Times Union14%
First storm-related death reported after upstate New York flooding 6%
By Phillip Pantuso3%
7/31/2026, 8:03:02 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 17 faulty reasoning types, including Status Quo Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Anecdotal, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 20.5% saturation with 90 hits. Analysis detected 657 faulty-reasoning hits from 440 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 14.5% and a BS Rank of 6% (27,302 of 28,818 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.70% of the article peer group.
CALLICOON — Emergency crews recovered the body of a Sullivan County man from the North Branch Callicoon Creek on Wednesday after an abandoned pickup truck was found in the flood-swollen water, in what appears to be the first reported death connected to the historic rainstorm that inundated eastern New York this week.
State Police identified the victim as Jesus Arroyo Ortega, 39, of Livingston Manor.
Police said Arroyo Ortega was driving on North Branch Road in the town of Callicoon sometime during the morning hours on Wednesday when his pickup truck struck a utility pole near 572 North Branch Road and then ended up in the fast-moving North Branch Callicoon Creek.
At about 7 a.m., troopers from State Police’s Liberty barracks responded to a report of the truck half-submerged in the creek.
But its driver was nowhere to be found.
That prompted a large-scale search involving local fire departments, swift-water rescue teams, State Police investigators, Forest Rangers and the Sullivan County Search and Rescue Team.
After arriving at the scene, the Sullivan County Bureau of Fire requested swift-water rescue resources from the Rock Hill Roscoe Rockland Joint Special Operations Task Force, according to a new release issued by the agency.
The bureau’s special operations coordinator and a task force member entered the creek to search the truck and confirmed it was unoccupied.
Search teams then combed the creek’s banks upstream and downstream while responders used GPS mapping through Team Awareness Kit, or TAK, software, unmanned aircraft systems and Starlink satellite communications to coordinate the operation, according to the Bureau of Fire.
Arroyo Ortega was eventually found dead more than 2.6 miles downstream from the pickup truck near Route 17B, according to State Police.
The Sullivan County Democrat first reported from the scene.
State Police’s investigation remains ongoing.
The death comes as communities across upstate New York continue to assess the damage from Wednesday’s historic rainfall, which flooded homes, washed out roads, triggered rescues and evacuations and damaged infrastructure across the Capital Region and Hudson Valley.
Some communities received nearly a foot of rain, the highest totals recorded since Tropical Storm Irene struck the region in 2011.
State Police said they were assisted by the North Branch Fire Department, Hortonville Fire Department, the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office and the New York State Forest Rangers.
The Sullivan County Bureau of Fire also credited the Callicoon Fire Department, the Rock Hill Roscoe Rockland Joint Special Operations Task Force, Sullivan County Division of Public Safety, Sullivan County Bureau of EMS, Sullivan County 911 and Upper Delaware Ambulance, among other agencies, for assisting with the search.
Speakers
3speakers18%attributed speech361writer words
100%flagged-word coverage
35 attributed words44% of attributed speech49% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.