New York awakes to scenes of devastation

Philip Rosenberg and his wife Alison, from Middlesbrough, live and work in New York. As Hurricane Sandy crashed into the Eastern Seaboard of the United States they were in the eye of the storm...

WE didn’t think it would happen, but Hurricane Sandy – at 800 miles in diameter, the largest storm in recorded history to hit the Eastern Seaboard of the United States of America – has managed to bring New York City to its knees.

Across the US as a whole, more than 6.5 million people have lost power, the NYC Subway system has been flooded and closed, several hospitals have been evacuated, and one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions, the New York Stock Exchange, is surrounded by sandbags after closing its doors for the longest period of time due to a natural disaster since 1888.

Many residents refused to leave their homes, certain that Sandy would peter out unceremoniously before doing much damage, as so many other storms have done before. Charles Elli Carr, a student at Brooklyn College in the heart of the city's largest borough, had no plans to spend money he couldn't afford just so he could ride out the storm in comfort.

“New Yorkers can’t really tell when the Big One is going to hit because our weathermen are regularly forecasting gloom and doom.

“So no, I’m not going to spend an extra $400 a night on a hotel room to escape what is likely to be much ado about nothing”

Mr Carr lives in Brighton Beach, at Coney Island, right on the Atlantic Ocean coast in an area that has seen US government-mandated evacuation. Mr. Carr could not have known at that moment that the city of his birth was about to bear a very strong resemblance to the mythological Lost City of Atlantis.

Also taking a battering was New York’s transport system, bringi9ng the city to a standstill in the aftermath of the storm.

“The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night,” said Joseph J Lhota, chairman of the Mass Transit Authority (MTA).

“Hurricane Sandy has wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region.”

Mass transit across the five boroughs has been closed, which means a day or two off from work for most people working in Manhattan.

Six of the subway tunnels closest to Wall Street and the downtown financial center have been completely flooded and experts are unsure how long it will take to have the system fully up and running again.

The local government listed a mandatory evacuation notice for low lying areas of NYC on Sunday evening, which has affected people in the hundreds of thousands.

By 6pm Eastern Seaboard Time on Monday, much of lower Manhattan was already under water.

Down State Medical Center, Bellevue Hospital, and NYU Medical Center had all shuttered their doors, with Bellevue having a particularly difficult time after its basement, which houses its power facilities, was completely swamped with seawater.

Patients have been evacuated to various hospitals either outside the Manhattan area, or to the northern portion of the island which is at a substantially higher elevation. With public transportation being out of commission, an army of ambulances had to make the trip, each carrying one or two patients to safer destinations.

A building façade crashed to the ground around 6:30pm, leaving the gaping maw that is the front of the building on 15th Street and 8th Avenue open to the public, although no injuries were reported.

“I was in my flat and it was hard to hear anything for the howling of the wind,” said Michelle Fix, who lives just 200 feet from the crumbling edifice on 15th Street.

“Then suddenly all was quiet. A friend of mine called my mobile to tell me a building had come crashing down just outside my own building, so I went outside to check it out.

“You could see right inside the building’s apartments because the whole front wall of the top two floors was torn off. It was totally surreal.

“It was difficult to even stand outside without being blown over for the fierceness of the wind,” said Ms Fix, producer of a children’s TV series, The Glamour Bees. “I had to grab onto the nearest light pole at one point to avoid being carried away.”

Unfortunately for the building whose façade had just crashed to the ground, no such good fortune would accompany it.

At 57th Street and 7th Avenue, a massive crane strapped to the side of a half-built, £1bn residential high rise complex, dangled precariously, threatening the surrounding buildings and their residents. At the time of this writing, the crane has neither fallen, nor been secured. High winds and the open nature of the construction have kept emergency workers from taking appropriate safety measures, and residents in the area, including guests at a posh hotel, had to be evacuated.

The South Street Seaport, one of New York’s popular tourist destinations, is completely underwater, its fate shared by the looping highway that circles Manhattan Island, but which now more acurately resembles a rushing river.

Both the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and West Side highways, along with their connecting bridges and tunnels, have been shut to traffic of any kind. Hardest hit of the tunnels leading to Manhattan is the Battery, which is entirely filled with sea-water, and awaiting the authorities to pump it dry.

Estimates predict the sea to beat a slow retreat from the shores of NYC and officials expect to see a bit of daylight by no later than Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. Damage estimates are as yet unclear, but some reports have talked about the cost of Hurricane Sandy’s destruction entering the tens of billions of dollars in NYC alone.