NYC Flooding: Gov. Hochul Declares State of Emergency

Torrential summer storms battered the Big Apple on Thursday, trapping a LIRR train filled with passengers and submerging cars on a Queens highway in a travel nightmare that hampered the evening rush.

Floodwater soaked the iconic Grand Central Station’s platform, cascaded in dramatic waterfalls inside Brooklyn’s Jay Street-MetroTech and burst from the walls in the Seventh Avenue station in Park Slope, wild video showed.

A LIRR train got stuck on the tracks for several hours near Bayside station in Queens, forcing firefighters to use ladders to help travel-weary commuters evacuate, according to separate footage.

“I was scared at first. About like 15 minutes after we stopped on the tracks, all the lights went off. That’s when I got a little scared and went ‘oh boy, something’s going on’,” recalled Jessica Grant, a Stony Brook resident who was heading home after a trip to Lake George.

Grant was sitting in the second car and was able to trek to the front of the train and see the track covered by water, she said.

Another passenger added that the crew kept promising a “rescue engine” that never came.

A third passenger, who said she experienced claustrophobia and had double-vision, started to panic once the cars started to heat up.

“It’s still scary. I don’t have depth perception and I have double vision. It’s scary, and it was getting hot,” she said.

To add insult to wet injury, a power outage at a Manhattan subway station caused delays on multiple trains as commuters desperately tried to flee home amid the storm.

The roadways above ground weren’t spared either and as the skies opened up with a vengeance in the late afternoon, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams issued emergency declarations, urging New Yorkers to stay home to avoid the flooded streets and inundated subway stations.

The Clearview Expressway in Queens was left underwater, trapping a semi-truck and several cars, authorities said.

Wild video showed two vehicles almost completely submerged, an SUV stranded under the overpass with its trunk open, and the 18-wheeler with water up to its cab doors.

The footage also showed a pick-up truck hauling a small vehicle attempting to fjord the murky waters that appeared to be over three feet deep in certain spots.

FDNY and the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit crews raced to the flooding near Northern Boulevard after reports of occupants trapped inside submerged vehicles, authorities said.

Those inside the stalled cars made it out safely, FDNY officials said — though it wasn’t immediately clear if they were rescued or escaped under their own power.

The Clearview was subsequently closed in both directions at Northern Boulevard, police said.

One MTA bus in Brooklyn inexplicably had stormwater flood its center isle, leaving commuters confounded and lifting their feet to avoid them getting soaked.

“They need traffic agents over here,” the person recording the growing puddle on the bus said. “It is flooded.”

Flooding also prompted closures of the Long Island Expressway, the Cross Island Parkway and the Staten Island Expressway, officials said.

New Jersey, likewise, was put under a state of emergency, with three counties in the southern Garden State put under a tornado warning, according to the National Weather Service.

Air travel turned into a nightmare as well.

All flights at the three main Big Apple-area airports were delayed for up to three hours as the torrential downpours wreaked havoc.

The city remains under a flood watch until Friday morning, with forecasters calling for up for five inches of rain.