In Plainfield, New Jersey, on Monday evening, catastrophic flooding caused streets to become inundated, resulting in the deaths of two persons.
At the height of the storm, the two women were in their vehicle on the road when it was washed into the Cedar Brook because of the strength of the storm.
The Cedar Brook was constructed to collect all of the floodwater that the city experiences, and it is the location where the water accumulates and drains.
Those who witnessed the incident claim that the water hurled the vehicle to the side of the road and then threw them in a different direction.
According to a witness, he was able to hear one of the women scream, “I don’t want to let myself die.”
In an interview with Eyewitness News, one individual stated that a good Samaritan shattered the glass of the victims’ vehicle, but they were unable to remove them out of the vehicle before they were dragged into the brook.
Because the storm was still raging on Monday night, firefighters were unable to reach the victims of the devastating storm. According to the presumption, the women were unable to escape their vehicle and consequently perished.
The human tendency to believe that one is capable of beating water is a common one. The Governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, made the following statement: “I know I can’t beat a tornado, and I shouldn’t touch a downed power line, but my vehicle can make it through water, or I can stay in my house, and people pay with their lives over it.”
The identities of the two people who were killed were not immediately made public on Tuesday.
The storm had left Plainfield with noticeable damage, including roadways that crumbled, portions of sidewalks that were gone, and debris from floodwater that was entangled in fences that were chest high.
“We’re not unique, but we’re in one of these kinds of high humidity, high temperature, and high storm intensity patterns right now,” Murphy said to reporters after seeing the damage caused by the storm in Berkeley Heights. “Everybody needs to stay alert.”
According to the mayor of Plainfield, the city is going to take a very long time to recover.
Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp stated that the city is currently dealing with basements that have been flooded to the point that they reach the ceiling. “We are dealing with individuals who have the entire contents of their basements stolen from them. Currently, we are working with infrastructural issues that require our attention.
Plainfield has been hit by severe weather for the second time in the past 11 days, and this time it has claimed lives. The weather on July 3 caused a tree to fall into a car, which resulted in the deaths of two people who were there.
Following Hurricane Ida in 2021, people of North Plainfield did not believe that a storm of this scale would occur again so soon after the hurricane.
Within a span of four years, twice. It’s like, all right, I’m over it,” Robert Aldred, a homeowner, said about the situation.
While Aldred was at work on Monday night, his wife Amanda was at home with their children. They were watching three cargo containers fly by as they passed by.
What was happening was that the water was rising, but these were enormous projectiles that came dangerously close to hitting their house.
“And so that’s when it was like, OK, I’ve got about 15 minutes and then I have to call evac,” Amanda Aldred explained to reporters. “But then I guess the water was so powerful that it moved the container down the road.”
Both of the containers ended up at a different yard. They were being used as storage units for the North Plainfield Middle School, which is located up the road, according to neighbors who spoke with Eyewitness News. The goods that were being stored there included musical and sports equipment that was utilized by the school’s band and teams.
