Mammoth storm Sandy plunges NYC into darkness

Lower Man­hat­tan goes dark Mon­day, Oct. 29, 2012, as seen from Brook­lyn, N.Y. Sandy con­tin­ued on its path Mon­day, as the storm forced the shut­down of mass tran­sit, schools and finan­cial mar­kets, send­ing coastal res­i­dents flee­ing, and threat­en­ing a dan­ger­ous mix of high winds and soak­ing rain. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Bebeto Matthews)

JENNIFER PELTZ

TOM HAYS

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Much of New York was plunged into dark­ness Mon­day by a super­storm that over­flowed the city’s his­toric water­front, flooded the finan­cial dis­trict and sub­way tun­nels and cut power to nearly a mil­lion people.

The city had shut its mass tran­sit sys­tem, schools, the stock exchange and Broad­way and ordered hun­dreds of thou­sands of New York­ers to leave home to get out of the way of the super­storm Sandy as it zeroed in on the nation’s largest city.

Res­i­dents spent much of the day try­ing to sal­vage nor­mal rou­tines, jog­ging and snap­ping pic­tures of the water while offi­cials warned the worst of the storm had not hit.

By evening, a record 13-foot storm surge was threat­en­ing Manhattan’s south­ern tip, howl­ing winds had sent a crane hang­ing from a high-rise, and util­i­ties delib­er­ately dark­ened part of down­town Man­hat­tan to avoid storm damage.

Water lapped over the sea­wall in Bat­tery Park City, flood­ing rail yards, sub­way tracks, tun­nels and roads. Res­cue work­ers floated bright orange rafts down flooded down­town streets, while police offi­cers rolled slowly down the street with loud­speak­ers telling peo­ple to go home.

“Now it’s really turn­ing into some­thing,” said Brian Dami­anakes, tak­ing shel­ter in an ATM vestibule and watch­ing a trash can blow down the street in Bat­tery Park.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Mon­day night that the surge was expected to recede by mid­night, after exceed­ing an orig­i­nal expec­ta­tion of 11 feet.

“The worst of the weather has come,” he said. He said New York­ers were inun­dat­ing the 911 sys­tem and get­ting stranded in cars, and urged peo­ple to stay put until the storm passed.

“You have to stay wher­ever you are. Let me repeat that. You have to stay wher­ever you are,” he said.

Shortly after the mas­sive storm made land­fall in south­ern New Jer­sey, Con­sol­i­dated Edi­son cut power delib­er­ately to about 6,500 cus­tomers in down­town Man­hat­tan to avert fur­ther dam­age. Then, huge swaths of the city went dark, los­ing power to 250,000 cus­tomers in Man­hat­tan, Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said.

New York University’s hos­pi­tal lost backup power, Bloomberg said.

Another 1 mil­lion cus­tomers lost power ear­lier Mon­day in New York City, the north­ern sub­urbs and coastal Long Island, where flood­wa­ters swamped cars, downed trees and put neigh­bor­hoods under water.

The storm had only killed one New York City res­i­dent by Mon­day night, a man who died when a tree fell on his home in the Flush­ing sec­tion of Queens.

The rains and howl­ing winds, some believed to reach more than 95 mph, left a crane hang­ing off a lux­ury high-rise in mid­town Man­hat­tan, caus­ing the evac­u­a­tion of hun­dreds from a posh hotel and other build­ings. Inspec­tors were climb­ing 74 flights of stairs to exam­ine the crane hang­ing from the $1.5 billion.

The facade of a four-story Man­hat­tan build­ing in the Chelsea neigh­bor­hood crum­bled and col­lapsed sud­denly, leav­ing the lights, couches, cab­i­nets and desks inside vis­i­ble from the street. No one was hurt, although some of the falling debris hit a car.

On coastal Long Island, flood­wa­ters swamped cars, downed trees and put neigh­bor­hoods under water as beach­fronts and fish­ing vil­lages bore the brunt of the storm. A police car was lost res­cu­ing 14 peo­ple from the pop­u­lar resort Fire Island.

The city shut all three of its air­ports, its sub­ways, schools, stock exchanges, Broad­way the­aters and closed sev­eral bridges and tun­nels through­out the day as the weather worsened.

Ear­lier, some New York­ers defi­antly sol­diered on, try­ing to sal­vage nor­mal rou­tines and refus­ing to evac­u­ate, as the mayor ordered 375,000 in low-lying areas to do.

Mark Vial pushed a stroller hold­ing his 2-year-old daugh­ter Mazi­yar toward his apart­ment build­ing in Bat­tery Park City, an area that was ordered evacuated.

“We’re high up enough, so I’m not wor­ried about flood­ing,” said Via, 35. “There’s plenty of food. We’ll be OK.”

On Long Island, flood­wa­ters had begun to del­uge some low-lying towns and nearly 150,000 cus­tomers had lost power. Cars floated along the streets of Long Beach and flood­ing con­sumed sev­eral blocks south of the bay, res­i­dents said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, hold­ing a news con­fer­ence on Long Island where the lights flick­ered and his mike went in and out, said most of the National Guards deployed to the New York City area would go to Long Island.

“Long Island has become more and more vul­ner­a­ble and the pri­mary area of our con­cen­tra­tion,” he said.

In the fish­ing vil­lage of Green­port, Sean Seal piled dirt and sand­bags onto the alley­way behind his col­lectibles store where the water was steadily creep­ing up the street toward his front door. He only opened the shop about two months ago.

“We put every­thing up. Up on tables, up on shelves, as far as we could,” he said. “It’s gonna be dev­as­tat­ing. We’ll lose a lot of stuff.”

Anoush Var­gas drove with her hus­band, Michael to the famed Jones Beach Mon­day morn­ing, only to find it cov­ered by water.

“We have no more beach. It’s gone,” she said, shak­ing her head as she watched the waves go under the boardwalk.

The cen­ter the storm, a com­bi­na­tion of Sandy, a win­try sys­tem from the West and cold air stream­ing from the Arc­tic, threat­ened to knock out the under­ground net­work of power, phone and high-speed Inter­net lines that are the lifeblood of America’s finan­cial capital.

Despite the dire fore­casts, many chose to embrace what was coming.

Tanja Stew­art and her 7-year-old son, Finn, came from their home in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neigh­bor­hood to admire the white caps on the Hud­son, Finn wear­ing a pair of binoc­u­lars around his neck. “I really wanted to see some big waves,” he said.

Nearby, Keith Reilly climbed up on a rail next to the ris­ing waters of New York Har­bor so his friend Eli Rowe could snap a photo of him in an Irish soc­cer jer­sey with the Statue of Lib­erty in the background.

“This is not so bad right now,” said the 25-year-old Reilly. “We’ll see later.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.