'The Water Didn't Stop': Wash Heights Man's Apartment Flooded

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NY — Matthew Bautista was laid up sick in his apartment near West 190th Street in Northern Manhattan on Thursday when the rain started coming.

"I was coughing my brains out in bed when all of a sudden I could hear splashing in the bathroom that was even louder than the apocalyptic thunder that was setting off all the car alarms outside my windows," Bautista told Patch.

A severe thunderstorm hit the city Thursday afternoon, leaving NYC's transportation arteries inundated with water and Upper Manhattan streets overflowing.

Dozens of photos and videos posted to social media showed many uptown train stations, sidewalks, and roadways flooding.

Flooding on #Dyckman #rainstorm #elalto pic.twitter.com/oqcQpGIMqb
— Inwood and Washington Heights (@ElAltoManhattan) July 8, 2021

Bautista lives with his husband in a basement apartment of a building on a hill that overlooks West 190th Street.

The couple has experienced slight gurgling in the toilet during a rainstorm before — and even saw water come up in the tub a week earlier during heavy rain — but the experiences did not prepare them for Thursday.

"The water didn't stop. And it came through the front door too — we've never experienced this," Bautista said. "As soon as I put towels down I had to run and collect our two cats and put them in a carrier and our two dogs, get them on leashes, and place all four animals in an area of the apartment that water wasn't getting to."

Bautista said the water came under their front door, filled up the bathtub, and overflowed the toilet.

He used every towel in the apartment, 11 rolls of paper towels, and four old New York Times to try to absorb as much water as he could.

In the time that Bautista was fighting through his sickness to battle the water invading their Upper Manhattan apartment, his husband had his own difficult journey of getting back home from Lower Manhattan.

Bautista's husband jumped in a cab from Bryant Park at 3:30 p.m., but was only able to get to Columbus Circle before the water put the West Side Highway on a complete standstill. He then took the train from 59th Street, however, had to get out at 168th Street when the A train stopped because of flooding in the stations.

He ended up walking the final 22 blocks home in the rain.

In terms of frustrations around the flooding situation, Bautista pointed to the "scripted response" from 311.

"311 — the response is, the pipes are a hundred years old and this will always happen during flood rains, the best thing to do is start a petition and present to your council member — seriously, that's the scripted response: START A PETITION," Bautista told Patch.

"Weather isn’t a surprise – my building management needs to be prepared and they weren’t. If this is how flooding rains play out, why aren’t drains cleared as a precaution? Why aren’t there sandbags or other deterrents ready to go? Why doesn’t the building own a wet vac?"

In one bit of positive news, the city appeared to avoid similar flooding as of Friday morning, but showers and thunderstorms are still in the forecast.

Patch reporter Matt Troutman contributed to this report.

Read More: Washington Heights, Inwood Flooded After Rainstorm: See It