One year after a house fire, Rachael Ray’s NYC apartment got flooded.
Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the TV chef’s house. Rachael Ray, the Ida TV chef, is struggling with a flooded flat just a year after her home in upstate New York caught fire and burned down.
Ray told People in an exclusive interview published Wednesday that the New York City flat she shares with her husband John Cusimano was devastated by Hurricane Ida’s strong rains, which killed 46 people in the Northeast.
“Ida took it out. And I mean, out. Down hard,” Ray told the magazine. “Like, literally every speaker in the ceiling, the fireplace, every seam in the wall… It was like the apartment just literally melted, like in ‘Wicked’ or something.”
The flooding, according to the 53-year-old cook, occurred shortly after they finished refurbishing the property. They had to wait a week for a cleanup team to arrive, which resulted in even more damage.
“They put up their fans and their humidifiers. And then, they make a hole in the wall and break the main water pipe and flood the entire building down to the first floor, from our apartment on the sixth floor.” Ray said. “Tell me you would not feel like a kicked can.”
Ray’s home near Lake Luzerne, New York, was engulfed in flames in August due to a chimney fire. On her broadcast, Ray talked about the devastating loss of her house of 15 years.
During her Season 15 premiere, she claimed, “I heard the fire in the walls,” “It was shivering and bloodcurdling from head to toe. When I turned to leave, a first responder stood immediately in front of me, yelling, ‘Get out, get out now.’ You have to go.’ “
Ray’s high-end, self-designed kitchen escaped fire damage despite flames flying through the roof in the inferno, Warren County Fire Coordinator Brian LaFlure told USA TODAY at the time.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ray was recording episodes of the “Rachael Ray Show” in her own kitchen, cooking food alongside her husband (and an at-home camera man).
She told People that she is “grateful.” for everything that has happened to her.
“There are so much worse positions we could be in,” Ray said. “I mean, I’m alive. And I do have a roof over my head. And I do have a job.”