PORT JERVIS- On Thursday evening, strong winds, rain, and hailstones hit the Tri-State region and continued throughout the night. The storm brought a constant downpour into Friday morning. Shortly after midnight, calls began coming in for emergency assistance with flooding. Calls have continued into Friday evening.
One of the earliest calls came at about 1:00 a.m. on Friday morning. An emergency call was placed for motorists trapped in cars in Port Jervis’ flooded railroad underpass. Before emergency fire and ambulance crews could arrive on scene, two Port Jervis police officers who were on duty at that time took it upon themselves to push the vehicles up a slight incline and out of the underpass. Motorists were safely evacuated, and there were no injuries reported in this incident.
A power outage has also affected most of the Port Jervis area since late Thursday evening. The restore time as of 6:45 p.m. Friday was listed on Orange and Rockland Utilities’ website as 9:00 p.m. for all areas in Port Jervis. This time had fluctuated throughout Friday as the utility company first tried to locate the issue, reported a transmission line failure, and then encountered additional problems.
A past chief of the department noted that calls seemed to come in faster once people came home from work. He noted that people would likely not think to go down to their basement or notice water was there until they went to use their hot water and realized their heater was out.
Port Jervis Fire Department had pumped dozens of basements in the city as of early evening Friday. Some of those flooded reported three or four feet of water, and had concerns that the water might extend to their furnace or electrical boxes. Fire department crews have been out addressing such concerns all day, continually pumping even as water continued to come in.
One firefighter checking the pumping status as one Franklin Street home was being helped, remarked that water seemed to be…
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