She is unsure whether her home will need to be demolished, or how and when they will rebuild. But she's already thinking about how to pay forward the help they got. 'We lost a lot but we're going to be donating when we're up and going,' she said. —— Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP's philanthropy coverage, visit
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Automotive
- RNZ News
Truck leaks diesel on roads from Wellington's city centre to Miramar and Kaiwharawhara
Photo: Peter Young / Fisheye Films The clean-up of a diesel spill in central Wellington is expected to take some time, police say. A "large amount" leaked from a truck on Monday, across roads from Wellington's city centre to Miramar and Kaiwharawhara. "Wellington motorists are advised to take extra care around the city centre, Miramar, and towards Kaiwharawhara," police said in a statement. "Clean-up in affected areas has been organised but will take some time." They said to expect delays. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
