Torrential rain ravages Gowanus
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A Monday night downpour cut
through the searing heat that
plagued Brooklyn since Friday,
only to incite fl ash fl oods in low
lying neighborhoods across the
borough, drowning cars and
inundating homes in murky,
knee-high water.
One Gowanus driver said
she was amazed at the fl oodwater’s
extraordinary speed,
which managed to submerge
her Prius in mere minutes.
“I went to take a shower and
when I got out it was fl ooded,”
said Eunice Lee, who parked
on Fourth Avenue near Carroll
Street on the border of Park
Slope Monday. “It happened
within 10 minutes.”
Lee’s partner, Jason Rivera,
tried save the vehicle upon noticing
the fl ood, but the water
was already too high by the
time he reached the car, and the
pair watched helplessly from a
nearby fi re escape as the deluge
washed away construction barriers,
carried away trash bags
strewn along the busy thoroughfare,
and engulfed their
hybrid.
Naturally, the couple’s son
found the whole spectacle hilarious,
according to Lee.
“Our son thought it was
funny and wanted to go swimming,”
Lee said. “When you
can’t do anything, you just kind
of take it in and you just wait.”
Another motorist discovered
the fl oodwater had swept
his Beamer from a parking spot
on nearby Carroll Street and
sent the luxury German import
slamming into a nearby street
lamp.
“I came by this morning...
and the car was up against the
light post,” said Thomas Flaherty,
who was in town from
North Carolina visiting his
daughter in Park Slope.
The Southerner bailed out
his car with a bucket and a
cup, but his engine coughed up
smoke when he went to start
it, and his insurance company
later told him the vehicle was
most likely totaled.
Car owners shared their
misery with nearby businesses,
and soon-to-open Fourth Avenue
watering hole Gowanus
Gardens took some water damage,
according to the husband
of the bar’s owner, who found
the establishment’s basement
transformed into an underground
BAD TRIP: North Carolinian Thomas Flaherty found his Beamer drenched
with water Tuesday morning after leaving it parked there on the weekend.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
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pool.
“The basement was really
bad — like three feet of water,”
said Danny Peña.
Peña’s efforts to drain the
basement were frustrated by
passing cars, which continued
slosh water into the cellar, and
he was forced to wait for the
downpour to subside and for
city workers to start draining
the fl oodwater before he could
make any real progress.
“The city people came, they
cleaned up the sewers, and
that’s when everything started
going down,” he said.
The sky dumped nearly
three inches of rain per hour
in the borough during last
night’s storm, which rolled
down Carroll Street to the lowlying
Fourth Avenue, overwhelming
the thoroughfare’s
drainage system, according to
Department of Environmental
Protection spokesman Edward
Timbers.
“Fourth Avenue sits at the
bottom of Park Slope – so stormwater
fl ows downhill from Prospect
Park West all the way to
Fourth Avenue,” Timbers said
in an emailed statement.
Fortunately, the fl ood consisted
entirely of stormwater,
according to Timbers, who insisted
that water from the fetid
Gowanus Canal did not spill
onto the streets.
“This was all stormwater.
Contrary to some reports,
there was no tidal fl ooding or
breach of the Gowanus Canal,”
he said.
The agency toured the area
with Borough President Eric
Adams Tuesday afternoon and
showed him how they plan to
upgrade the area’s drainage
early next year, according to
Timbers.
The brownstone Brooklyn
neighborhoods weren’t the
only parts of the borough submerged
by the torrential rains,
as residents of Borough Park,
Williamsburg, and Crown
Heights found themselves wading
through water and bailing
out basements that evening,
according to Council Speaker
Corey Johnson .
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