Two men nearly drown in elevator in NYC downpour

The record rainfall on Sunday in New York not only dampened people's outdoor plans, but it proved almost fatal for two men on Staten Island.

Construction workers Ed Tyler, 26, and Wendell Amaker, 48, both from New Jersey, were trapped inside an elevator filled with water until they were rescued by firefighters, the New York Daily News reported. 

"We thought we were dead," said Tyler,  "I literally thought I was going to die."

According to the story, both Tyler and Amaker were in the elevator transporting materials in a hotel being converted to senior housing. They rode the elevator down the basement because the doors were shut, but didn't know that the basement was already flooded. As Tyler described it, the water started rushing in.

With water that was filling up past their waists, the men held up a cell phone through a ceiling hatch in order to dial 911. Firefighters eventually rescued the uninjured men by turning off the power and lowering a ladder through the hatch.

Officials say that when firefighters arrived, the water was up to the men's necks.

"They were happy to see us," Capt. James Melvin of Ladder 86 told the News. "The water was going up, down, up some more."

The workers' ordeal highlighted a day of heavy downpour in the Northeast that flooded a hospital, closed roads and dumped record levels of rain in some areas.

As much as 11 inches of rain fell over parts of New Jersey on Sunday, washing away some roads.

Nearly 8 inches of rain fell at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport Sunday, the most ever recorded there in a single day.

In northern Ohio, a hospital closed because water was getting into a room holding power distribution panels. The Sandusky Register reports patients were transferred.