N.J. SUPERSTORM MOVES ON, LEAVING DEVASTATION BEHIND IN N.Y., N.J.
The Washington Post
October 31, 2012 Wednesday
Met 2 Edition
by Joel Achenbach;Colum Lynch
Sandy, the hybrid hurricane/nor’easter, began to lose steam Tuesday
as it drifted across Pennsylvania and veered toward Canada. But the
damage was done, and it will go down as a historic storm, not least
because of what it did to New York City, where a surge of seawater
inundated some of the most valuable real estate in America.
Much of Manhattan, the seat of American finance, is in the dark.
Someone standing after dusk Tuesday in the middle of the Brooklyn
Bridge would see the lighted-up Chrysler Building and other Midtown
skyscrapers to the north but darkened buildings to the south –
almost all of Lower Manhattan vanishing into the night. Only City
Hall was illuminated.
Power could be out for a week – a fact noted by some New Yorkers who
packed their bags and headed for the exits.
The storm was blamed for 50 deaths up and down the East Coast,
according to the Associated Press. The tempest played havoc with the
power grid, knocking out electricity to 7.5 million people. More than
16,000 airline flights have been canceled so far. Eqecat, a firm that
models the costs of catastrophes for insurance companies, estimated
Sandy’s economic impact on the country at $10 billion to $20 billion.
At the point of attack was New York City, a marvel of infrastructure
and civil engineering that rediscovered this week that it is a coastal
city, and that nature can be vicious. Sandy’s high winds sparked fires
that destroyed scores of houses. All the city’s airports remained
closed Tuesday, along with the flooded subway. Wall Street never
opened for business, the first two-day closure due to weather since
the days of horses and buggies. The United Nations will be closed
Wednesday for the third straight day.
“The damage we suffered across the city is clearly extensive, and it
will not be repaired overnight,” said New York Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg (I).
Bloomberg put the city death toll at 18. The toll could have been
higher: Firefighters rescued 25 people from an upstairs apartment as
they battled a huge blaze in the Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens.
Another drama unfolded late Monday at New York University’s Tisch
Hospital, when a backup electrical system failed and nurses had to
evacuate infants from neonatal intensive care, carrying them down
darkened stairwells to get them to the safety of another hospital.
The Breezy Point fire immolated 80 homes, one of which belonged to
a congressman, Robert L. Turner (R-N.Y.).
In Brooklyn, Dave Shamoun, 58, the owner of Technico Marine Corp.,
a marine industry supplier, surveyed the soggy wreckage in a
15,000-square-foot warehouse.
“This is New York’s Katrina,” Shamoun said.
Some residents of Sheepshead Bay, an old fishing community in southern
Brooklyn, tried to ride out the storm in their wood-frame houses and
bungalows. They were inundated by fierce waves that surged in from
Manhattan Beach. Water ripped apart a 100-year-old esplanade and yanked
sailboats from their moorings. Mud and water invaded storefronts and
shattered the plate-glass windows at Tete a Tete Cafe on Avenue Z.
“It didn’t seem as if anyone had prepared their homes before the
storm came in,” said Ned Berke, editor of Sheepshead Bites, a news
Web site that covers the neighborhood. “They thought it was going to
be like Irene.”
The denizens of Lower Manhattan were astonished by the sight of
submerged and floating cars in vintage residential neighborhoods
and the financial district. In the East Village, more than a dozen
people waited on line Tuesday at the Village Farms grocery store,
where workers escorted each shopper for a flashlit tour of the aisles.
Around the corner, 37 people waited on line at a coffee truck, some
amusing themselves by guessing how long it would be before power
returned to their apartments.
“Four days? Thanksgiving?” asked Zack Zavada, 29, a clothing salesman
who said he had seen a Con Edison transformer explode from his window.
At Fanelli’s, open since 1847 at Prince and Mercer streets, there
were no empty stools as the bartender served by flashlight. Small
candles burned on the bar.
“Liquor, no food,” said Mark Michaelson, 56, an art director, taking
a smoke break at the entrance. “A Jameson’s is like a sandwich.”
Every block in Lower Manhattan offered a different version of a city
in its first full day of coping with Sandy’s effects. In TriBeCa,
people walked from corner to corner with their smartphones searching
for Internet service. Chances improved with every block northward,
so many headed north by foot.
At Bleecker Street Pizza in the West Village, one of the first
restaurants to reopen, dozens of people waited in line for a warm
slice. Most had endured the night without power, and looked it. The
smell of yeast blasted down the sidewalk, pushed by wind gusts. The
fiercest winds were gone, but the rain continued, and as it intensified
nobody budged, including Jonathan Padron, 26, who came out with a
box of sausage pizza after a harrowing night of darkness and a tin
of tuna in his apartment.
“I was so stressed out, I had to meditate,” said Padron, a dog walker
who works in Brooklyn.
Businesses, apartment dwellers and homeowners from Manhattan’s East
Village to Brooklyn’s Red Hook spent Tuesday pumping floodwaters from
their basements and trying to salvage waterlogged possessions. Simply
crossing the street was dangerous, with streetlights out and traffic
cops scarce.
Elizabeth Freund, 49, returned to her home in Red Hook on Tuesday
morning to find it inundated by nearly 31 / 2 feet of water. “My
bedroom is floating, my office is floating, my daughter’s room is
floating,” she lamented.
Gino Vitale, a Brooklyn landlord who owns 25 apartments in the area,
said 16 of them were flooded, some submerged in more than eight feet
of water. One of his renters phoned him in a panic about 7 p.m.
Monday, saying, “What do I do?” Get out, he said he answered. “By 9,
it was over the fridge,” he said.
People were stunned at the sight of a Bayliner pleasure boat that was
swept into the very end of Sheepshead Bay, slamming into the concrete
abutment. The smell of gas oozed from its tank.
“What’s that smell?” cried Bella Kharajyan. Her daughter, Milena
Rangini, 27, covered her nostrils with her scarf. The two had spent a
long, tiring night in their second-floor apartment in Brighton Beach
as other residents flocked to their door, knowing that the two women
from Armenia spoke English and could understand the news reports.
Kharajyan bemoaned the lack of help for people who speak languages
other than English and Spanish, such as their Armenian- or
Uzbek-speaking neighbors. “A little bit I understand American
information news,” she said. “I don’t see anybody helping us.”
President Obama signed federal emergency declarations for 10 states
and the District of Columbia, and he canceled campaign plans for
Monday and Tuesday so he could remain at the White House and oversee
the storm response. After visiting the headquarters of the Red Cross
in Washington, Obama told reporters, “My message to the federal
government: No bureaucracy. No red tape.” He said if local officials
get no for an answer from the federal government, “they can call me
personally at the White House.”
Republican challenger Mitt Romney also shelved many of his campaign
plans but held a “storm relief” event near Dayton, Ohio. Romney
ignored repeated questions from reporters about whether he wished
to scale back the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a position he
advocated during a GOP primary debate.
Obama will visit New Jersey on Wednesday, touring damage with Gov.
Chris Christie, a Republican with his own presidential aspirations.
Christie said early Tuesday that 2.4 million New Jersey households
were without power, twice the number that lost electricity during
Hurricane Irene.
Later in the day Christie toured the coastal towns by helicopter.
“I was just here walking this place this summer, and the fact that
most of it is gone is just incredible,” Christie said to Belmar Mayor
Matt Doherty, according to an AP pool report.
The governor vowed to rebuild:
“This is the kind of thing New Jerseyans are built for – we’re plenty
tough, and now we have a little more reason to be angry after this,”
he said. “Just what we need in New Jersey – a chance to be a little
more angry.”
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Lynch reported from New York. Paul Schwartzman, Anne Hull, Suzanne
Sataline and Katie Van Syckle in New York; Lisa Rein in New Jersey;
and Dan Eggen and William Branigin in Washington contributed to
this report.