They were here and then they were gone. Remembering Ida’s 29 victims. – NJ.com

They were cat lovers and motorcycle enthusiasts. Youth sports referees and liquor store clerks. Married couples who had been together for 46 years and teenagers just charting out their lives. They were teachers and coaches and retail workers and college students. Young and old, men and women, moms and dads, sons and daughters, people with big families and those who lived alone.

They were here and then they were gone. Taken by a storm unlike anything ever unleashed in New Jersey.

As of Friday, 29 people have died after the remnants of Hurricane Ida barreled through the state nine days ago, unspooling a nightmare of torrential rain, devastating winds and calamitous flash flooding. All told, New Jersey lost more lives than any state, marking one of the deadliest disasters in modern history, even as authorities continued to search for two people who went missing in the storm.

The hellacious weather sparked tornadoes that flattened neighborhoods whole and flooding that transformed tranquil suburban streets into raging rivers. Many people were stranded in their cars or trapped in their own homes as flood water burst through windows and doors and swept them away and under.

Most of the flood damage was concentrated in a half-dozen counties in the central and northern part of the state, including Essex, Mercer, Passaic, Somerset and Union. In Hunterdon County, in the state’s sparsely populated west-central region along the Delaware River, six people died. Meanwhile, tornadoes eviscerated southern portions of the state, especially Gloucester County, where New Jersey’s largest dairy farm and whole neighborhoods were torn to bits.

“It’s just a nightmare,” said Marianne Eachus, whose family runs the severely damaged Wellacrest Farms in Mullica Hill. “It’s heart-wrenching.”

The storm swept across New Jersey with deadly speed, dumping 10 inches of rain in parts in a matter of hours. In Elizabeth, Union County, the Oakwood Plaza apartments were overrun with flood water, killing four residents and leaving 600 without a home. In Manville, Somerset County, most of the borough of 11,000 flooded when the nearby Raritan River crested to record levels, triggering an evacuation order and emergency responders to rescue residents with boats and a helicopter. In Hopewell, Mercer County, three police officers were swept away by out-of-control flood waters, forcing them to cling to trees for hours until they were rescued.

Most costly of all, the storm took more than two-dozen lives, marking the worst natural disaster in New Jersey since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when 40 died.

“It’s an absolute tragedy,” Gov. Phil Murphy said the day after the storm. “We mourn the loss of those lives. This was going to be a very significant, historic rainstorm. We’re going to clean up and we’re going to stay together.”

But the deadly legacy of Ida, and the day the storm hit, will live on forever.

Bracing for impact

The warnings became more dire by the day. As the remnants of Hurricane Ida carved a treacherous path north, over New Orleans and then through Appalachia, barreling straight for New Jersey across the final days of August, the National Weather Service grew increasingly worried about its impact on the Garden State.

The service warned of severe thunderstorms, damaging winds, downed wires and trees and flooding of creeks and streams. Murphy did not declare a state of emergency ahead of Ida, but Sept. 1, the day of the storm, he began calling mayors whose towns were predicted to be most impacted, according to his office. He also activated the state’s Office of Emergency Management prior to the storm.

The storm began knifing through the state late on the afternoon of Sept.1, immediately transforming New Jersey into a disaster zone.

Shortly before 6:30 p.m., the National Weather Service reported “a large and extremely dangerous tornado was located over Woodbury Heights, or 8 miles south of Gloucester City, moving northeast at 40 mph.”

Another tornado appeared to touch down in Burlington County, based on multiple videos from the scene. The weather service also received a report of a funnel cloud and damage in Wenonah Borough in Gloucester County at 6:27 p.m.

All told, the National Weather Service confirmed seven different tornadoes touched down in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania Wednesday night — an almost unimaginable sudden outburst of violent, destructive weather.

At Wellacrest Farms, two 80-foot corn silos were toppled, a grain bin was damaged and a cow barn was flattened. Three of the farm’s 1,400 cows were killed.

More than a dozen nearby houses on Josephine Lane and Marvin Lane in Mullica Hill also were torn to shreds. The eviscerated neighborhoods looked like a scene out of Tornado Alley, with homes buckled and splintered and personal items strewn about.

“It sounded like a freight train came through my living room,” Mike Castle, whose home was destroyed, said of the tornado.

After the storm moved north, the major threat shifted from swirling winds to torrential downpours that triggered mass flooding. Trickling creeks became thundering rivers. Suburban and city streets morphed into impassable waterways. Incessant iPhone alerts screamed in the pockets of residents, warning of the historic flooding. But the alerts still went unheeded by some. Most of New Jersey’s deaths were drownings, Murphy said, including several people whose cars were submerged.

As of around 8 p.m. on Sept. 1, there were “numerous water rescues” ongoing in northern Middlesex County, according to reports sent to the National Weather Service. In Passaic, Mayor Hector Lora confirmed one person had died in the floodwaters late Wednesday. In Newark, police and firefighters conducted 36 rescues from seven flooded locations.

And this was only in the early stages of the storm.

The chaos and destruction would rage throughout the entire night.

Grim reality

By daylight on Sept. 2, grim reality was setting in. This hadn’t just been one of the most destructive weather patterns to ever crush New Jersey; it was one of the deadliest, too.

That afternoon, Murphy sent out a somber Tweet, reporting that 23 New Jerseyans had lost their lives to the storm. The next day, Sept. 3, Murphy upped the number of deaths to 25. By Sept. 9, the tally was 29 — most of any state in the nation, including Louisiana, which absorbed a direct hit by Ida.

The victims came from all walks of life, all ages and backgrounds. Among them:

A 25-year-old from Monroe found dead outside his car near route 518.

A 58-year-old from Bloomfield electrocuted while plugging in a generator.

A 78-year-old from Raritan discovered alone in her waterlogged car.

A 55-year-old from Maplewood swept away trying to remove debris from drains.

One after another, the heartbreaking tales poured in.

There was Shakia Garrett, 33, who had eight siblings and lived at the Oakwood Plaza apartments in Elizabeth. She died inside the home of neighbors Jose Torres, 74, and Rosa Espinal, 72. Relatives said she spent her last moments alive trying to save herself and her neighbors from the rising flood waters.

“She kept fighting for herself and she kept fighting for them,” the Torres’ son-in-law, Duteche Aine, said. “So I don’t want you guys to forget her. She’s my hero.”

Torres and Espinal, who’d been together for 46 years, were killed in the unit, along with their 38-year-old son, Jose Torres Jr.

There was Preston Moody, an affable sports referee who worked youth games across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, his body found in the Raritan River.

There was Cheryl Ann Talke, who worked in retail and loved cats, and died alone in her car in Hillsborough.

There was Barry Snyder, a wrestling coach and motorcycle enthusiast, who loved watching his grandsons play sports. His body was found in a Hunterdon County creek after his pickup truck had been swept nearly two miles by floodwaters.

Then, more than a week after the storm, two more bodies were recovered from the Passaic River. They turned out to be Nidhi Rana, 18, and Ayush Rana, 21, friends who were last seen trying to escape their car as flood waters bore down.

Ultimately, Hurricane Ida took its place on a grisly historical list of deadliest storms. Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged New Jersey in October 2012, had the highest death toll of any storm in the Garden State during the past century, with 40 fatalities attributed to the monster cyclone. A year earlier, in 2011, Tropical Storm Irene claimed nine lives in New Jersey. Two back-to-back storms that struck the state in August 1955 — Hurricane Connie and Hurricane Diane — combined to cause massive flooding, resulting in the deaths of 26 New Jerseyans, according to published reports.

Some forecasters saw Ida coming. And with climate change continuing to cause more frequent bouts of increasingly extreme weather, they fear more are on the way.

After the storm

Six days after Ida inflicted its wrath, President Joe Biden touched down in New Jersey and made his way to Manville, the borough of 11,000 flooded from end to end. Accompanied by Murphy, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker and a trio of congressional lawmakers, Biden walked the streets taking time to talk with families devasted by the storm, occasionally posing for a picture or hugging a small child amid the ruined houses.

Biden arrived in the Somerset County community around noon, driving past homes that were turned inside-out with trash bags piled shoulder-high on sidewalks and scores of water-logged personal items strewn across their yards.

“The losses that we witnessed today are profound: dozens of lost lives, homes destroyed in Manville, damaged infrastructure,” Biden said. “My thoughts are with all those families affected by the storms and all those families who lost someone they love.”

The national attention was one of the first steps as parts of New Jersey sought to rebuild. People who live in the ten hardest-hit counties are now eligible for federal assistance under a disaster declaration by Biden. The aid includes low-cost loans for property losses not covered by insurance, and grants for temporary shelter and home repairs.

In addition, state and local governments and some nonprofit organizations in those same counties can receive federal funding for emergency work and repairing or replacing facilities damaged by the storms.

Murphy also emphasized the need to do more to address state infrastructure and climate change.

“As we continue to contend with the reality of climate change, it is no surprise that storms like Ida are happening with greater frequency and intensity,” Murphy Tweeted on Sept. 3. “While New Jersey has more work to do on climate resilience, I am pleased that we have moved the ball forward significantly on this issue already. In the past three years, we’ve invested $1.5 billion in water infrastructure — with another $1 billion to come in the next year.”

Perhaps the investments will help blunt the impact of the next storm to hit New Jersey.

But even so, Ida’s legacy will remain deep in the destroyed homes and property across the state.

And the 29 lives taken by the storm.

NJ Advance Media staff writers Adam Clark, Len Melisurgo, Amanda Hoover, Matt Arco, Jonathan D. Salant, Rodrigo Torrejon, Rebecca Panico, Steven Rodas, Susan K. Livio and Matt Gray contributed to this report.

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Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook.