NEW YORK (AP) — A stunned U.S. East Coast woke up Thursday to a rising death toll, surging rivers and destruction after the remnants of Hurricane Ida walloped the region with record-breaking rain, filling low-lying apartments with water and turning roads into car-swallowing canals.

In a region that had been warned about potentially deadly flash flooding but hadn't braced for such a blow from the no-longer-hurricane, the storm killed at least 22 people from Maryland to New York on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Nine people died in New York City, police said, one of them in a car and eight in flooded basement apartments that often serve as relatively affordable homes for low-income people. Officials said at least eight died in New Jersey and three in Pennsylvania's suburban Montgomery County; one was killed by a falling tree, one drowned in a car and another in a home. An on-duty state trooper in Connecticut was swept away in his cruiser and later taken to a hospital, state police and local authorities said.

In New York City, Deborah Torres said water rapidly filled her first-floor Queens apartment to her knees as her landlord frantically urged her neighbors below to get out, she said. But the water was rushing in so strongly that she surmised they weren't able to open the door.

“I have no words,” she said. “How can something like this happen? And the worst is that there's a family downstairs with a baby, and they couldn't get out.”

The remnants of Ida lost most of the storm's winds but kept its soggy core, then merged with a more traditional storm front and dropped an onslaught of rain on the Interstate 95 corridor, meteorologists said. The situation has followed hurricanes before, but experts said it was slightly exacerbated by climate change — warmer air holds more rain — and the urban setting, where expansive pavement prevents water from seeping into the ground.

The National Hurricane Center had warned since Tuesday of the potential for “significant and life-threatening flash flooding” and moderate and major river flooding in the mid-Atlantic region and New England.

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