in attempts to tackle the heavy smog and developing the region. all schools and colleges which have already been closed for more than a week remain shut until further more than a week remain shut untilfurther notice. more than a week remain shut until further notice. those are the headlines. now on bbc news, it is time for hurri, and the story of what happened when hurricane ida hit new york city. news archive: a word of more warnings that have just been issued. flash flood emergency for all five boroughs of new york city. what was coming in from my drain in the back, from my drain in the side of the house, water was gushing through that thing and made the water rise all the way up to about 9 feet. it is manhattan, the bronx, westchester, until 9:30, they're telling you, "take shelter right now." i'm picking everything up, unplugging everything because we did not want to be electrocuted. we activated our flash flood i plan and we had our agencies begin to prepare - for a flooding event. obviously, we weren't preparing for what we ended up getting. 2021, and here i am having exposure to sewage water in my own home. i screamed out to him and i said, "justin, iam drowning, i'm gonna drown." sirens wail very good morning, it is wednesday, september 1. my name is yvette meier and i live in woodside, queens, new york. my parents live down the block and i've grown up here. i promised to stay here to take care of them. everyone knows each other and we all kind of help each other. my name is aladini, i am 25, i am a refugee from somalia. and i am a full—time candidate running for state senator here in harlem, in district 30. harlem is a majority black and brown community. i leave on a very historic street, 137th, between 7th and 8th. my name is danette and i live in woodside, queens. we have multiracial community and it's very friendly. our community, it's a normal day, whether it's raining or dry outside. we're still looking at a pretty potent storm system with a lot of rain, and it's all starting to move into the tri—state area. my name is hakeem. i am the owner of the yafa cafe in brooklyn, new york. during covid, we saw a revenue loss of about 75%, and so it was always really difficult to operate and let go of a bunch of our stuff. now that things were finally back kind of to normal, with vaccinations, we felt that we were ready to kind of start bringing back our old business model. the winds kicking in and also we're going to end up getting bigger rain in our area, because as it moves on a diagonal, it starts tapping into that ocean influence. the possibility that those storms do turn severe is something we've got to consider. we had the flash flood warnings. in new york they're pretty consistent, we get them all the time, but it's never been anything to worry about. a lot of us are not taking this one real seriously because maybe itjust doesn't have, like, the big name — the tropical storm, the hurricane — i'm telling you, this one, i'm really worried about this one, all right, so sit tight. the new york city emergency management's role is to - co—ordinate all emergency- responses within new york city but our larger role - is about preparedness, of trying to prepare - citizens and businesses for emergencies. back to our forecast, we are bracing for downpours tonight. the rain's going to get here, 0k. in fact, rain arrives during the overnight hours. we activated our flash flood i plan and we had our agencies begin to prepare - for a flooding event. obviously, we weren't i preparing for, you know, what we ended up getting. word of more warnings that have just been issued. the emergency alert services telling us, according to the national weather service, it is manhattan, the bronx, westchester, until 9:30, they're telling you, take shelter right now. this has got twist in the atmosphere. siren wails i noticed that water was also coming into the basement, but i tried to use a sump pump to pump the water out. i was upstairs, making dinner and i heard a gush of water. i'm picking everything up, unplugging everything because we did not want to be electrocuted and i was trying to salvage what i could. we started to hear gurgling in the pipes and that is when the backflow started from the sewage. the water wasjust gushing through the door and ijust didn't know what to do. i am at 4810th—65th street. this is my house - and it's getting flooded. water was coming in - from my drain in the back, from my drain outside, i in the side of the house, even the sewer— that was in the back alley, water was gushingl through that thing, and made the water rise - all the way up to about 9 feet. for the first time in recorded history, the national weather service issuing a flash flood emergency for all five boroughs of new york city. historic flooding as ida travelled across the north—east. the western hemisphere�*s busiest subway system shutdown. trains pulling in to find platforms submerged. people wading through waist—high water. we were expecting 3 to 6 inches of rain over multiple hours. - all right, they're just telling me now, this is coming in with rainfall that's coming down — are you ready for this one? 3 inches per hour. the water in the atlantic ocean and the gulf of mexico is warmer than it used to be, it's a lot warmer, 3 or 4 degrees fahrenheit warmer, and what this does is it brings more moisture to the storms. each degrees celsius of warm—up water —— each degrees celsius of warmer water adds 7% more precipitation. eventually, that moisture is going to be unleashed in the form of rain, increasingly in these huge events where you have three, four, five, six inches of rain in an hour. there's two areas where there are drainage in the front and back of the house. when we open them up so that water can drain out, those were starting to come up and they were coming up through the toilet, it was coming up through everywhere, and it happened within a half an hour. a lot of the messaging that comes out - ofthe— national weather service, which is the cellphone alerts, i the wireless emergency alerts, is controlled by fema and the — national weather service. so we also grabbed those, we'd notify nyc, _ and we can distribute those in multiple languages. - i have heard that - there was some confusion. even my own family, you know. _ we were flooding while this was happening. i we got a tornado warning and a flood warning - at the same time. if you are in manhattan, if you're in the bronx, if you're in southern westchester county, look, until 9:30 — this is not a long time — but you have go to go to the basement, if you have one, you go to an interior room, if you need to, something without windows. the sewer system in new york city l is built to accept - a certain amount of water. once you exceed that, - it does have to go somewhere, and, unfortunately, it did go into people's basements, i into lower levels of their- home, into the subway system. my son, justin, he's blind and he had no idea how high the water had risen. i screamed out to him and i said, "justin, i'm drowning, i'm gonna drown." i was going under. basically the water was already rising and i needed to get to the window as soon as possible because i knew that i wouldn't have a way to breathe. you know, ithought that the water would make me lighter, and it didn't, it made me heavier. every time i tried to climb out the window, i absolutely could not get out. the window is about 7 feet high up, or 6.5 maybe, and i am 5'5". and every time i touched the ground, i was underwater, and then i would have to push myself back up, over the water, and as much as i tried, i could not escape. basically, i was fighting for my life. my son is my hero. i heard something, i wasn't necessarily sure what exactly. and i basically went downstairs and i was taken aback by the amount of water. he's blind from cancer of the eyes and i had to train my son exactly how to manage walking around. i tried calling the cops, but that was pointless 'cause everyone was calling the cops. he had to come down about five or six steps, then he had to walk through everything that was floating around — the garbage cans, the snow blower. i mean, the water was pretty high. it was like there were rapids coming out of the building. it was like there was a river coming out of the house. so this is the window that my son pulled me out of. this is where i escaped from the flood. the water was about almost to the top of the window so all of this was covered in water. when he was pulling me out, i could not breathe. i was holding my breath because i was still under the water. i suppose if i wasn't here, who knows what would have happened. it's highly likely she would've been dead. the water came up to about this step, and the water travelled to about — right here, right below the switches. we were left with, like, a black sediment on the walls and on the floor. there was about $30,000 worth of damage between things we lost and reconstruction, yeah. i think it was saturday morning, we woke up with the intention of trying to salvage all of the photos from our photo albums. my husband thought of stringing them across our kitchen. i was the one in charge of taking them out of the photo albums and he was stringing them up and clipping them, just to save them all. my children's, ourfamily albums — there were so many, and all the water from those photographs was dripping onto our table. we didn't think too much of it. and then the symptoms started at about 11:30. by sunday night, i was in pretty bad shape. i felt really weak. and that evening, i started having diarrhoea every 15 minutes. i told my husband, "i think i'm not in a good place. "i think i should go to the hospital." the nurse practitioner called and said i had norovirus and e. coli toxicity and that i was basically poisoned from the sewage water. 2021, and here i am having exposure to sewage water in my own home, which i thought was safe. my next—door neighbour said her son had experienced similar symptoms and was sick for about three days. my husband talked to another neighbour that lives two houses away, and she's 77, and she was having similar symptoms. 0ur neighbour across the way said he felt the same way. by saturday, no—one had come for sanitation. just give me a moment... that was the most difficult — is losing a lot of photos that i had to end up throwing out. and i had saved some of the children's toys, some of their books. and, i guess, those were the most difficult things that we had to get rid of. 13 people — that numberjust updated — have died in new york city. multiple deaths reported - as the remnants of ida merged with a front to produce chaos. emergency officials have found more people who have died from the storm. a short time ago, we're told that three people were found dead in the flooded basement apartment. of those 13 deaths here in the city, at least 11 of them died — 11 of those people died in flooded basement apartments, most of them here in queens. the youngest victim was just two years old. these apartments wound up being death traps because they weren't regulated, because they didn't provide sufficient means of egress, sufficient means for people to escape in an emergency. affordable housing is the big issue in new york city. it's a desperately needed part of the city environment here. for undocumented or immigrant population, there is a problem with earning enough income because they often find jobs that aren't at an hourly rate that would provide for — enough money for housing. consequently, they have to double—up or triple—up in housing accommodations. when climate disasters hit, they make an already strained society that much harder. poor people, people of colour in new york city, generally don't have the kind of wealth and social power to easily bounce back from a climate disaster. ida was a different type of storm. it didn't push up sea levels as much. rather, it dumped down an incredible amount of rain very rapidly, and that also flooded the subways, it flooded people's basements. i feel an incredible responsibility to get our decision—makers, corporations and government to slash pollution because i know that the place i grew up in will not survive. my office is responsible for preparing the city for the impacts of climate change. the inequities of these climate impacts came to light in such a significant way from this particular storm because it was, in most cases, low—income immigrants who were trapped in their basement apartments during the storm and were the ones who lost their lives. it also underscored, for me, how our affordable housing crisis is coming into direct tension with our work on climate resiliency. one of the challenges that we face is that most of the federal dollars that can be invested into resiliency measures are triggered after an extreme event. the tax dollars just don't go there. they don't go where they need to go, to make sure that low—income and middle—class homeowners like ourselves are safe. the infrastructure of new york city needs to be modernised and i think ida underscored that — in particular, our sewer system was built for the conditions that we experienced 100 years ago. there is no amount of sewer system upgrades or sea walls or resiliency improvements that will protect the city from the amount of climate change that would happen if pollution is not checked and reduced rapidly and radically. i went out to one of the blocks that was most affected by ida right after the storm, and it was extremely sad. it was tragic. a family had drowned in a basement apartment on a street that had flooded over and over and over again, without the city doing anything to improve the infrastructure over the last two decades. i certainly hope that in the future, we will be able to prevent deaths in basement units through better notification and ensuring that basement units are safe and resilient to the impacts of extreme precipitation. i think those deaths would have been preventable had we had better forecasting, better notification, and had... i don't want to say this. i think i'm going to leave my answer where it was, about — what i said about the future. we are responsible for the safety of everybody in the city. all new yorkers, it is our responsibility, so we felt terrible. the storm changed so quickly on us and the amount of rain that we received was much more significant in a short period of time than we ever imagined. all cities are unprepared for the climate eventualities. now we have to act to protect our citizens, and that means more funding for cities and other areas around — notjust around the united states, but around the world. when i saw everything submerged in water, i was heartbroken. ifelt like i was homeless again, that i had to start over again. it was wild to see there was water coming from everywhere. it felt pretty apocalyptic. downstairs, we got about five feet. and then upstairs, our neighbour's backyard flooded, which subsequently caused our indoor dining space to flood. we had about 3.5 feet of water, almost four feet. i guess the water receded about 3am. and it was a clean—up — just pulling everything out of the house. the floor was black, everything was tipped over. some stuff had already started to develop mould. there was oil everywhere, just sludge. i lost everything. right now, i'm sleeping on my friend's sofa, i have no bed to sleep on. it has been a month of me sleeping on a couch. we were on our own — this whole communityj was underwater andi we were on our own. it was just very, very. scary and unfortunate. there is destruction everywhere. - the walls are - completely destroyed. the floor is damaged. i lost everything. we didn't have flood insurance and they only offered to cover damages from the oil kind of tipping over, it only came out to about $1500, which is about nothing. so we definitely could have reopened. we put up a video of the flooding and just told everyone that we would be closed and that is when the messages started to pour in, where people were like, "let us help you". "start a gofundme. "let us donate. "let us help." it was like, the out pour of love, it was incredible. so yeah, we started a gofundme, and we had our goal set out at $15,000 but within six hours, we reached $20,000. it was humbling — humbling to say the least. climate change science is proven and indisputable. 0ur planet is warming because of greenhouse gas emissions that are man—made, and it's going to get much warmer and much more dangerous as extreme weather events affect average people in their daily lives. we have got to prepare for this. it is going to happen. the truth of the matter is that everyone — from politicians to climate advocates and even scientists — have underestimated how much climate change is going to affect our daily lives. i think climate change is the greatest challenge of our time. as a new yorker, as an american, i feel that we are not giving it the attention, the urgency that it needs. we need to be more proactive about the things we do and put in place for the future. i'mjust angry. i am tired of watching - the world burn when we can do so much to protect it. wednesday morning will be a little bit colder compared to the last couple of mornings. and, indeed, by day, it'll feel a touch fresher, too. but overall, the next 2—3 days will remain above the average for the time of year. i want to show you the jet stream — and there is a dip in thejet stream at the moment across the uk, and you can see the blue colours — so that's the slightly colder atmosphere that's spread across the country into the early hours of wednesday. and, with the clearer skies, that means that, in many towns and cities, temperatures will be around five celsius or so, especially out towards the east and in central parts of the uk. even colder than that in aberdeen, barely above freezing. but that means a lot of bright and crisp weather in the morning, especially across central, eastern, and southern areas of the uk. not necessarily in western scotland and northern ireland, always a bit more cloud here and a chance of catching a shower. and you can see those temperatures actually not far off the average, just a fraction above. but look what happens on thursday — another change in the jet stream. now this time, the jet stream's way to the north of us, it's bulging northwards of the uk and allowing for a stream of really mild air to sweep in from the azores. so, mild south—westerlies across the uk, cloudy and damp in western and northern scotland — but where the skies clear, where the sun pops out for any lengthy period of time, temperatures will reach around 15—16, maybe even 17 celsius to the east of the highlands because of something called the foehn effect — you'll have to look that up, not enough time to explain it. but look where we are, nine celsius is the average this time of november — we are talking about 17 celsius, eight degrees above the average for the time of year. and the same pattern continues in a friday, as well — east of the highlands, possibly 17, we could get 16 also east of the pennines, and widely around 14—15 celsius. and then, a reversal in the wind direction — you can see this time, rather than from the south—west, it's coming in straight from the north. now this looks pretty cold, doesn't it? well, it won't be that cold — it will be relatively speaking, but actually, we'll be going down from 15 to around nine celsius, which, of course, is about the average for the time of year, give or take. welcome to bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories: clashes on the border between poland and belarus as the polish authorities use water cannon and tear gas to push back migrants. chaos has broken out. the government has accused belarus of trying to push them —— the polish forces have responded with water, but also with gas. it is difficult to breathe. government look at reducing restrictions for the unvaccinated as the continent once again become the epicentre of the pandemic. former england cricketer azeem rafiq gives shocking details of the racism he faced, saying he was constantly subjected to offensive language at yorkshire cricket club.