YONKERS — A Yonkers man who was napping before his midnight construction shift at New York University was jolted out of sleep in his basement apartment Wednesday night about 8:30 p.m.
“The water started coming in from the bathroom toilet and the drain,” Wilson Disla told PIX11 News. “It literally went from my feet to my chest in 30 minutes,” he added. “This was pool level.”
Disla said when he tried to open the door to a basement pump, “the water started pouring in.” He said he and his sister ran outside and “my car was almost submerged.”
“We just started throwing stuff in the car,” Disla recalled.
Disla missed his midnight shift and sent PIX11 News cell phone footage to illustrate “there’s a fridge floating in the living room — and a sofa, too.”
“I’ll never rent a basement apartment again,” Disla said, noting he had lived in the Yonkers space for five years.
He told PIX11 that not everyone on his block got flooded out, but noted, “My house, where I live, the street drainage is right in front of us. It was clogged.”
Disla’s boss told the operating engineer he could come in to work Thursday morning.
And that’s where Disla remained Thursday evening, telling PIX11 he would be on the clock until midnight.
