(The following story by Zachary R. Dowdy appeared on the Newsday website on June 27.)
NEW YORK — Severe storms brought Long Island Rail Road trains to a halt Wednesday night, sending passengers scrambling for alternative routes as officials worked to remove debris and mend signals to get the lines running again.
The train delays, which began to abate by late Wednesday night, came as potent thunderstorms swamped roads and tore down tree branches in parts of the metro area.
Sudden downpours pooled into flash floods as much as 3 feet deep in some areas, stranding cars and pouring into basements, said Jeffrey Tongue, a meteorologist with the weather service.
State troopers said several trucks and cars were stranded in massive pools of water on the Southern State Parkway but that tow trucks responded quickly and cleared the vehicles out by late evening.
A flash flood warning was in effect for central Queens until 3:15 a.m. today, and until 1:30 a.m. in the rest of New York City, as heat and humidity spawned heavy rains that were expected to continue until after midnight. Three to 5 inches of rain had fallen in the New York metro area by 10 p.m., and another inch was expected, the National Weather Service said.
The storms also caused significant delays at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports.
LIRR service was suspended into and out of Jamaica station after weather knocked out signals about 7:30 p.m., said LIRR spokeswoman Susan McGowan. Trains started moving again at about 10 p.m., said McGowan, but the Far Rockaway branch was still immobile well past 11 p.m. because of several downed trees on the tracks.
She said about 98 percent of the system was operating after 11 p.m., though there were still some delays.
Penn Station was closed for a time during the evening as no trains were able to leave the terminal, she said. Commuters sat on the floor or milled about, straining to hear the announcements, somewhat confused as to whether they should leave the station to take subways or wait for the LIRR trains to resume.
One commuter, who did not want to be identified, told Newsday that the Port Washington train was working, providing a dilemma for stranded commuters who could choose to take New York City Transit’s subways or buses or stay put in the humid and hot station until the problems were corrected.”They make announcements and they say there are signal problems and service interruptions — but you don’t get the sense of what the right thing to do is,” said the commuter, who did not want to be identified.
“We are communicating with customers on all of our trains asking customers to remain patient until we can return trains to stations,” McGowan said.
Terry Erb, 48, of Bay Shore, waited for word from 8 p.m. until he got onto a Babylon train at about 10:30 p.m., well after he had finished his plain slice of pizza and beer.
“There’s announcements every now and then,” said Erb, an information technician who had planned on taking his 3-year-old daughter to swimming lessons. “That’s all they can do. We’re sort of used to this. That’s the unfortunate thing. I work for a global company. I have colleagues from Switzerland and they are very amused at the service we have here.”
McGowan said NYC Transit was honoring LIRR tickets to get passengers to eastbound destinations via subway at Jamaica, Penn Station and Flatbush Avenue, and that officials would work through the night to get buses to transport passengers.
(Freelance writer T.W. Farnam contributed to this story, which was supplemented with wire service reports.)