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NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - Heavy rain took out a temporary wall at the Court Square-23rd Street Subway Station, knocking a man to the ground and nearly dragging him onto the train tracks.
The shocking video posted to social media by 'Subway Creatures' shows the man get knocked to the platform.
The man was reportedly very disoriented when he was helped to his feet by another man. The incident occurred Wednesday at about 8:30 p.m. while the city was being hit by a huge storm.
The MTA issued the following statement:
"This was an absolutely unacceptable and avoidable incident caused by a contractor working on a residential development project that could have put lives at risk. We have already begun taking steps to make sure the developer and contractor are held accountable and this doesn't happen again.
We have no reported injuries and no service impact from this incident as our tracked drainage system was able to remove all of this unexpected water, but we regret that our customers were inconvenienced and put at risk by this contractor's shocking lapse in best safety practices.
Our initial investigation finds that severe and dangerous flooding was caused at the Court Square subway station last night when a private developer building a residential tower adjacent to the subway station – as well as a new entrance and elevator for the station – allowed their construction site to become inundated with water after their contractor relocated utilities and did not have the proper pumping system in place to act as a temporary drainage system. Their worksite was inundated with rainwater during severe thunderstorms, causing water to build up at their worksite and breach plywood separating their worksite from the station.
Transit personnel responded to the station immediately last night after a customer report of water in the station; the platform water condition had already cleared but that section of the platform was blocked off temporarily out of an abundance of caution.
Transit officials met with the contractor and secured numerous measures to address this immediately: the contractor agreed to restore proper pumping to the worksite, agreed to build additional protections around its worksite including a dam and a new wall and waterproofing, and agreed to have more personnel on site during major storm events.
NYC Transit will also have additional personnel on site to monitor this project during storm events."