Two famed restaurants, the River Cafe in Brooklyn and the Water Club in Manhattan, also took a beating.
“We battened down the hatches, cabled everything up,” said owner Buzzy O’Keeffe, who started at the River Café at Fulton Landing before hightailing it across the Brooklyn Bridge to try and save the Water Club from the surging East River off the FDR at 30th Street.
As conditions worsened, he decided to put his employees over his business.
“The generators flooded so quickly that they were put out of commission right away,” O’Keeffe said.
“When things started to rock and roll, we had to abandon ship to save the people.”