Ford Explorer
MOM’S NIGHTMARE: The tragic youngsters, ages 2 and 4, were sitting here (top) when their mom, terrified by the rising waters as they fled their home for higher ground, got out with them to ask for help. But the boys were swept away from her as the floodwaters mangled their Ford Explorer. (
)
A massive search involving dozens of rescuers is under way for two Staten Island boys who were swept from their mother’s arms by fierce floodwaters.
The boys — Connor, 4, and Brandon, 2 — went missing Monday evening while mother Glenda Moore, a nurse at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, made a desperate attempt to flee from her Great Kills home to Brooklyn.
Moore’s Ford Explorer — packed with baby clothes, diaper bags and an umbrella — stalled on severely flooded Father Capodanno Boulevard in South Beach a few miles from her home. She got out of the car with the boys to ask for help.
By then, the waves were picking up speed and Moore lost her grip on toddler Brandon. The desperate mother clutched tighter to her older boy — but Connor, too, was swept away by the water.
She continued to search for the boys all night, knocking on neighboring houses for help, the children’s grandfather said. The distraught mother got none.
“She spent all night on the steps outside,” said the grandfather, who did not want to be identified. “Nobody wanted to help her.”
The mother was finally able to get help the next morning, when she was taken to a local hospital with hypothermia.
“It was an absolute nightmare,” said Iqbal Mughal, 46, a neighbor who rescued three other people stuck in the flood but did not hear or see Moore as she struggled to find her children.
“You couldn’t hear anyone screaming because the waves were so loud,” another neighbor explained.
“It’s one experience in my life that I’ll never forget,” added a shaken Mughal, who housed nearly 30 neighbors in the second floor of his home, whose first floor was flooded by more than 5 feet of water.
Moore was taken home yesterday morning, where she reunited with her husband, Damien, a city sanitation worker who was in Brooklyn during his wife’s harrowing search for Connor and Brandon.
Neighbors said the beloved parents looked “dazed.”
“They are beautiful little guys,” said neighbor Laurene Ryan, 62, of the boys. “I usually hear them playing in the yard. Connor always had a smiley face. They’re such nice people.
“This is so wrong. This is just unbelievable. There are no words.”
Another neighbor, Val Mironovich, 71, said, “They’re the two nicest people that live on this block. They’re very caring, hardworking people.”
Nearly 40 rescuers yesterday focused on nearby marshes, into which Moore’s SUV was pushed — and where the waves may have taken the children.
The search party carried pitchforks, shovels and wooden sticks to comb through the marshes, where water reached as high as 5 feet.
A helicopter equipped with a heat-seeking device hovered overhead, searching for any hints of life in the marshes. Rescuers aboard an airboat sifted through deeper waters for the kids.
Meanwhile, rescuers lifted debris and pulled out two other cars stuck in the marshes. A felled tree was removed.
Yet there was no sign of the two boys — and rescue efforts were suspended for the night.
The death toll from superstorm Sandy climbed yet again yesterday as rescuers continued to discover bodies in cars overtaken by flooding and debris-filled buildings throughout the city and the suburbs.
At least 32 people have been killed in New York City, sources said. Four people were reported dead on Long Island and three in Westchester.
“For all we do to recover, I think it’s fair to say we can’t replace the lives lost as a result the storm,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.
“And we may find a few more bodies,” the mayor warned.
“Our hearts go out to families who lost loved ones and homes.”
Throughout the country, at least 64 people were killed, including nine in Maryland, eight in New Jersey, six in Pennsylvania, five in West Virginia, four in Connecticut, two in Virginia and one in North Carolina.
One person was killed due to the storm in Toronto, Canada. Before reaching the United States, the storm had killed 69 people in the Caribbean.
Several others in the New York area were still missing yesterday — including George Dresch, the father of Staten Island eighth-grader Angela, 13, whose body was found Tuesday morning.
Her mother, Patricia, a teacher at Tottenville’s Our Lady Help of Christians School, was in critical condition at Staten Island University Hospital in Prince’s Bay.
The storm also killed a 24-year-old couple walking their dog in Brooklyn, a 29-year-old Queens groom-to-be, and two parents in New Jersey — who were crushed by a tree in front of their kids, ages 11 and 14.
Two of the youngest victims were two Westchester boys — Jack Baumler, 11, and Michal Robson, 13 — who were crushed by an oak tree that fell into the family room of Jack’s house in North Salem.
iframe src=”http://embed.newsinc.com/Single/iframe.html?WID=2&VID=23864780&freewheel=90081&sitesection=nypost&height=295&width=525″ height=295 width=525 frameborder=no scrolling=no noresize marginwidth=0px marginheight=0px>