JAMAICANS in the north-eastern United States caught a scare midweek as Hurricane Ida hurled post-tropical cyclones throughout the area and induced devastating flooding, leaving more than 60 people dead across several states, including New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Connecticut.

“It really did not spare anyone,” said Jamaican Dionne Lewin, a housing management agent living in Mount Vernon, 10 minutes away from the Bronx, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday. She described the scenes she experienced as similar to watching toy cars floating in a bathtub.

“We are always told, if you can’t see the bottom don’t drive through standing water…people had to climb through their windows — they were on top of their cars waiting for emergency help. The parkways looked like parking lots.

Then all the trains shut down, and what people had to do was jump on top of the seats [in buses] because the water came gushing in.

We’ve never seen anything like that. I’m not even sure how you can prepare for something like this,” she said.Lewin said her own house came under water, but not as badly as some of her neighbours, whose entire basement homes were inundated, forcing them to move furniture out to the sidewalk. One neighbour, she said, was just devastated. “Nothing was able to be saved,” she remarked.

“I just got my place back to normal, it was just too much. I was exhausted, and some people have worse stories,” she said.Another Jamaican, a New York City housing inspector of over 20 years, Paul Goldson, said a friend had a narrow brush with death and was forced to kick open the back windscreen of his motor vehicle to escape the raging waters.

Donovan Longmore, Jamaica Diaspora Northeast USA think tank member told a similar story of flooded basements, and now closed streets, as residents started to pick up the pieces behind Ida, which it seemed caught many by surprise.

“I’m still working to help people who are [members of the Jamaica Diaspora]; it affects everyone.

It’s drying up now, and the city and state are doing a wonderful job. Some people are still affected but we are doing our best to ensure we help as many people as possible,” he said.

Representative for the Jamaica Diaspora Northeast USA Dr Karren Dunkley said the chapter has been reaching out to Jamaicans in need of help with the relevant resources.

“This is like the calm after the storm,” she said of the past few days post-Ida.

“It’s almost like nothing happened, but when you look in people’s basements the fact that schools are closed, the roads now need to be prepared, you know that a storm happened,” she said.

Goldson, meanwhile, pointed out that the mopping up process has not been a simple one, given the hidden dangers of gas and electricity in the presence of water.

“All those boilers have to be repaired and if the water has salt at all in it they have to take that system out because the salt will erode the pipes and everything and eventually it will cause an explosion.”

The death toll from Hurricane Ida continued to increase up to yesterday, with more than 20 fatalities in New Jersey alone, and several missing. Ida is the ninth named storm, and fourth hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season.