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Northeast Suffers Huge Damage in Storm’s Path; Millions Without Power After the Devastation, a Daunting Recovery
(about 1 hour later)
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which left a trail of deadly destruction, devastating power failures and extensive flooding, millions of people in the New York metropolitan region spent Tuesday assessing the damage and preparing for the possibility that it could be days or even weeks before life returned to normal. The New York region began the daunting process on Tuesday of rebuilding after a storm that remade the landscape and rewrote the record books as it left behind a tableau of damage, destruction and grief.
Throughout the day on Tuesday, there were reports of daring rescue operations as people began to grasp the magnitude of the damage done by the violent winds and lashing rains that transformed the landscapes of New York City and the wider region into tableaus of destruction both stark and unprecedented. The toll — in lives disrupted or lost and communities washed out — was staggering. A rampaging fire reduced more than 100 houses to ash in Breezy Point, Queens. Explosions and downed power lines left the lower half of Manhattan and 90 percent of Long Island in the dark. The New York City subway system — a lifeline for millions — was paralyzed by flooded tunnels and was expect to remain silent for days.
As night fell, more than eight million people, including many in a large swath of Manhattan, were without electricity. Streets were littered with debris and buildings were damaged. Seven subway tunnels under the East River were flooded. While several bridges over the river were set to reopen, other mass transit services, including commuter rail, were still suspended. Accidents claimed more than 40 lives in the United States and Canada, including 18 in the city. Two boys — an 11-year-old Little League star and a 13-year-old friend — were killed when a 90-foot-tall tree smashed into the family room of a house in North Salem, N.Y. An off-duty police officer who led seven relatives, including a 15-month-old boy, to safety in the storm drowned when he went to check on the basement.
In New York State, the deaths of at least 18 people were linked to the storm, with at least 10 victims reported in New York City alone. On Tuesday, the storm slogged toward the Midwest, vastly weaker than it was when it made landfall in New Jersey on Monday night. It delivered rain and high winds all the way to the Great Lakes, where freighters were at a standstill in waves two stories tall. It left snow in Appalachia, power failures in Maine and untreated sewage pouring into the Patuxent River in Maryland after a treatment plant lost power.
One person was killed after stepping into a puddle where a power line had fallen, and several others were killed by falling tree limbs, the authorities said. President Obama approved disaster declarations for New York and New Jersey, making them eligible for federal assistance for rebuilding. “All of us have been shocked by the force of mother nature,” said the president, who plans to visit New Jersey on Wednesday. He promised “all available resources” for recovery efforts.
As attention turned to the recovery efforts, officials across the region cautioned that it could take some time to restore both electricity and basic service given the unprecedented nature of the storm. “This is going to take some time,” he said. “It is not going to be easy for these communities to recover.”
“We have a plan for recovery and that recovery is already beginning,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in an evening news conference. The city was working on restoring electricity and mass transit, but he cautioned that it was a “mammoth” undertaking. There was no immediate estimate of the losses from the storm, but the scope of the damage — covering more than a half-dozen states — pointed to billions of dollars. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called it “incalculable.”
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who described his experience traveling around the city at the height of the storm on Monday night as “frightening,” said people should expect “long-term recovery and reconstruction.” Rescuers looked for survivors in the wet rubble in places like Atlantic City, and state and local officials surveyed wreckage. Utility crews began working their way through a wilderness of fallen trees and power lines. And from Virginia to Connecticut, there were stories of tragedy and survival — of people who lost everything when the water rushed in, of buildings that crumbled after being pounded hour after hour by rain and relentless wind, of hospitals that had to be evacuated when the storm knocked out the electricity.
President Obama, who is planning to visit New Jersey’s ravaged coast on Wednesday with Gov. Chris Christie, promised on Tuesday “to do everything we can do to get aid” to those affected by the storm, saying there would be “no bureaucracy, no red tape.” The president spoke with 20 governors and mayors on a conference call, and the White House said the president would survey damage from the storm with Mr. Christie on Wednesday. Mr. Obama’s press secretary said the president would join Mr. Christie, who has been one of his harshest Republican critics, in talking with storm victims and thanking first responders.
“America is with you,” the president said. “Obviously this is something that is heartbreaking for the entire nation.” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Mr. Obama had also offered to visit the city, “but I think the thing for him to do is to go to New Jersey and represent the country.”
There were at least 38 deaths in eight states over 48 hours, when the storm toppled trees, whipped up destructive winds and sparked fires in several areas, government officials and emergency authorities said. Connecticut, New Jersey and New York reopened many closed roads and bridges, and the New York Stock Exchange made plans to resume floor trading on Wednesday after a two-day shutdown, its first because of weather since a blizzard in 1888.
One of the most devastating fires was in Breezy Point, Queens, where more than 200 firefighters worked to contain a blaze that left more than 80 homes destroyed, including that of Representative Bob Turner. Mr. Bloomberg compared what he saw there to the photographs of the devastation in photos after bombings in World War II. There were no traffic signals on the walk from Fifth Avenue to the East River. Police officers were directing traffic; here and there, bodegas were open, selling batteries and soft drinks. In Times Square, a few tourists walked around, though some hotels still had sandbags by the doors.
Mr. Christie, during a morning news conference, marveled at the strength of the storm, calling the damage he had seen “unthinkable.” Citing just one example, he noted how a tidal surge lifted two dozen small freight cars off train tracks and onto an elevated section of the New Jersey Turnpike in Carteret. Mr. Bloomberg said 7,000 trees had been knocked down in city parks. “Stay away from city parks,” he said. “They are closed until further notice.”
There were also reports of heroic rescues. For example, in Seaside Heights, N.J., the police plucked two people from a tree in the middle of the storm after their home was swamped with water and they tried to swim to safety. The mayor also said that trick-or-treating was fine for Halloween, but the parade in Greenwich Village had been canceled. The organizers said it was the first time in the parade’s 39-year-history that it had been called off.
On Fire Island, several people who did not heed evacuation orders remained trapped and cut off Tuesday evening. Most businesses and schools were closed from Cape May, N.J., to New London, Conn., and life had ground to a halt as residents hunkered down with stocks of food and water. There was no clear timetable for a resumption of services, like transportation. New York’s subway network, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year-history, faced one of its longest shutdowns because the problems were so much worse than expected, said Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman and chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the subways and several commuter railroads.
By Tuesday evening, many people were somewhat dazed, taking in the totality of the damage and looking for information on basic services, a search complicated by the fact that without power, many were also without cellphone and television service. Water climbed to the ceiling of the South Ferry subway station, the end of the No. 1 line in Lower Manhattan, and debris covered tracks in stations up and down other lines after the water rushed in and out. Mr. Lhota said that seven subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn were flooded.
Mr. Bloomberg said that schools would remain closed for a third day on Wednesday, and that the authorities would try to restore subway service in about four days, but he did not provide an exact date. He also said that the Metro-North Railroad had no power north of 59th Street on two of its three lines, and that a 40-foot boat had washed up on the tracks in Ossining, N.Y.
The storm surge, which reached a record-setting 13 feet in Lower Manhattan, sent brackish water pouring into so many subway tunnels that most of the day Tuesday was spent assessing the damage. The Long Island Rail Road’s West Side Yards had to be evacuated, and two railroad tunnels beneath the East River were flooded in the storm. The railroad had not restored power on Tuesday and had no timetable for restoring service. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel also remained impassable, he said.
Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that it was the most destructive storm in the 108-year history of the subway system. Even after the storm passed, one of the most striking symbols of the scope of the challenge in New York City remained visible 80 stories overhead, where a wind-tossed construction crane atop one of Manhattan’s tallest buildings still dangled over West 57th Street after coming loose during the storm. The tentative plan was to try and secure the damaged part of the crane to the main body, which runs up the side of the building and then erect another crane to take the broken one down, Mayor Bloomberg said. Airports, too, took a beating. More than 15,000 flights were canceled, and water poured onto the runways at Kennedy International Airport and La Guardia Airport, both in Queens. Officials made plans to reopen Kennedy, the larger of the two and a major departure point for international flights, on Wednesday. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said La Guardia would remain closed “because of extensive damage.”
As the storm made its way across the Atlantic this week, the authorities had ordered mandatory evacuations in many low-lying areas of states along the coast to clear residents from the anticipated surge and powerful winds. At one point, hurricane-force winds extended up to 175 miles from the center of the storm; tropical-storm-force winds spread out 485 miles from that center. The flooding in the tunnels in Lower Manhattan was so serious that the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked specialists from the Army Corps of Engineers to help. The “unwatering team,” as it is known — two hydrologists and two mechanical engineers from the corps with experience in draining flooded areas — flew to the airport in White Plains because it was one of the few in the area that was open.
Many of the people who needed rescuing had not heeded those warnings. Buses began running again on Tuesday afternoon, and the mayor ordered a ride-sharing program for taxis. He said more than 4,000 yellow cabs were on the streets by Tuesday afternoon.
Forecasters tracked the storm’s path shifting well to the west, with prediction models suggesting it would run through central Pennsylvania and western New York and enter southern Ontario by Wednesday, said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami. From southern New Jersey to the East End of Long Island to the northern suburbs in Connecticut, power companies spent Tuesday trying to figure out just how much damage the storm had done to their wires, transformers and substations.
Rain levels are expected to diminish as the storm continues to move inland and loses contact with the ocean — its source of moisture — though wind damage is still probable across a broad stretch of the country, Mr. Blake said. “You’ve got rain or snow extending from Georgia through Maine and Michigan,” he said. “When you have something over Pennsylvania, and Lake Michigan is seeing gale-force winds, you’ve got a very large storm.” The work will take at least a week, possibly longer, because the damage was so extensive, and utility companies called in thousands of crews from all around the country to help out. Consolidated Edison reached to San Francisco to bring in 150 workers from Pacific Gas and Electric.
Airline flights were canceled at the three major airports in the New York City area. Even with the additional manpower, Con Edison said it could still take more than 10 days to complete the repairs. Con Edison had more than 285,000 customers in Manhattan who were in the dark on Tuesday, and more than 185,000 in Westchester.
Some of the bridges linking Manhattan to other boroughs opened again on Tuesday and there was limited bus service in the city by evening. Things were worse east of New York City, where nearly one million customers of the Long Island Power Authority did not have power on Tuesday and Mr. Cuomo made clear he wanted the authority to restore power faster than it had in the past. He said it was “not O.K.” for it to take two weeks to repair lines brought down by tree limbs.
The New York Stock Exchange intended to reopen on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. but it was testing its contingency plan “just in case,” Larry Leibowitz, the company’s chief operating officer, said, according to Reuters. The New York City Marathon was also set to be held on schedule on Sunday, race officials said. In New Jersey, Public Service Electric and Gas said it had 1.3 million electric customers in the dark, including 500,000 without power because a surge in Newark Bay flooded substations and other equipment. Another New Jersey utility, Jersey Central Power and Light, whose territory covers many shore towns, said almost all of its customers had lost power in some counties, including Ocean and Monmouth. More than one-third of Connecticut Light and Power’s 1.2 million customers had no electricity, either.
The surging water also caused extensive complications at NYU Langone Medical Center when a backup power system failed on Monday night, forcing the evacuation of patients to other facilities. Backup power also failed at Coney Island Hospital in southern Brooklyn, though critical patients had been evacuated in advance of the storm. The fire in Breezy Point, Queens, leveled scores of houses, among them one that belonged to Representative Bob Turner, who was riding out the storm at home despite the mayor’s order to evacuate low-lying areas. Mr. Turner’s spokeswoman, Jessica Proud, said he and his wife made it out safely after flames reached their house. Michael R. Long, the chairman of the state Conservative Party, had a home nearby that also burned down, she said.
The deaths included a 30-year-old man who was killed when a house fell in Queens, the police said. About the same time, two boys, ages 11 and 13, were killed in North Salem, in northern Westchester County, when a tree fell on the house they were in, according to the State Police. The storm was tied to another three deaths in Maryland, two in Connecticut and one in West Virginia, state authorities said. Flooded streets in the area prevented firefighters from reaching the blaze, a Fire Department spokesman said, and the mayor, who toured the area on Tuesday afternoon, said the neighborhood was devastated.
Officials in Pennsylvania said two deaths, of a boy in Susquehanna County and of a 62-year-old man in Berks County, were being investigated but that the county coroner had not yet confirmed them as related to the storm. In North Carolina, a man was killed when his vehicle hit a tree that was crashing down in Surry County, said an official with the state emergency offices. “To describe it as looking like pictures we have seen at the end of World War II is not overstating it,” the mayor said.
In New Jersey, the wind-driven rain lashed sea walls and protective barriers in places like Atlantic City, where the Boardwalk was damaged as water forced its way inland. The off-duty officer who drowned in his basement was identified as Artur Kasprzak, 28, who was assigned to the First Precinct in Manhattan. He had led seven relatives upstairs to the attic as the water rose in his house on Doty Avenue on Staten Island. He said he was going to check the basement and would be right back. About 20 minutes later, one of his relatives called 911 and said he was missing.
The extent of the destruction was clear from video taken from a helicopter as officials surveyed the damage. In town after town along the Jersey Shore, houses were leveled, boardwalks destroyed and smoke smoldered from dying fires. A rescue team with boats and jet skis tried to answer the call but could not reach the house at first because power lines were in the water. His body was found shortly before sunrise.
In New York City, where streets turned into rivers on Monday, there were signs everywhere of the power of the waves that topped the sea wall in the financial district in Manhattan, sending cars floating down streets, and swamped West Street, along the western edge of Lower Manhattan.
Mr. Cuomo described the shock of seeing water rush into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which was flooded “from end to end,” according to the transportation authority. The water rushed in only hours after it was closed to traffic. Officials said water also found its way into seven subway tunnels under the East River.
Consolidated Edison said Tuesday night that it was slowly getting service back for some customers but did not provide a timeline for the vast bulk of those without service. Mr. Bloomberg said many people would not have power until the weekend. On Tuesday morning, there were 634,000 customers in New York City and Westchester County were without power. Con Ed, fearing damage to its electrical equipment, shut down power pre-emptively in sections of Lower Manhattan on Monday evening, and then, at 8:30 p.m., an unplanned failure, probably caused by flooding in substations, knocked out power to most of Manhattan below Midtown, affecting about 250,000 customers. Later, an explosion at a Con Ed substation on East 14th Street knocked out power to another 250,000 customers.
Much of Manhattan could be without electricity for several days after the explosion, a spokesman for Con Ed said Tuesday morning. More than 240,000 customers — and many more people — were without power more than 12 hours after the explosion; a customer can represent a single family or an entire building, utility officials said.
The blast knocked out electricity for all of Manhattan below 39th Street on the East Side and 31st Street on the West Side — with the exception of a few pockets, including Battery Park City.

Reporting on the storm was contributed by Peter Applebome, Charles V. Bagli, Joseph Berger, Nina Bernstein, Cara Buckley, Russ Buettner, David W. Chen, Annie Correal, Sam Dolnick, Christopher Drew, David W. Dunlap, Ann Farmer, Lisa W. Foderaro, Joseph Goldstein, David M. Halbfinger, Christine Hauser, Elizabeth A. Harris, Winnie Hu, Jon Hurdle, Thomas Kaplan, Corey Kilgannon, John Leland, Randy Leonard, Patrick McGeehan, Jad Mouawad, Colin Moynihan, Sarah Maslin Nir, Sharon Otterman, William K. Rashbaum, Ray Rivera, Liz Robbins, Wendy Ruderman, Nate Schweber, Michael Schwirtz, Mosi Secret, Kirk Semple, Joe Sharkey, Brian Stelter, Kate Taylor, Julie Turkewitz, Matthew L. Wald, Michael Wilson, Michael Winerip, Vivian Yee and Kate Zernike.