two key updates this hour you'll see live on msnbc with the two states reeling this morning after the quote, unquote, remnants of ida turned deadly. governors of new jersey, new york, and the mayor updating us on the state of emergency declared in those states. a full month's worth of rain falling in just a couple of hours. rescuers are trying to get to people stranded by the flash floods. you see some of those images here. just in to us, at least 15 people have been killed, including five people discovered in an apartment complex in elizabeth, new jersey, this morning.

we'll take you live those news conferences as soon as they start. you have streets that look more like rivers. all morning we've been seeing scenes like this play out. first responders, an inflatable boat, inflatable rafts, helping people escape their flooded-out homes. this is epic rain and shut down a lot of the subway service in new york. new york city subway has very limited service. this is the scene at some of these subway stations. you can see it again, gushing water. the entire -- nearly the entire new jersey transit rail system is down, too. and this morning they're surveying the damage from dangerous tornadoes created by this storm. several homes in new jersey and maryland totaled in a matter of minutes. >> wind, nearly five minutes, and then everything was decimated. >> i'm hallie jackson in washington, along with our nbc news team. stephanie gosk is in the city of queens. gary gombrach, and bill karins

join us. we're calling this a one in 500-year rainfall event. in six hours, you had nearly 8 inches of rain falling in newark, new jersey, in new york city more than 6 1/2 inches. in new york, according to our meteorology team they saw something like half inch of rain in a couple of minutes. steph, i want to start with you in new york. we've been watching you this morning. it's almost sort of unbelievable what you're looking at, given we expected devastation when hurricane ida was moving up through the gulf coast. people had been bracing for that. this seemed to take people a little bit by surprise. >> yeah. and i think you hit it on your introduction, hallie, with that word remnants. we hear remnants, we think, it's the tail end of the storm. but this storm still packs a huge punch. and really this is a story about water. water that fell fast, it fell hard, and it actually, here in queens, brought down this gas

station. this wasn't wind. this was water that brought this roof down. you come this way a little bit, you can see underneath is a car that got trapped under the roof. thankfully, the owner of that car was actually inside the gas station when it fell. the national weather service did something last night that it very rarely does, and, in fact, has never done before in the city of new york. they declared first a flash flood warning, but then they upgraded that to a flash flood emergency, and that's when lives are at risk because of the flooding. here in new york, we already know that lives were lost. nypd says eight people were killed in storm-related deaths, and in the description of those events, all of them related to flooding. they appear, hallie, like people just got caught off guard in their homes. the water rose that quickly, that fast. and they just couldn't get help to them in time. you talked a little bit about the numbers of total rainfall

for a period of six hours. there's another really incredible statistic in central park for just one hour, and that's the hour between 9:00 to 10:00 in central park. 3.15 inches of rain fell in that hour. the previous record was 1.94, and that was actually set by hurricane henri, which was tropical storm henri when it got here, about ten days ago. that is a lot of rain in this region really quickly. saturated ground. water just rose, for some people, faster than they could react to it. hallie? >> and it left a lot of people stuck, right? the situation this morning, steph, as you know well, you just can't get around the region. i wonder what it was like for you and your crews as you were trying to get to the locations here. i heard of cars on the highway that was just left there, et cetera. things you don't typically see in northern new jersey. >> reporter: yeah. you know, in coming here, i did sort of wind my way through

manhattan and then through queens over a couple of bridges. it's a beautiful, bright, sunny day. you might have thought things were okay until you saw lines of abandoned cars on the side of the road. some of them had blinking taillights. others were just simply empty. there was water on those roads overnight. and what happened, people got alerts actually from the weather service saying, abandon your car now if you are on these roadways, because your life is in danger. and people clearly felt like that's what they needed to do. you also saw incredible scenes, too, of people just being in their cars and doing what you're told always not to do, which is to try to drive through standing water. >> drive through it, yeah. >> reporter: doing that, and the cars getting taken away and they're having to call for help. those scenes today out of pennsylvania and new jersey, so often the case after one of these storms, it takes a little while to figure out exactly what happened. we are really beginning to understand the full impact of this rain.

remnants? not really the right way to describe what ida did to this region. hallie? >> not even close. steph, thank you so much. we're showing pictures of what's happening this morning. we are going to keep up these live shots for you. we mow these rescues are happening in new jersey, in pennsylvania. you're taking a live shot, live look at philly. this is live. i believe this is from our affiliate down there. i'll have the control room correct me if i'm wrong. this is exactly what stephanie is talking about here. cars stranded and abandoned. i wonder specifically where in philly this is, if anybody can tell me that. we don't have the specific location, but you can see this is -- one of these rescues that's going on, at least for the car that's out there. this is playing out over and over and over again in the region because of that unbelievable amount of rain that we got, and that people in the northeast felt and heard and saw, and are dealing with this morning. people in our region, in the d.c. area, knew this happened about 24 hours ago, a lot of us

woken up in the middle of the night from ida passing through our neck of the woods. and then there's tornadoes that got spawned in maryland. this is p.a. i want to leave this shot up. you are in annapolis, maryland, which for folks that don't know, is right on the chesapeake bay. a tornado spawned up from edgewater to annapolis yesterday. tell us about what you're seeing there. >> reporter: we're at 1,000 miles where the hurricane made landfall in the gulf coast. and we're still seeing a significant impact from the remnants of hurricane ida. power crews are working to try to make -- reproduct these crew lines and these signs were ripped off their poles here. as we can see behind a mazda dealer shirngs the roof was ripped off like a can opener. here at a gas station, we're also seeing a tree narrowly missing these gas pumps. here at anne arundel county in this area of maryland, the schools are closed. schools are delayed in some places.

there were no injuries or deaths. that's good news. >> yeah. >> reporter: about 6,000 people are out of power. and so this, of course, is the eastern shore of maryland. this is not tornado alley. this is where that residents here are not used to this type of activity. we talked to one business owner earlier, who was talking to us about his business, his roof is completely ripped off his business, but his workers are all okay. hallie? >> gary live for us in annapolis, gateway to the east shore. i want to bring in now meteorologist bill karins. this is somerset, new jersey, a chopper shot coming in live from one of our affiliates. if they zoom back in -- again, we have no control over this camera. we're watching this with you live as it unfolds. it looks like there's another boat, another potential rescue. look at this. look at the flooding in these communities. look at how high the water is, coming up now to these homes. those are traffic lights. and you can see the water up to

almost where the traffic light is hanging, at least from this vantage point. it looks like it's fairly deep. this is significant stuff, right? this is something that people had been warned about. as stephanie gosk pointed out at the top of our broadcast, this was predicted to be remnants. we knew we would get a lot of rain in new york, about a month's worth of rain in 24 hours or so. that month's worth of rain ended up coming in two hours i want to keep this shot up. i'm talking to our control room here. if they zoom back down to get a better sense of what this rescue is. but bill karins, talk to us. it looks gorgeous. it's a blue bird day out in somerset, new jersey, at least if you look at the sky. on the ground it's a very different story. >> yeah. this is somerset county. the biggest river through somerset county, new jersey, is the rariton river from north central new jersey back down towards the new york harbor and out to sea. the rariton river is very close to cresting, if it hasn't

already crested already. it is very close, the same levels that hurricane floyd did and hurricane irene. so that's 1999 and 2011. that's the flood of record for the rariton river. as i mentioned, it looks like the helicopter is freezing up a little bit there. it's hard to picture from this shot even for me where the river is supposed to be. i believe it's all the way to the right where you see it looks like a pond in the upper right-hand corner. i believe that's where the river is supposed to be. and then it has completely, obviously, way overflooded its banks. the river height right now is right around 40 to 42 feet. typically, it will be somewhere around the 20-foot mark. that's how much higher it is than normal right now. if you were with us last hour we were talking about the schuylkil river outside of philadelphia. that broke the 1972 hurricane ag

nechlt s flood. this wasn't your average, typical flood. this is rivalling some of the worst storms in recorded history of new york, pennsylvania. >> that's right. >> and new jersey. and all of this water has to go through. hallie, kind of an important point. one thing i really -- for all the viewers and everything else, this was well forecasted. now, if people listened or not is a completely different story. we can talk about messaging of forecast and people looking at their iphones and seeing rain drops and not reading flood watches. new york city went into flood watch 48 hours before this hit. they were in a flash flood emergency when it hit but the forecast was made well before. yesterday morning i showed a high risk of flash flooding through the region. storm prediction center told us a few strong tornadoes could be in new jersey and toward the philadelphia area. that's exactly what happened. this is one of the most well-forecasted extreme weather

events i have ever seen. this was the map that i showed yesterday morning. it almost perfectly pinpoints where the heaviest rain went. >> can i ask you -- >> it's incorrect to say -- >> i'm sorry, go ahead. you were making a good point here. some people were saying on the ground they were surprised by it. that's not due, as you are making the very valid point, to any lack of forecasts on this. did you really expect eight inches of rain in newark? was that part of the forecast? my understanding was we knew there would be a ton of rain but that's an intense level in a short period of time. no? >> i was on tv yesterday morning. the rainfall totals, i had six inches, new york city at 5 1/2. forecasts showed possibility of 10 inches in the poconos or catskills. we knew it would be a widespread, three to six inch rain and some had a chance of getting ten inches.

one spot on staten island got a foot of rain. it was very, very close to what we predicted. this is what actually happened. you know, maybe it was going to be a little bit to the north, and it was a little bit south. everything is magnified when 10 million people in new york city go under a flash flood emergency. that's the largest flash flood emergency in the history of flash flood emergencies. new york city had never issued a flash flood emergency before and yesterday they issued three of them. it is unprecedented. what happened, we've had huge rainstorms. this was the fifth wettest day in central park history. those records go back 153 years. it wasn't like new york hasn't had that much rain before, but they hadn't had that much rain in a short period of time. in one hour, it was over three inches. the previous record was under two inches. think of all the thunderstorms that have ever rolled through new york city. none of them did this in one hour. and, you know, you're starting off the top of the show saying the one in 500-year rainfall

event, it doesn't mean this can't happen every once every ten, 20 years. the math on it, probability statistics tell us going into every single year it's .2% chance of happening. now with climate change, are those odds going to start changing and we're going to start changing the math on that? likely. when we start next year, we could see another flood like this. if you're going to vegas and betting on it, the odds are significantly against that happening. >> bill karins, you provide such an important and valid perspective. can you hang with us? we're going to see the new jersey governor in a couple of minutes from harrison township. we expected that news conference to start about 14 minutes ago. obviously it's running late. we are also expecting to hear live from the governor and the mayor of new york, governor of the state, mayor of the city, obviously. we'll bring those updates to you live as well. bill, we hope to have you throughout the show. thank you so much for that. a lot of other news to get to, too, not just these

developments in the northeast and atlantic on so-called remnants of ida, but the news breaking overnight on the texas abortion law. what the supreme court is now doing to break its silence. later in the show, we're talking with one abortion provider in houston on what he's telling patients and the future of his clinic. we're also talking democrats promoting one republican to be the number two member on the january 6th committee. what her party leadership is saying about that this morning. and new movement in new york's investigation into former president trump and his family business. who is set to testify before a grand jury. that's coming up. a grand jury that's coming up secret stops odor-causing sweat 3x more. and the provitamin b5 formula is gentle on skin. with secret, outlast anything! no sweat. secret. ♪ all strength. no sweat. ♪ now, we all know progressive offers 24/7 protection, but we also bundle outdoor vehicles with home and auto to help people save more! [ laughs ] ♪♪

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we told you new jersey governor phil murphy would be giving an update live on the flooding. here he is. let's listen. >> this is going to take us some time to dig out of this, no question about it. on behalf of all of us, we're going to stay here, be by the

side of the residents and small businesses that have been impacted so severely. if you're a small business, you're barely getting back on your feet from a pandemic and you get whacked by this. you ask yourself, rightfully, life's not so fair sometimes. but i promise that we will stay with everybody and it won't be a short road, but we will stay with them on that road to recovery. i just got off, which is why i'm a few minutes late with the fema administrator, chris well. i said to her, and she has been terrific and her team has been terrific, that we will be sending in a major disaster declaration request today. i will speak shortly with the president and reiterate that and thank him for his support and help. that will be a game changer if that is accorded in terms of our ability to get individuals, families, businesses and our infrastructure and the cleanup

back to where it should be. nj transit is a work in progress, both on the rail and the bus side, somewhat depending on where you are in the state verse the atlantic city, i'm told, has been clear sailing, which is good news but that's not the case for most every other line in the central and northern part of the state. as i mentioned, the highways getting a work in progress, the parkway and turnpike are wide open, north to south, and that's good. we've got a couple of challenges still on the interstates. as i mentioned, some local off-ramp type issues that will take some time to fix. we have had fatalities. i won't get into the details or the numbers. we did not have them here, thank god. but we have had them in the central and northern part of the state. so, please keep those folks in your prayers. as we get more specificity on that, we will obviously let you know. but sadly, more than a few folks have passed as a result of this.

i think that it, as a general matter, other than, as i say, we'll stay at this as long as it takes. i will likely be doing some more stops later this afternoon, probably in central and northern part of the state. and those will be largely getting a handle on the flooding impact there. again, we keep all of the victims, both individuals, families, small businesses, on main street in our prayers and, again, we will not relent. we will stand by the sides of everybody who has been impacted by this in new jersey until we get back on our feet. i guess i'll close with a pretty obvious statement. the world is changing, right? these storms are coming in more frequently. steve and i were on the phone last night on this topic. they're coming in more frequently. they're coming in with more intensity. and as it relates to our infrastructure, our resiliency, our whole mind-set, playbook that we use, we have got to leap

forward and get out ahead of this. any infrastructure money we get, i'll bet you a lot of it will be put into resilient infrastructure, because that's exactly what you need when you're the most densely populated state in the nation with our extraordinary location, which is second to none. i think any amount of investment we can make in the years ahead in resilient infrastructure will be investment that will help us. please, god, if we have to deal with things like this going forward in the years ahead. anybody want to add anything? guys? >> just from the federal side, personal thank you, governor, for being here. steve, the legislative team for new jersey, and certainly the commissioners and mayor and township. i'm looking across the street, and that could be any of our closets. the shoes are there. and behind me, swingset that children could have been playing on. the fact that people were not killed or seriously injured is

just amazing. but when we look at this, and we were in washington last night monitoring -- we were in session until 3:00 this morning. we jumped on the train and literally i got stopped in delaware, because we couldn't get into philadelphia or above it. this is a problem that's going on. but we never had tornadoes of this nature when we grew up. occasionally a small one. what we see behind here is change. and you mentioned the infrastructure. that's exactly what we're working on. luckily, we're going to get that done and bring those much-needed resources to what we have here today. speaking with fema, we reloaded them because this storm was supposed to make a right-hand turn, go out to sea by north and south carolina, but as we go into labor day weekend, i want to say thank you to all those who labored to help the people behind us, whether you're the utility for the electricity or your neighbor helping them pull

out. that's what makes new jersey a great state. we help each other in times of need. and we're going to need more help. so based on that, we just want to thank all you who helped. and certainly if you're having trouble, obviously, give our office a call, certainly the legislators, insurance issues. certainly we want to be there to help with that. >> thanks. >> i want to start with thanking the first responders. they come out to the front line of defense and they do a hell of a job for us. they put their own safety at risk. the counties, oems, outstanding. the coordination. everyone working together to make things work. in talking to bob last night and lou, the mayor, and most importantly the governor, because i asked him for some help. and help came last night because we have a lot of trees down.

you're seeing property damage here. but as you travel through this county it looks like a bomb hit in some places. >> yep. >> and getting those trees cleaned up is critically important. governor, i just want to say thank you for stepping up once again to help the citizens of this county, and the state. look, anybody who is a global warming denier, take a look at what's going on. around donald said, you might have had an occasional storm. it wasn't anything. these things are getting stronger and there's more damage. we've got to do something because it's too late now. governor, thank you. >> thank you, steve. >> governor, for families. [ inaudible question ] >> how do they get help right now? >> we will probably be putting up a whole bunch of information on websites, or phone numbers to go to. it will be both a combination of state, federal and third parties like the red cross.

obviously, it will depend, in part, on whether or not you have a structure like this, versus whether it's water damage, et cetera. i want to reiterate before we take a couple of questions, the points that these guys just made. in particular, our first responders. i was in a room this morning at the statewide traffic management system with the colonel and dan. and moeb in that room -- i slept a couple of hours. lou, i suspect you didn't sleep much last night, or bob. nobody am that room slept. so the atlantic city electric team to the d.o.t. folks, dep to the county, bob to you and your colleagues at the county, the state police, the local teams, oems, cannot thank you enough. you're on a pedestal. bob, come on. >> before you take questions, i'm the director of the board of commissioners in gloucester county. before the governor takes some questions, just want to put it out. we have all these cameras here.

it's the easiest way to get out to gloucester county. anybody affected in this storm in gloucester county, the red cross is set up at the gloucester institute of technology and are there to serve you. >> thank you. bob says we got a lot of camera s on, let's take advantage of it. right? brian? >> you and the legislators, the speaker, have charted a fairly ambitious course against climate change. and you said several times it's becoming more intense, the storm s, more frequent. does this suggest to you that we need to accelerate the efforts that are already under way? >> unequivocally, yes. and i think -- i don't know where donald went but the federal infrastructure bill that is being debated, god willing voted on sooner than later -- i should say bills. you've got two different buckets there. any amount of that will be of huge help toward our efforts. i just want to make sure this isn't -- i can't see this thing.

yeah, i believe this may be the president. so i'm just going to take this and make sure. >> tell him i said hello. >> bob danninger, mr. president, says hello. the answer is unequivocally, yes. i assume you all would agree. >> state level, governor? >> state and federal, but there's only -- we will put state resources into this as we have done and we will continue to do. the game changer here is the fed s and the work that donald is doing with federal dollars. please? >> governor, we talked to victims in this neighborhood and said the national weather service alerts saved their lives. alerts also went out, flood emergencies throughout new york yet a lot of people were still trapped in their car, some dying in their cars. >> sadly. >> don't know how many water rescues there were. is there a way to improve, to get people off these roads when these flash flood emergencies are issued before the inevitable

happens? >> it's a great question. we had this very conversation, the colonel and i, and others this morning. thank god the alerts worked in this case, right? as bad as the damage is behind us, i'm told that family was in the house and went to the basement and they're alive as a result of it. steve, you told me last night you went to the basement. people did the right thing. i don't know. this is a personal opinion. i'm not sure. we're going to look at this. i'm not sure it's a difference of the alerts, because the alerts did go out. i got them myself on my phone. but i think people hear flooding and they hear tornado, and i think perhaps they put them into a different category. and sadly, we can't do that. people pay with their lives as a result of that yesterday. but we're going to look at the entire system. there were too many cars on the road and too many cars. thank god most of them were abandoned and people got out safely, but that was not the case for everyone, sadly. please.

>> a question for the mayor. >> please. >> obviously this is something that you do not see. [ inaudible question ] >> sure. obviously this is an unprecedented event for us locally and even regionally. what i will say is how impressed i was, as i arrived at our office of operations for emergency management at the fire hall last night. maybe 6:45. at that point it was me and my oem director and a couple of firefighters. and i watched the process coordinated by the county. i want to give the county their due, director danninger. that's the way it's supposed to work, where everything is coordinated through the county. i watched it crystallize in front of my eyes over the next 30, 40, 50, 60 minutes where everything was coordinated and nothing was dispatched. we have people now filling the room, ready to work. that's the other part of this.

the support from our neighboring communities and from individuals, just showing up in the middle of that -- at that point it's a torrential rainstorm after the tornado had left. and filling our firehouse, ready to be dispatched but not doing anything based on our local oem directive that we have to hear from the county first. they did a stellar job. thank god. only by the grace of god was there no loss of life or serious injury to be dealt with during that critical first hour, 90 minutes. by the time we got through that, the coordination, it was like clock work. it was really something to behold. i was literally watching it all happen. incredible. where we go from here is, it's a focus on our residents and their health and well-being, first of all. and, therefore, if there was a sheltering need or any type of support, that is coming to us in spades where we're just getting so much, so many offers for that. that will be our focus. we have that coordinated locally from a township perspective. and then it becomes about these

homes and the damage to them, and the digging out, cleaning up, and rebuilding. and, look, that is where americans, new jerseyans quintessentially come together. we saw it last night and we're seeing it now. everybody supports one another. the help will be there. we'll clean up. we'll dig out, rebuild. one final comment that the governor -- again, i cannot thank enough the fact that the level of support from all levels of government. i got my congressman from a different district, by the way. congressman norcross is here. obviously my district, legislative district representative is here. my good ne friend, senate president sweeney is here. at the end of the day what the xwfr said, it's residential impact and business impact. locally, we were lucky enough where not many of our businesses were physically impacted.

however, and this is the last comment i want to make and put a light on it, we had our farming community affected. and that is -- you know, they are the foundational pillar of where we are. and they have been for generations. locally, the grasso family farm was devastated. it's basically gone. and speaking with him at 11:30 last night, he is devastated. but as he said, he will rebuild. he had his farming community family around him, pledging their support to help him get through the rest of the season and somehow salvage whatever that might be and rebuild. just north of us in manchua, the largest dairy farm, i believe, governor, in the state. >> that's right. >> 250-plus cows where we're told at this point they've lost as much as 100 of those cows. it's devastating to that business and to that culture. i want everybody to just keep

them in your thoughts and prayers now. >> well said. and, lou, you make a very important point. it's farms here. if you go into the central part of the state, northern part of the state, it's main street businesses. i saw a raging river right down the middle of town. all those small businesses are crushed in the, and the farms down here are crushed and there are homes obviously in all the state. one more maybe. [ inaudible question ] >> senator testa helped set it up. >> yep. >> you're asking him for storm mitigation protection. >> yep. >> what have you got to say about that? >> he's doing a lot, in fairness. the dep, you may have seen, put out a big report with the army corps of engineers, a preliminary report, but a big one as it relates to resiliency up against storms. that's more focused on the shore

than it is on the -- the shore largely was -- came through last night okay. most of what we're dealing with, the overwhelming amount of what we're dealing with is inland. they'll be there, i promise you. it's the game changer will be continuing to do what we're doing and, god willing, do more. with donald's help and other colleagues, adding on top of that, the federal money to -- really that's the game changer in terms of building the infrastructure. maybe be one last one, sir. >> can you name the county you assess damage in? >> bob? >> harrison township where we're at now, mullica hill. winona was hit hard. several of the other towns that weren't hit as hard but got a piece of it. mantua was hit hard, winona, harrison township, i think, were the hardest hit.

and woodbury, and defford. so, you know -- i just want to let you know, and to the people that live here and the residents that are here, i know every one of these gentlemen very well that are standing around me. this isn't just a photo-op for a bunch of politicians to stand here. these people will be here for the residents of this community and the rest of gloucester county. and they'll all tell you, they're men of their word. we're not walking away from anybody. we'll be here through the process. right, governor? >> you bet ya, bob. >> you call me in the county, you call your local legislature, or congressman, we'll help out. and, you know, all the way up to the governor. we're here for the duration. we're not going anywhere. nobody is left behind. thank you. >> extremely well said, bob. and i just want to underscore that with great emphasis. to the colonel and bob, lou, thank you for hosting us. steve, you're being attacked here, don, to everybody here,

especially the residents who have been impacted so severely. we are with you. this won't be overnight, by the way. this is going to be a longer road than any of us will like. we will not relent. >> we are going to take you from new jersey up to new york where the governor, kathy hochul and new york city mayor bill deblasio are giving their own update. let's listen in. >> mayor bill deblasio, burrough presidents, we're here today because of a devastating storm that shocked the people of this city. and even the morning after, we're still uncovering the true depth of the loss. the human loss, which is hard to imagine, that people simply in their cars, in their homes and their basements succumb to the ravages of a brutal storm, and their families just must be in such pain this morning. so to all of them, we offer our

love, our condolences, and our wishes for their healing. and we'll be there to support them. and this is all precipitated by last night's record-shattering rainfall. and what's so fascinating is that the records that were broken in central park, for example, 3.15 inches in one hour. it broke a record literally set one week earlier. that says to me that there are no more cataclysmic, unforeseen events. we need to see these in advance and be prepared. and we learned a lot of lessons from sandy. we built back resiliency. our coastal shore lines are in much better shape than they had been. where we have a vulnerability is in our streets with the higher elevations now, the flash floods, which were unknown before. this is the first time we've had a flash flood event of this proportion in the city of new

york and outlying areas. we haven't experienced this before but should expect it the next time. that means we have to continue investments in infrastructure, working in partnership with our federal government and support from senator schumer and president biden, who are working so hard, so hard to get the infrastructure dollars back to our state so we can build this up, working in partnership with the mayor and other officials, to work collaboratively and get this done so we can take care of the drainage shortcomings in our streets. when the streets get flooded, what happens next? the water rushes down not just through the highways but also finds its way to penetrate our subway system. and as a result, what happened yesterday, trains were shut down. people were stranded. the fear that they must have experienced when this occurred i cannot imagine. and i don't want this to happen again. so what we're doing in preparation, we directed all of our state resources to be prepared, our d.o.t., throughway

authority, mta, port authority, all of our first responders embedded with the local teams here and throughout long island, nassau, suffolk, putnam, rockland counties have suffered some form of loss. we also have pumping systems in place, taking care of the subways, literally removing the water physically. i want to thank, first of all, everyone who was involved last night. but our transit workers are heroes, especially all the bus operators who had to be deployed to literally take people from stations to where they needed to go. so it's an extraordinary rescue operation just a few short hours ago. moments ago, i was on the phone with the white house, president biden called, offered any assistance. he repeated, any assistance that the state of new york needs. i told him we'll take him up on that. and what happens next, we'll be doing on-the-ground assessments

with the damage, our local partners and making sure we get a true accounting of the loss. he promised that he will guarantee, he said, i guarantee you i'll approve any declaration you need, emergency declaration so we can get the money flowing to new york, to our municipalities, to our cities, to our citizens, the businesses affected, and certainly to the homeowners. and also with respect to the homeowners, who have experienced the flooding in their own basements, i've directed the department of financial services to be in contact immediately with our insurance providers so they get people on the ground. show up in these neighborhood, get your claims adjusters, let them start filing to get reimbursed for the damages. we have mobile units on the ground to this end as well. so we still have a limited services on the subway. i'll be heading out to long island to see the damage that occurred out there shortly. but the metro north, lirr are not fully functioning at this time. i want people to stay engaged,

following the information and to make sure that they stay safe. i want to conclude by saying, once again, new yorkers show what they're made out of. the collaboration that was going on, the constant communication between our teams is something that perhaps you don't see in the public, but it's real. it makes a difference. and it helps save lives. and literally i want to thank our partners at the state level as well, state police and rescue teams had to rescue over 100 people in westchester, rock land county alone. so this is the scenario as we speak today. i'll be giving continuing reports. i want to assess where we are today. my next question is, where are we going next? how do we prevent this from happening? how do we get money and resources to the places we can build up the resiliency in streets? before we worried about the coastal areas, now it's about what's happening in the streets, the drainage systems that need to be enhanced and all the resiliency we can embed because

of climate change unfortunately we'll have to deal with this, with great regularity and we want to ensure new yorkers we're prepared for this and will do everything in our power to protect human life and property. thank you very much. i would like to introduce senator schumer, has been very engaged. we spoke already this morning and i want to thank him for his partnership. senator? >> okay. thank you, governor. and you struggle to get out but you can't. it's an awful, awful situation. and our hearts go out to them. i, too, want to thank all of our new yorkers at the city and the state level as well as the other localities who always go all out

one thing we've learned is how strong new yorkers are and how much our public servants want to go all out and risk their lives to preserve other people's lives and we thank them. i want to make two points here. number one, we'll do everything we can to get all the federal aid that's needed. we did this after sandy and all the other storms, when we worked together on these storms upstate. i spoke to fema administrator deann griswald. before she was fema administrator she was the city's oem commissioner. so she knows new york well. we will fight and make this -- make new york declared a

disaster area, spoken to the white house as well. and that will mean money. money for homeowners and individuals, money for small businesses that may have been lost, and money to our city, state and other local governments for the amount of money that they've had to lay out, to deal with this crisis. and i will make sure, as i have in the past, that no stone is left unturned and all of the federal -- in the federal government we know when a disaster hits one area, the whole country comes together and helps. and that is what we're going to ask here pore new york, just as we are helping in california with the fires and out west with the fires, et cetera. and that relates to my second and final point. global warming is upon us. when you get two record rainfalls in a week it's not a coincidence. when you get all the changes we've seen in weather, that's not a coincidence. global warming is upon us. it's going to get worse and worse and worse, unless we do

something about it. it's important to pass the two bills, infrastructure bill and budget reconciliation bill. the second deals with climate change and will reduce the amount of carbon we've put in the atmosphere by 50% by 2030. the first bill deals with infrastructure and built into that infrastructure is something that i started fostering with sandy, that we don't just build infrastructure, but we build resilient infrastructure, so when these floods or fires, or anything else occurs, they're much more resistant. and you saw some results of that from the sandy money, but we need much more of it. and these bills do that. woe is us if we don't recognize these changes are due to climate change. woe is us if we don't do something about it quickly, both

in building resilient infrastructure and going to clean power, whether it's in homes, in electricity, in transportation to stop the global warming or at least reduce its awful effects on this country. i want to thank the governor for being here right on the spot. i want to thank the mayor. he's always available. our burrough president, great congressman who i work with on these issues, greg meeks, miller and everyone who is here. it's my honor to call on mayor deblasio. >> thank you, senator. senator schumer is right. we are in a whole new world now. let's be blunt about it. we saw a horrifying storm last night, unlike anything we've seen before. this is a reality we have to face. unfortunately, the price paid by

some new yorkers was horrible and tragic. we have now lost nine new yorkers to this storm. nine people who were alive at this exact moment yesterday. no idea that such a horrible fate could befall them. families in mourning right now. we need to be there for them and for all the new yorkers who are dealing with the results of this horrifying storm. i want to thank senator schumer. we spoke earlier today. i know he will get us the maximum federal aid. our homeowners need it. our business owners need it. people are going through hell right now. they need help. i thank president biden and senator schumer for being willing immediately to help. governor hochul, we spoke repeatedly last night, this morning. thank you for your leadership. thank you for the way the state of new york responded. we are truly all in this together. and storms affect all of us. but what we've got to recognize

is the suddenness, the brutality of storms now. it is different. a record set two weeks ago. another record set now, rainfall like we haven't seen ever before. this is possibly get. we will have to do a lot of things differently and quickly. what is a constant is our first responders. i want to thank the men and women all of the agencies out that rescued hundreds and hundreds of new yorkers. so many lives were saved because of the fast kour ray those response of first responders.

this happened literally hundreds of times, god bless the first responders that are there. a lot of work right now to help new yorkers recover. but we also have a lot of work to change the very approach. i agree with the goran, it's time for a very different approach because we're getting a signal here. it's not going to be easy. we're going to need all of that help possible from the federal government, but in our time we have to make this change. we have gotten the message that we have to make a change to protect the lives of the people of this city, thank you. now i want to call on someone that makes sure that we get help in this city, congress member gregory meeks. >> first, let me begin my condolences to the family members, the friends, the relatives, the neighbors on this

block that have to be devastated. one day, a beautiful day, and we know that in queens neighborhoods are families. block associations. working together, neighbors pro protecting neighbors homes. my heart reaches out to each and everyone on this block and in this family. a mother, a son, gone from us because of climate change and these record storms. storms that were once in 500 years i'm told. now that we have to look at them to be storms that could be more intense as indicated. i want to thank -- i spoke to

speaker pelosi to make sure we work with senator schumer so there is no separation. the united states congress to the city of new york. knowing that we need infrastructure it is absolutely crucial and important that we pass reconciliation. one of the reasons it is important for flooding in southeastern queens, i have a question now, for some close to four million dollars just for blocks like these. there are pictures now at 10:00

p.m. last night, it was devastating. the emergency services, the heros and the sheros that the governor indicated. when i look at the bus drivers and the sub way systems, getting people out into safety, and rescuing people stuck in their cars, they're really heros putting themselves at risk for the they had been working here for a long period of time in this very block trying to make a difference for the people of this government, for all that she does. so all right, now i want to bring up the current borough

president who is working very hard to make sure this borough received all of the infrastructure dollars and the attention it rightfully needs. >> we're going to keep this video up with what is happening, but we want to draw your attention to what is happening on the right side of the screen. that is a live picture nap is coming to us. someone on the roof of the building. the water is pretty high down below. on the left side of that video box, and they're saying they're okay, and they are speaking about what is specific on the ground here, but we want to let owe know what you're seeing here as this is unfolding.

>> we need washington dc to move with a level of urgency. we have been here before in hurricane sandy. there is many parts of this borough that have flooded and it will only get worse. if we do not address climate change we will continue to lose lives across not just this borough and this country. we don't have to look further than louisiana to see what happened there. please document all of your losses, i've spoken to homeowners here, it is with your insurance companies as well. i know a lot of residents

struggle with flood insurance but these are things to do. i'm asking companies to allow their workers to work remote today and if you're not able to, stay off the roads as much as possible. we want you to know that we're here, we asked the governor today for assistance to our small businesses and our homeowners as well. she gave her stamp of approval and all of those things. we're not out of the woods. these lives could have been saved if we had the investment that we sorely needed a long time ago.

someone that worked to secure $2 billion for south queens, thank you. >> good morning. first of all my condolences to the family and i want to thank the governor, the mayor, and those that have come together. they have come together to address this issue and they have done so very well, articulated the issues of climate change and infrastructure or the lack there of. but all politics are local. and i think the congressman mentioned that we spent the better part of ten years on this street here. and probably had about six to 12 inches of watter in my basement

this morning, but i always say that you feel like the man with no shoes until you come over here on 183rd and then you see the man with no feet, right? where i bet you this is my mother, every time you goat a mic. >> mom, your son's okay, he's doing a press conference. he is looking good. it's my mother, okay, so yeah, we felt like until you see the person with no feet. where folks here have a foot of water on the first floor and not in the basement. and the cruel irony is as borough president richards spent here in southeast queens, the

priority was 183rd street. when that schedule came out we said don't do springfield, do 183rd street first, and guess what? they did, and then they did it again because it wasn't done right the first time. and we're still here today. and so there has to be oversight, and we have to figure out what we're not doing right. that we have to make sure that my staff and i, we have the hotspots as the borough president knows. you call over here and certain areas to see if it is working. this was different, and the loss of lives is unacceptable. we absolutely have to make sure that we're taking care of families.