Water, fire, destruction: NYC after the superstorm

October 30, 2012 at 1:12p.m.

NEW YORK (AP) — The massive storm that pummeled the East killed 10 people in New York City and left the nation’s largest city eerily quiet today, with no running trains, a darkened business district and neighborhoods under water.

It was “a devastating storm, maybe the worst that we have ever experienced,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave no firm timeline on when the city’s basic services would be restored.

Scenes of the damage from the overnight havoc were everywhere after a wall of seawater and high winds slammed the city, destroying buildings and flooding tunnels. Between 80 and 100 flooded homes in Queens caught fire and were destroyed. A hospital removed patients on stretchers and 20 babies from neonatal intensive care, some on respirators operating on battery power.

Sidewalks, streets and subways usually bustling with crowds and traffic jams were largely empty. And high above midtown, the broken boom of a crane continued to dangle precariously over a neighborhood.

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, no,” said Faye Schwartz, 65, Tuesday morning as she surveyed the damage in her Brooklyn neighborhood, where cars were strewn like leaves, planters were deposited in intersections and green Dumpsters were tossed on their sides.

The storm was once Hurricane Sandy but combined with two wintry systems to become a huge hybrid storm whose center smashed ashore late Monday in New Jersey. New York City was perfectly positioned to absorb the worst of its storm surge — a record 13 feet.

The dead included two who drowned in a home and one who was in bed when a tree fell on an apartment, the mayor said. A 23-year-old woman died by stepping into a puddle near a live electrical wire. A man and a woman were crushed by a falling tree. An off-duty officer on Staten Island who ushered his relatives to the attic of his home apparently became trapped in the basement.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said 156 rescue missions were made by state and city police.