The flood that drowned American dreams
By Zhaoyin Feng
BBC News, New York

Published15 hours ago
Like many who come to America, Leng Hongsheng was looking for freedom.

He arrived in the 1990s, having lived through the tumult of a world war, a cultural revolution and the emergence of a nation into modernity.

He was thought to have been an engineer back in China. In New York, he collected rubbish for a living, peddling around Chinatown in Queens looking for plastic bottles and electronics to recycle.

Still, he found joy, brought his family to the US and got a green card, endeavouring to make a better life.

That hope ended last month, when Mr Leng, 82, along with his wife and daughter, drowned in the turbid waters that flooded his tiny basement flat - one of 14 victims of Hurricane Ida in New York City.

A memorial for the family was held on 3 October, a month after the devastating storm struck.

Most of the casualties in New York, including a two-year-old boy and a 86-year-old woman, were Asian and Hispanic immigrants living in illegal basement dwellings.

Hurricane Ida, a powerful Category 4 storm, made landfall in Louisiana with wind speeds of 150mph (240 km/h). As it moved north, it left a trail of destruction with dozens killed and tens of thousands of homes seriously damaged. When it hit the Northeast on 1 September it would become the deadliest storm the region has faced since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The deluge started around sunset and continued until past midnight. New rainfall records had just been set days earlier by a tropical storm, only for them to be broken again when Ida arrived. Rainfall averages for the entire month of September were reached within a few hours, triggering one of the worst urban flood disasters in US history.
It was around 11pm when Wu Ming was woken up by the sound of water. He opened his eyes, only to realise that flood waters were gushing into his ground-floor flat, on the same block as the Leng family's home.

He looked out the window and saw cars floating in the streets. "I had never seen anything like that in my 10 years of living in New York," Mr Wu told the BBC in Mandarin. (Wu Ming isn't his real name, as he has asked not to be identified.)

In less than two minutes, the water rose from his knees to his chest. He tried to escape through his front door, but to his shock, it wouldn't move an inch - he could not prise it open against the powerful cascade of water. He fled through the back door and spent a sleepless night on the outside staircase.

"I thought 'just endure tonight, we'd all be okay tomorrow,'" Mr Wu, a builder in his 50s, said.

There were glimpses of hope. A resident swam through the flash flood and rescued a cat and a dog from a flooded apartment. Residents on higher floors provided shelters to others.

It crossed Mr Wu's mind at some point that he had not spotted the Leng family.

"I wanted to help them," Mr Wu said, "but the floods were so overwhelming. I couldn't even see the door to their basement."

Today, some 1.5 billion people - about one in five people worldwide - face at least moderate flood risk, according to the World Bank.

In the US, about 41 million people are exposed to flood risk, concentrated in metropolitan areas where population density is high, and building on land newly prone to flooding is common.
A narrow outdoor stairwell led down to the Lengs' underground home, a nondescript red-bricked house on a quiet street in Flushing, with multiple families sharing the three floors of a few rooms each. Theirs was one of at least three blocks of such abodes in the neighbourhood.

Days after the storm, dirt, toppled furniture and rubbish laid strewn about the Lengs' flooded flat. Intense musty odours permeated the air and lingered around the neighbourhood.

In major US cities, as in many urban centres, a housing crisis has forced low-income renters into flats like those occupied by the family and other Ida victims.

"New York just doesn't have adequate housing for everyone who lives here, including the immigrants who are often very vulnerable," says Dr Jacqueline Klopp, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University.

There are around 50,000 illegal basement dwellings in New York City, according to the city's estimate.

Despite the hazards, tenants and homeowners often avoid reporting any issues due to fear of eviction or fines.

Two other household, also Chinese immigrants, shared the 93 sq m (1,000 sq ft) basement with the Lengs - but they were out at the time of the flood, one household having gone back to China for a visit and the other, a single man, out for work as a delivery man.

Only weeks before the storm, Mr Wu had asked Mr Leng's wife Shen why they kept living in such cramped conditions. The family had applied for federal housing, she told him, but it had not yet been approved.

"They did not realise their American Dream," Mr Wu said, sighing.

Five of the six properties where New Yorkers lost their lives during the floods are unlicensed cellar-level homes, city officials said.

Seven miles from the Lengs' home, the Lama family from Nepal lived in the basement of a brick house next to two major highways in Maspeth, Queens.

Ang Gelu Lama, 50, had come to the US from Nepal 14 years ago. He and his wife Mingma Yangji Sherpa had a two-year-old son Lopsang, who had red, chubby cheeks and liked playing with monkey toys. A family friend told the Washington Post that the family lived in the cramped basement space for the cheap rent.

The last phone call Mrs Sherpa made was to a neighbour upstairs, telling her that flood waters were seeping into her flat.
A makeshift memorial now stands in front of the Lamas' home, displaying a black-and-white family photo, Lopsang's stuffed monkey and two lollipops.

On a recent day, Nuku Sherpa, Mr Lama's aunt, broke down in tears as she chanted a Buddhist prayer for the Lamas. Ms Sherpa, who lives in New Jersey, had just cleaned up her own flooded flat when she learnt of their deaths.

"We are heartbroken," she said.
In all, Hurricane Ida tore through 1,500 miles of the continental US over the course of three days, spawning tornadoes in at least seven states, record rainfalls across the country and bringing about New York City's first-ever flash flood emergency.

Days after the storm, Mr Wu returned to salvage his belongings and to drain floodwaters from his mud-covered car, hoping that the engine could restart when dried. He couldn't bear to lose it, he said, after almost everything else had been taken by the water. "Even the trousers that I am wearing now are borrowed," he said.

The Lengs' deaths have been widely remarked upon in China, with many wondering on social media why the patriarch chose such a seemingly impoverished life for his family.

Asked one user: "He loved America, but did America love him back".

What got my attention was the fact that an Engineer in China, would migrate to the US to become a garbage collector and be living in abject poverty in New York.
Nigerian planning to emigrate should take note.

Source below:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58565627