TRAGIC TOLL: Workers remove a wind-blown tree that crashed into a home in Flushing, Queens, last night and killed a man inside. It was the storm’s first official local fatality. (Matthew McDermott)
Closed-circuit cameras captured flood waters surging out of an elevator shaft and inundating this PATH station in Hoboken, NJ. (AFP/Getty Images)
Vehicles are submerged on 14th Street in Manhattan. (AP)
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A street off Atlantic City’s boardwalk lies submerged. (AFP/Getty Images)
TIMBER! An uprooted tree, which pulled a slab of concrete on its way down, lies toppled on a three-story building in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, yesterday — and that was hours before Sandy reached her full fury. No one was injured. (Gregory P. Mango)
TRAGIC TOLL: Workers remove a wind-blown tree that crashed into a home in Flushing, Queens, last night and killed a man inside. It was the storm’s first official local fatality. (Matthew McDermott)
Hurricane Sandy blasted the New York area yesterday, killing at least nine people: three adults in Queens, a teenage girl on Staten Island, two on Long Island, one in Ulster County and three kids in Westchester.
The storm, its winds flirting with 100 mph, unleashed a wave of devastation from which it could take weeks to recover.
In flooded lower Manhattan, water gushed into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and cars were floating in the streets.
There was no dry land anywhere in the Rockaways, where cops in the 100th Precinct station house were trapped on the building’s second floor.
As Sandy reached land near Atlantic City, it was downgraded to a tropical storm after its winds weakened slightly.
NYC TRANSIT CRIPPLED AFTER STORM
POWER OUT FOR THOUSANDS AROUND AREA
AT LEAST 75 FLOODED HOMES BURN AS BREEZY POINT BLAZE RAGES
PHOTOS: SANDY BATTERS EAST COAST
The punishing storm:
* A Howard Beach woman drowned because she was unable to get to the second floor, police said.
* Killed a 29-year-old man in his Flushing, Queens, home when a tree fell into the building. The victim, Tony Laino, was found in his bedroom by three neighbors who went to rescue him. The branch that fell on him was at least three-feet wide.
Witnesses said the victim’s devastated dad was crying out for his son. The family has lived there for more than 20 years.
* Claimed the lives of three children, at least two whom were killed when a tree fell in North Salem.
* Caused the death of woman, who was electrocuted after stepping into a puddle on 105th Avenue in South Richmond Hill.
* Killed a teenage girl in Tottenville on Staten Island, the Staten Island Advance reported.
* Sent a tree crashing by a car in Suffolk County on Long Island, killing 39-year-old John Miller as his wife and kids were near him in the driveway of their Lloyd Harbor home at 7:30 p.m. last night; they were not hurt, police said,
* A Garden City Park man, 46, lost his hand after lighting a firework, which he mistakenly believed was a candle.
* Left NYU Langone Medical Center dark after backup generators failed. Patients had to be moved to other facilities.
* Generated a storm surge worsened by a higher full-moon tide, with the peak of the flooding engulfing lower Manhattan and other low-lying areas at 8 p.m.
* Forced the MTA to continue its crippling closure of all trains, buses and subways until at least tomorrow. All flights have been canceled from area airports, and the flood-prone Brooklyn-Battery and Holland tunnels were shut down indefinitely.
* Knocked out power to at least 650,000 in New York and Westchester customers by early this morning — 250,000 in Manhattan at the height of the storm. Most were below 39th Street. As of 1 a.m. Tuesday, Con Ed had the number of customers without power: 193,000 in Manhattan; 158,000 in Westchester County; 74,000 in Queens; 71,000 in Brooklyn; 76,000 in Staten Island; and 38,000 in the Bronx.
* Left more than half of Long Islanders without power as 650,000 people had outages as of 8 p.m. last night.
* Led to forced evacuations for up to 375,000 people from low-lying areas in New York’s Zone A — although some refused to leave their homes. More than 3,000 people were in city emergency shelters by midday.
Gov. Cuomo deployed about 2,000 National Guard troops to deal with Hurricane Sandy’s fury.
He warned there may be prolonged power outages because Sandy was affecting “potentially the entire Eastern Seaboard” — meaning fewer crews will be able to leave their home states to help New York.
Sandy’s storm surge could break the record of 10 1/2 feet set by Hurricane Donna in 1960, said state Operations Director Howard Glaser. Tropical Storm Irene last year had a 4-foot storm surge that rose to a maximum of 9 1/2 feet.
Mayor Bloomberg warned that the city would remain under a coastal flood warning until 3 p.m. today, with a high-wind warning remaining in effect until early this evening, even as the rains taper off.
On Coney Island, Chmi Gaiger stood marveling at the roiling, white-capped Atlantic before Sandy’s full force was felt.
Gaiger, 42, said he was there “to see something you have never seen before and that you’ll never see in your lifetime again. To see the big power.”
Harried cops used sirens and horns to warn about a dozen storm watchers off the end of a Coney Island pier near Stillwell Avenue.
“Get out of here!” the cops yelled.
Philip Ellis, 53, of Flatbush, did more than just watch — he went for his daily swim, and lived to tell the tale.
“It was just way too turbulent, too much of a riptide. I couldn’t stay in more than 10 minutes,” said the former airline employee, who emerged purple-lipped and shivering from the surf.
“You don’t get much of a chance to experience what it’s like to swim right before a hurricane. It was exciting, exhilarating.”
More fearful of Sandy was Steve Geykhman, 25, a marking manager who lives on Surf Avenue in nearby Sea Gate.
“I got the whole house boarded up,” Geykhman said. “I’m expecting the worst.
“My whole family left, and I’m protecting the fort. I have my whole survival kit ready: water, dry cereal, some cigarettes, flashlights, candles.”
On Staten Island, South Side Hardware Co. owner James Rachmiel said, “We are sold out of mostly everything.
“People have been buying tarps, hoses, batteries. People are panic buying,” Rachmiel said. “I think people are taking it more seriously than last year.”
Great Kills resident Alex Rubin, 44, an environmental engineer, was among those stocking up, saying, “I’m leaving now. The water is coming up the block.
“I’m used to flooding, but it’s going to be bad . . . My wife is worried — that’s why we’re leaving.”
As city residents fled from Sandy or battened down the hatches in their homes, President Obama and Mitt Romney canceled a number of their scheduled campaign events because of the mega-storm.
“This is going to be a big storm. It’s going to be a difficult storm,” said Obama, who headed back to the White House from the campaign trail in Florida.
“The great thing about America is when we go through tough times like this, we all pull together.”
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh, Antonio Antenucci, Larry Celona, Lorena Mongelli, Kate Kowsh,Philip Messing Kenneth Garger and Kieran Crowley