Death toll tops 25 after Ida remnants slam stunned Northeast

NEW YORK (AP) — A stunned U.S. East Coast faced a rising death toll, surging rivers, tornado damage and continuing calls for rescue Thursday after the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain, drowning more than two dozen people in their homes and cars.

In a region that had been warned about potentially deadly flash flooding but hadn't braced for such a blow from the no-longer-hurricane, the storm killed at least 26 people from Maryland to New York on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

At least 12 people died in New York City, police said, one of them in a car and 11 in flooded basement apartments that often serve as relatively affordable homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets. Officials said at least eight died in New Jersey and three in Pennsylvania's suburban Montgomery County; one was killed by a falling tree, one drowned in a car and another in a home.

In New York City, Sophy Liu roused her son from bed, put on a life jacket on him and squeezed him into an inflatable swimming ring as their first-floor apartment flooded in Queens.

Unable to open the door against the force of the water, she called friends for help. The water was nearly five feet (1.5 meters) high when they came to her rescue, she said.

“I was obviously scared, but I had to be strong for my son. I had to calm him down,” she recalled Thursday as medical examiners removed three bodies from a home down the street.

In another part of Queens, water rapidly filled Deborah Torres' first-floor apartment to her knees as her landlord frantically urged her neighbors below — who included a baby — to get out, she said. But the water rushed in so strongly that she surmised they weren't able to open the door. The three residents died.

“I have no words," she...