Tornado In Queens:Flash storm, tornado warnings to be powered via the New York evening Gorod Thursday, with winds up to 70 miles per hour demolition of trees, damaging buildings and destroying cars and causing the death of at least one person.
Severe weather wreaked havoc on the transportation system of the city in the middle of the evening commute. All Long Island Rail Road service was suspended from Manhattan in connection with the downed trees on tracks near
Sunnyside, Queens. LIRR service was also disrupted between Brooklyn and Queens, and only 7 subway line has been out for several hours.
Some roads were closed to vehicular traffic due to debris. A woman was killed when a tree toppled on her car on the Grand Central Parkway near Jewel Avenue, authorities said.
The storm and knocked out power to more than 24000 customers in Queens and 4800 households in Staten Island, according to Con Edison. Over 570 customers were without power in Brooklyn. New Jersey government officials say about 40.000 households were without electricity as a result of the storm.
Almost an hour after the storm passed, the 911 boards were swamped with calls by injury, but it was unclear how many were considered serious, the representative of the Fire Department said. The spokesman said several firefighters responded to the scene in Queens and Brooklyn, where motorists were stuck in the car, after tree falls on them.
Aaron Donovan, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman urged the LIRR passengers to “sit tight at the moment” rather than head to the station, Penn Station or Jamaica. New passengers were turned away from Penn Station, “he said.
MTA was the mobilization of buses to take passengers from the LIRR station in Jamaica, Queens, to points east, but the Donovan urged passengers not to travel to Jamaica because of the limited capacity of the bus.
Although tornadoes have never been officially announced, weather spotter training reported seeing a funnel cloud about two miles north-northeast of the Huguenot area of Staten Island, according to the National Weather Service, Sean Potter. Wind speeds of 70 miles per hour were evaluated on Staten Island, while parts of Brooklyn, saw sustained winds of 60 miles per hour, Potter said.
Brandon Smith, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Upland, New York, said the agency has received “numerous reports of damage in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens as a result of the storm. “First of all damage to trees, large branches all over the place,” he said.
Smith said that the National Weather Service officials must wait for daylight to come back before they could check the storm damage, to determine, in fact, a tornado hit the city. “The way the damage is on the earth can give you many hints,” he explained. “In the Tornado, you can see signs of rotation in the garbage.”
But city residents were not waiting for the official definition. “A very strong wind,” said a fruit vendor Abul Kashem, 35, who lost about $ 800 dollars of fruit in the storm, when his cart near the Grand Army of Brooklyn’s Plaza was overturned. He insisted that winds a tornado, a tornado. ”
“I’m lucky I’m safe,” said Kashem, who took refuge under the scaffolding, which eventually collapsed, forcing him to hide in the lobby of a brown building. “My fruit basket, he departed.”
Carolyn Davis returned to his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to find a huge loss. “The roof in the back of what I see, has been completely severed. Lantern in Busted”, she said.
Proof of damage caused by possible tornadoes can be found on the Internet minutes after the tornado warning expired at 6:00 pm Photos are available on the image-sharing service Twitter have shown, which was structurally damaged in the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn. Photos posted on Flickr showed SUV crushed by a tree brought down in Brooklyn, as well as significant damage to the pavement.
The last tornado to strike city was this summer, according to the National Weather Service, when weak Twister landed in the Bronx.