A DAUNTING RECOVERY
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Cynthia McCloudIn Appalachia, Coping With the BlizzardTERRA ALTA, W. Va. — When the power went out Tuesday at Carrie Luckel’s house in Terra Alta, which got more than 2 feet of snow in 24 hours, she had to take drastic measures to stay warm and cook food.
Ron Rittenhouse/The Dominion-Post, via Associated Press A resident of Morgantown, West Virginia, shoveled snow early Tuesday morning.
“We are seriously using a turkey fryer to keep our bedroom warm enough to live, and a Coleman stove in our bedroom to heat up cans of soup,” Ms. Luckel said. “Our milk is sitting on the roof.”
In West Virginia, one of the hardest-hit states by the snowstorm that coincided with Hurricane Sandy, 275,000 people are without power.
At the Heartland nursing home in Kingwood, a generator was being used to power and heat patients’ rooms, though the staff offices didn’t have heat or lights.
“Appalachian people are really hardy,” said an administrator, Melissa Groves. “We are doing fine.”
Just across the Maryland border in McCoole, Stephanie and Russ Stallings took in Stephanie’s best friend when her basement flooded.
“She’s waiting on her landlord to shut off the breakers down there so she can come over to our little trailer,” Ms. Stallings said. “She is without power or heat and it’s 56 degrees in her house now. She has three kids living with her and one of them has Rett Syndrome,” a nervous system disorder.
“She has life-saving medical devices that she needs electric for,” Ms. Stallings continue. “So we have opened up our tiny house for them. Tonight we will have four adults and four kids in my three bedroom house. The power company doesn’t have a clue when her power will be back on. We are looking at another two days of heavy blizzard like snow. But all in all we are good and praising God through this storm and every storm.”
Correction: An earlier version of this update contained a misspelled dateline. It is Terra Alta, W. Va., not Tera Alta.
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The New York TimesChris Christie Visits Storm-Stricken Towns
Tim Larsen/Office of the Governor Gov. Chris Christie in Belmar, N.J., on Tuesday.
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Andy NewmanThe Death of an OfficerAfter shepherding six adults and an infant to safety in the attic of his house on Staten Island last night, an off-duty New York City police officer, Artur Kasprzak, went downstairs to check on the basement. He did not come back up.
Here is the Police Department’s statement, unedited:
During the tumult of Hurricane Sandy last night, off-duty Police Officer Artur Kasprzak, 28, got to work shepherding his family to relative safety inside his home on Doty Avenue, in the confines of the 122 Precinct.
By about 7 p.m., with flood water surging into his house, Officer Kasprzak was able to get six adults (M/69, F/68, F/56, M/31, F/31, F/30) and a 15-month-old male infant upstairs and into his attic to escape the rapidly rising water.
Officer Kasprzak then turned to one of the women and told her he was going to check the basement but would be right back.
At 7:23 p.m., the female called 911 and reported Officer Kasprzak missing.
NYPD personnel from the Emergency Service and SCUBA units immediately responded to the residence using Zodiac boats and Jet Skis, but could not access the home due to down, electrified power lines in the water.
After deeming the house safe to enter, a search commenced. By about 7 a.m., Officer Kasprzak’s body was located, unconscious and unresponsive, in the basement. EMS was on scene and pronounced him DOA.
The Medical Examiner’s Office will determine the cause of death. Officer Kasprzak was assigned to the 1st Precinct in Manhattan and had six years on the job. Previously, he served the city for one year as an NYPD Cadet, and was assigned to the 122 Pct. Detective Squad.
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Matt FlegenheimerDozens of Bus Routes RestoredDozens of bus routes have begun operating again in New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Tuesday night. They are:
In Manhattan: M2, M5, M8, M11, M14, M15, SBS15, M34, M34A, M22, M57, M60, M86, M96, M101
In Brooklyn: B1, B3, B15, B35, B41, B44, B46, B61, B82, Q58, Q59
In Queens: Q4, Q6, Q7, Q10, Q12, Q22, Q23, Q25, Q33, Q35, Q46, Q50, Q60, Q65, Q66, Q69, Q101, Q113
In the Bronx: Bx1, Bx6, Bx7, Bx8, Bx10, Bx12, SBS12, Bx16, Bx23, Bx27, Bx36, Bx38, Bx40, Bx41, Bx55
On Staten Island: S40, S46, S48, S53, S59, S61, S62, S74, S78, SBS79
The authority said a full schedule for buses was expected on Wednesday.
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Amanda CoxSpread of Power Failures Across the NortheastMore than six million customers lost power Monday as Hurricane Sandy felled trees, downed power lines and flooded substations. The storm led to power failures in at least 17 states, including more than a million customers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and about 660,000 in New York City.
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The New York TimesStorm Finds Many Ways to Claim LivesThey stepped in the wrong puddle. They walked the dog at the wrong moment. Or they did exactly what all the emergency experts instructed them to do — they huddled inside and waited for its anger to go away.
The storm found them all. Read the stories of some of the dozens of people killed by Hurricane Sandy.
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Christopher DrewAn Eerie Quiet at Newark AirportImagine hopping out at Newark Liberty International Airport without dodging the double-parked cars and strolling up to the security scanners without any line. If you wanted to see what that felt like, you could have done it in the dark and eerily quiet terminals on Tuesday, as workers struggled to restore power in hopes of resuming flights on Wednesday afternoon.
Travelers from Europe were stranded at Newark Liberty International Airport on Monday.
Two of the terminals, A and C, were virtual ghost towns, with only the sounds of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like A Wolf” blasting through loudspeakers to entertain the guards in Terminal A. The electronic flight information screens were blank. Hudson News was shuttered, and all the wheelchairs sat in a long row, empty.
The only faint stirrings were in Terminal B, where the airport had herded all the passengers stranded during the storm. About 65 people had slept on cots on Monday night in a guarded area on the mezzanine level, and more were planning to stay Tuesday night.
A few lights were on, thanks to power generators, and Dunkin’ Donuts was providing fancy coffee drinks with whipped cream.
Jan Erik Jensen, 41, a truck driver trying to get home to Norway, was one of the latest arrivals, a refugee from one of the many hotels in New Jersey that had also lost electricity. Delta rebooked him on a 2:30 p.m. flight Wednesday. “The airline says that hopefully the flight will go then,” he said.
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Andy Newman and Justine SimonsHalloween Parades Canceled; Trick-or-Treating? Maybe NotThe Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, a beloved if sometimes overly boisterous New York City tradition for nearly four decades, has been canceled for Wednesday, parade officials announced Tuesday afternoon.
Jason Decrow/Associated Press Lindenhurst, N.Y. on Tuesday.
In areas devastated by the storm, of course, Halloween is the least of anyone’s concerns right now.
But in neighborhoods and towns hit less hard, and on chat boards and Yahoo groups, parents found themselves very delicately asking themselves and one another if it was not unseemly to have children go out to trick-or-treat.
“Halloween is something that kids really look forward to, and that can be a fun diversion for them in a dark time,” one mother wrote on the New York City thread on Urbanbaby. “I, for one, know that after sitting through the storm in a small place with 2 toddlers, I’m dying to get them out of the house and focused on something fun/exciting.” She did not state where she lived.
In Park Slope, Brooklyn, which suffered relatively modest damage but also canceled its Halloween parade, the head of the Park Slope Parents board, Susan Fox, wrote:
The weather predictions are actually good — so trick or treating is still on. Not sure if all the local businesses will be open, but there is some great trick or treating from home. If you are accepting trick or treaters — put something on your door and light your pumpkin! Let people know that you’re around!
In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie even managed a grim joke about the situation Tuesday afternoon. He told officials in Avalon, a coastal community that was not badly damaged, to expect an executive order later in the week rescheduling Halloween, The Associated Press reported.
“It might even be funny to reschedule Halloween for Election Day,” the governor said. The line drew a chuckle from the local officials.
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Nina BernsteinA Nerve-Racking Evacuation From NYU LangoneWhen the power went out at NYU Langone Medical Center Monday evening, Christine Chin, 31, was in a 14th-floor intensive care unit for transplant patients, tethered to the electronic equipment that pumped critical fluids into her system. Her husband, who had been at her side all day, was finally getting something to eat in the first-floor cafeteria, the only visitor among about 40 hospital staff members.
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Christine Chin has had a series of operations to try to repair leaks in her bile ducts after part of her husband’s liver was used to replace her cancerous one five years ago.
“Everyone on the floor started panicking – there were no lights whatsoever,” the husband, John Tran, 31, recalled in a telephone interview Tuesday from Mount Sinai Hospital. His wife, suffering serious complications from a liver transplant, was among the last NYU Langone patients to be evacuated after the storm surge knocked out power and crippled back-up generators at the sprawling medical center in the East 30s in Manhattan.
“I needed to get upstairs to my wife,” Mr. Tran said. Clutching his macaroni and cheese, he said, he followed nurses with flashlights up the 14 flights of stairs, barely able to believe what he saw out the stairwell windows.
“First Avenue was engulfed in water to knee level,” he said. “The water was rocking, left and right – waves on First Avenue. I said to a nurse, ‘Is this for real, or is this like a movie?’”
The nurses with flashlights exited the stairs at the 11th floor. The pale light of street lamps on the water outside went out, too. Mr. Tran, who works for Unicef, carried on alone in the dark to the 14th floor, where he found his wife still sleeping.
Battery power had kicked in to operate the machines monitoring and hydrating her and four other patients in the special transplant unit. Attentive nurses checked vital signs manually every 15 minutes, and assured him that backup generators would soon take over.
But they never did. Instead, at about 1 a.m., doctors began calling to find hospitals able and willing to accept the critically ill transplant patients.
“Her battery-powered things said ‘low battery,’ “ Mr. Tran said, “and I was scared that it was going to die.”
Ms. Chin, a manager with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, has had a series of operations to try to repair leaks in her bile ducts after part of her husband’s liver was used to replace her cancerous one five years ago. The latest surgical procedure was done Monday afternoon just before the storm hit. Metal stents used in one repair were found to have migrated to her stomach, Mr. Tran said; she is unable to keep food down, and was being fed through a special machine.
By 3 a.m., all the machines in the room began to beep as they ran out of battery power. “It’s like a chorus of beeps,” her husband said. “We had a window, and you can see the storm happening. You can see Hurricane Sandy there.”
By then, the couple had been told that Ms. Chin and three of the other transplant patients were being evacuated to Mount Sinai. But they had to wait their turn.
At 3:30 a.m., the first battery died. Minutes later, three New York City firefighters and a resident carrying a flashlight arrived to carry Ms. Chin, a tiny woman who weighs 100 pounds, down the stairs in a plastic cocoon-like device known as a sled, an oxygen mask over her face.
Mr. Tran, following her, saw the designation Fire Engine 108 stamped on the back of the firefighters’ jackets. “They were really awesome,” he said.
On the first floor, they joined a long line of about 20 patients, each with a doctor and two nurses, waiting to be assigned to waiting ambulances.
Finally, they were speeding north through the empty, storm-tossed streets of Manhattan. “It was surreal,” he said. “No lights but the ambulance lights. I said to the nurse, ‘I’ve never seen New York like this before.’ ”
At 6 a.m., he finally saw his wife tucked into bed in a warm, well-lighted hospital, as the city awoke to daunting damage. “It was,” he said, “like the end of a long journey.”
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Michael M. GrynbaumBloomberg's Tough Upper Lip on DisplayMayor Michael R. Bloomberg is not a feel-your-pain politician. In his concluding remarks, he says simply that the city “will try to take this as a lesson and figure out how to make things more functional the next time.” While the mayor did acknowledge the tough conditions that many New Yorkers still find themselves in, he seems to be conveying a stiff-upper-lip attitude, leaving the empathy and emotion for other politicians. “It’s still dangerous,” he adds, reminding New Yorkers to stay away from parks and Zone A, which remains under a mandatory evacuation order. He left the stage, saying he will return on Wednesday if there are additional updates. It is unclear if his briefing could be viewed by the more than 250,000 New Yorkers who remain without power, which is not expected to be restored until closer to the weekend.
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Michael M. GrynbaumBloomberg Says He Plans to Attend Basketball GameMayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he did not know the fate of the first regular season basketball game at the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn between the Knicks and the Nets. It was scheduled for Thursday evening. Mr. Bloomberg says that, if the game goes on, he will attend. It might be difficult for others, though: every form of train that leads to the arena in Brooklyn is currently closed.
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Michael M. GrynbaumMayor Not Very Concerned About Dangling CraneOf the dangling crane in Midtown, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday that the city “feels very good” about its current status. When the wind dies down, he added, the city will “find a ways to pull it in.”
A crane seen dangling from 157 West 57th Street on Tuesday. The snapping of the crane was one of the most visible and startling moments in New York on Monday in the hours before the full brunt of the storm arrived.
The only concern, Mr. Bloomberg said, was: “Does the boom break off?” (Of course, residents of 56th Street in Midtown, which has been blocked off across several avenues, may have additional worries.) The city has shut off gas and steam lines beneath the street so that, in the event of a fall, the crane would not start a fire.
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Michael M. GrynbaumBloomberg Says Persuading People to Evacuate Is ChallengingReflecting on Tuesday on the measures taken by the city to prepare for the storm, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “The one thing that is still a conundrum when we order people to leave, only half of them did so, and there were a number of times we had to go out there and rescue people.” He said the city should find “better ways to impress on people” that evacuation orders are for their own good.
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Michael M. GrynbaumExtra Police in City Areas Without PowerMayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that city residents in areas without power should expect to see a heavy police presence on the streets on Tuesday evening. “Police cars have their lights on, and officers are out there standing around. I expect everyone to understand we’re in this together,” the mayor said. He added: “The last time there was a blackout, Diana and I walked together…and joked with everybody. It was a sort of coming-together moment.”
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Michael M. GrynbaumBloomberg Suggests Obama Should Not Visit New YorkAsked on Tuesday if President Obama would be visiting New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg replied: “We’d love to have him, but we have lots of things to do. I’m not trying to diss him.” He added that he spoke with the president on a conference call earlier in the day. The mayor said he was “flattered that he offered to come, but I think the thing to do is for him to go to New Jersey, and represent the country.”
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Michael M. GrynbaumCon Ed Says Power Is Not Expected Back Before the Weekend“Service in some places will come on in the next day or so, but you should not expect the vast bulk of people who do not have service today to get service before the weekend,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Tuesday of electrical service.
Con Ed is also working to restore steam service to customers in the city, although Kevin Burke, its chief executive, said flooded basements were a challenge for some workers. The utility has also brought in workers from other states, including North Carolina, to help repair overhead electrical lines for its suburban customers, thousands of whom remain without power.
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Michael M. GrynbaumCon Ed Says Storm Was 'Worst' in Its HistoryHurricane Sandy was the “worst storm in our history,” said Kevin Burke, the chief executive of Consolidated Edison, speaking to reporters alongside Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Mr. Burke said the utility’s substation at East 14th Street was knocked out of service by “the tremendous storm surge.” The utility is working to reconnect transmission lines from that substation, and they are hoping that power can be restored in those areas in three to four days.
Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Consolidated Edison’s substation at 14th Street.
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Michael M. GrynbaumMarathon Still Planned for SundayThe New York City Marathon will go on as scheduled on Sunday, but the mayor said he would re-confirm that on Wednesday morning. Additional police will also be deployed to areas of the city that remain without power.
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Michael M. Grynbaum18 Reported Deaths in New York CityThe city has now recorded 18 fatalities related to Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Bloomberg said. Earlier Tuesday, the city’s death toll had stood at 10.
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Michael M. GrynbaumWidespread Reports of Tree Damage in New York CityThe city has received 7,000 reports of damaged trees or limbs so far, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, and he urged residents to stay away from city parks until further notice from the authorities.
Librado Romero/The New York Times Fallen trees in Riverdale on Tuesday.
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The Associated PressChristie Stunned at Damage on New Jersey CoastGov. Chris Christie New Jersey took a four-and-a-half-hour helicopter tour of his state’s storm-ravaged coast on Tuesday, touching down in Belmar and Avalon to survey the damage.
Tim Larsen/New Jersey Governor’s Office Kayakers observing the damage in Belmar, N.J., on Tuesday.
In Belmar, Mr. Christie encountered one woman who cried and a man, Walter Patrickis, 42, who told him, “Governor, I lost everything.”
From the air, Mr. Christie and several cabinet members saw homes surrounded by water, residential blocks ending in the bay, submerged gazebos, roads made impassable by drifted sand, a few smoldering fires where foundations used to be, and boats piled onto one another like toys.
The hardest-hit area appeared to be north of where Sandy made landfall, from Seaside to Belmar.
“I was just here walking this place this summer, and the fact that most of it is gone is just incredible,” Mr. Christie told Matt Doherty, the mayor of Belmar, as he surveyed the damage on Ocean Avenue.
The boardwalk south of 10th Avenue had been washed away. A seaside trailer was knocked off its foundation.
Once the weather clears and the waters recede, damage assessments will be done.
“Now we’ve got a big task ahead of us that we have to do together,” Mr. Christie said. “This is the kind of thing New Jerseyans are built for — we’re plenty tough and now we have a little more reason to be angry after this. Just what we need in New Jersey, a chance to be a little more angry.”
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Michael M. GrynbaumStock Exchange to Re-OpenThe New York Stock Exchange will open at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg said, and the trading floor facility was not damaged in the storm.
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Michael M. GrynbaumPartial Bus Service is RestoredThe mayor said that 4,000 taxis — about a third of the entire fleet — were operating in the city on Tuesday afternoon. Buses began running on Tuesday afternoon, on a Sunday schedule, and fares are free for the remainder of the day. More service is expected to be restored on Wednesday, Mr. Bloomberg said. “A mammoth job,” Mr. Bloomberg said of the challenge to restore transit services around the city.
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Michael M. GrynbaumBloomberg Says He Toured City by AirMayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he surveyed the city’s damaged areas earlier on Tuesday in a helicopter, joined by Senator Charles E. Schumer and Christine C. Quinn, the speaker of the City Council. Mr. Bloomberg, on foot, toured the neighborhood of Breezy Point, in the Rockaways, which had been devastated by fires and flood. “Chimneys and foundations were all that was left of many of these homes.” One person he met was Bob Turner, a congressman from Queens, whose home was destroyed in the fires.
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Michael M. Grynbaum'Storm of Historic Intensity' Bloomberg Says“It was a storm of historic intensity, but New Yorkers are resilient,” said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, his voice a touch raspy, as he addressed the public in his second storm briefing of the day from the Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn.
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The New York TimesVideo: Mayor Bloomberg Speaks
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Michael S. SchmidtArmy Corps Will Help Drain Subways and TunnelsThe flooding in subways and tunnels in Lower Manhattan was so severe that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked a team of specialists skilled at draining flooded areas from the Army Corps of Engineers to help New York City officials.
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times M.T.A. workers pumped water out of the South Ferry subway station on Tuesday in Manhattan.
On Tuesday afternoon, two hydrologists and two mechanical engineers from the corps were in a government jet headed to New York. The jet was expected to land around 5:30 p.m. at the Westchester County airport in White Plains, N.Y., one of the few airports open in the New York metropolitan area.
The team plans to first assess the severity of the flooding, and over the next few days more personnel would most likely be sent to New York, said Rodney Delp, the chief of the team, which is based in Rock Island, Ill.
The deployment of the team marks the first time it has been asked to help clear water outside of New Orleans since it was was created after Hurricane Katrina.
“They are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the flooding,” Mr. Delp said of the officials in New York. He said the State of New York had asked the federal agency for assistance and that the agency had then reached out to his team.
“What they typically do is look at engineering drawings to look at the natural low points and what the natural drainage may be, and how long it will take to drain,” Mr. Delp said of his team. “They then look for areas to breach, figure out what size of pumps to use for the water,” and begin the process of removing the water.
City officials rarely confront severe flooding in the subways and tunnels, and Mr. Delp acknowledged that his team had little experience working in them.
“New Orleans didn’t have subways,” he said. “But we have full confidence they will figure out how to clear the subways.”
Mr. Delp said that regardless of where the water was, ultimately, “the math” of clearing it would be the same.
It took a 12-member team about 30 days to clear the water out of the flooded areas of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit, he said.
The Army Corps assembled the group after that storm and has only used it for hurricanes that have hit the New Orleans area since then — Hurricanes Rita, Gustav and Isaac.
Mr. Delp said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be paying for the team’s services.
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Sam RobertsStorm Could Force Creation of Alternate Poll SitesWith Election Day a week away, the New York State Board of Elections said it was working with local election officials to determine whether the effects of the storm would hinder voting.
“We’ve been in conference calls all day with counties impacted by the storm,” said John Conklin, a spokesman for the board. “They’re all doing an assessment of their poll sites, whether there’s power and likely to be power, whether they are still accessible to the public, and whether they can deliver voting machines to those sites. New York City has given its poll site list to Con Edison so they can prioritize the restoration of power. After they do the assessment, they’ll determine whether they need to come up with alternate sites.”
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Patrick McGeehanSubstation Explosion Didn't Darken Lower ManhattanAs spectacular as it looked on a video clip that has gone viral, the explosion that lighted up the sky along the East River on Monday night was not the event that plunged most of Manhattan below Midtown into prolonged darkness.
Katie Orlinsky for The New York Times Con Edison employees tested water near a circuit breaker on Tuesday at the Con Edison power plant on 14th street and Avenue C.
The real cause was more prosaic: Water surging up from the East River submerged some electrical equipment in metal sheds, causing it to shut off power to about 250,000 customers of Consolidated Edison, a company executive said Tuesday.
Giving a tour of the near-century-old plant in the East Village that set off the widespread power failure in Manhattan, John McAvoy, senior vice president for system operations, pointed out the blackened circuit breaker that blew up about 8:30 p.m. Monday. He said the giant electrical flash did not harm anybody, nor, he emphasized, did it knock out power to customers.
Shortly after the explosion, the water rose to an unanticipated level, soaking parts called relays that operate like fuses in a household fuse box, Mr. McAvoy said. Suddenly, electricity stopped flowing through 10 distribution networks, from the Murray Hill neighborhood to the Battery.
About a dozen workers at the site had to be rescued by a Fire Department boat because the water flowing past the doors of the plant was six feet deep, Sanjay Bose, a Con Ed vice president for central engineering.
The vast majority of the city’s residents and businesses from 39th Street on the East Side and 31st Street on the West Side down to the southern tip of Manhattan still had no power by mid-afternoon on Tuesday. Mr. McAvoy said that some of them could have electricity again by Wednesday morning, but others would be without power for three more days.
Outside of buildings that have their own generators, like Bellevue Hospital and the New York Stock Exchange, lights and traffic lights were out through that whole swath of the island. One notable exception was Battery Park City, whose electricity is fed from a station in Brooklyn, not the one that flooded at the east end of 14th Street.
Without power, cellphone service was hard to obtain in those areas. On the sidewalk of 14th Street near Second Avenue, people lined up to use pay phones. A block away, outside Con Ed’s headquarters, which also lost power and ran on a backup generator, a man was selling hand-cranked flashlights out of a van.
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The New York TimesVideo: Collapse of Building Facade in ManhattanNo one was injured when two stories of a brick facade fell off the front of an apartment building at 92 Eighth Avenue in Chelsea on Monday night.
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Claire Cain MillerGoogle Rolls Out Alert System EarlyGoogle has scrambled to post online resources for people who want information about the deadly storm Sandy, including maps showing evacuation routes and shelters and a new service that sends emergency alerts to Google users.
On Monday night, the company introduced the new service, public alerts, to show warnings about natural disasters and emergencies based on information from government agencies like Ready.gov and the National Weather Service. Google said it had planned to introduce the service later, but sped up the process in response to Sandy. Read more on Bits.
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Sheri Fink and Anemona HartocollisBellevue Hobbled by StormAbout 3 p.m. Tuesday, people walking into the lobby of Bellevue Hospital, New York City’s flagship public hospital, were met with darkness.
The hospital, on the East Side of Manhattan, was on backup power, with only some lights working, according to visitors and a spokeswoman, Evelyn Hernandez.
There was a bad smell in the air, perhaps from toilets that could not be properly flushed, visitors said. A big team of people on the first floor was overseeing the transfer of patients by ambulance.
People could be seen delicately carrying tiny babies down the stairs, apparently so they could be evacuated. One baby was connected to intravenous lines, which had to be carried separately.
One doctor, who asked that his name not be used, said conditions had deteriorated so much that he wondered why patients were not being evacuated. He speculated that other hospitals were overburdened and could not accept more patients.
Indeed, a spokesman for nearby Beth Israel Medical Center said it was already so busy that it had been able to accept only two patients from NYU-Langone, also nearby, when it was evacuated on Monday night because of flooding. Instead, the spokesman said, patients had been sent to St. Luke’s and Roosevelt hospitals on the West Side.
Another Bellevue employee said his colleagues had been carrying fuel up to the generator in bucket-brigade style, to make sure it would not fail.
The Bellevue emergency room was open but was accepting no ambulances, only walk-in patients or people who drove there, according to Ms. Hernandez.
The hospital was using pumps to pump out some modest flooding in the basement, she said. Before the storm, Bellevue had about 700 patients, Ms. Hernandez said, and 13 who were on ventilators were being transferred to other hospitals, but Ms. Hernandez said a decision had been made to keep the others in place.
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David W. DunlapOfficials Improvise Plan for Crane Dangling in MidtownNew York City officials scrambled on Tuesday to improvise a plan for securing and removing the crane boom that was upended hundreds of feet over West 57th Street in the early hours of the storm and has been dangling there ever since.
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times A crane damaged during the storm dangled high above Midtown Manhattan.
“The Department of Buildings has determined that the crane is currently stable,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at his morning news briefing.
Once the high winds have died down, he said, the loosened boom will be shunted over and strapped to the building, a 73-story apartment tower known as One57, at 157 West 57th Street. (It is marketed as a 90-story building, but city records show only 73.)
A secondary crane would then be erected on the roof of One57 to help dismantle the damaged crane.
Once the boom is secured, the mayor said, the city could begin to reopen surrounding streets and allow occupants back into nearby buildings. He did not give a timetable.
Though the dangling boom is among the most compelling spectacles in the aftermath of the storm, the greatest immediate danger may come from a less obvious element: the counterweights under the crane platform that normally balance the boom atop the slender tower on which it rises. That tower depends for its lateral stability on being tied to the building at intervals.
Since the boom has flipped over, the heavy loads at the very top of the tower are no longer in balance.
“The weights are so heavy, they put tremendous strain on the building tie-ins,” said Robert Stewart of RCS Consulting in South Plainfield, N.J., which advises the building industry on construction- and demolition-related problems. He said the entire dismantling operation would probably take months.
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Video From Red Hook, BrooklynStephen Farrell and Emma Cott, video journalists for The New York Times, reports from Red Hook, Brooklyn.
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Sharon Otterman and Michael ShearObama Tells Storm Victims, 'America Is With You'“America is with you,” President Obama told victims of the storm across the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast on Tuesday afternoon.
Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama spoke at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington on Tuesday.
“Obviously this is something that is heartbreaking for the entire nation,” Mr. Obama said, speaking at a Red Cross center in Washington. “We certainly feel profoundly for all the families whose lives have been upended and are going to be going through some very tough times over the next several days, and perhaps several weeks and months. The most important message I have for them is that America is with you. We are standing behind you, and we are going to do everything we can to help you get back on your feet.”
He praised local officials, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose state he will tour on Wednesday, for the “extraordinary work that they have done.” He added, “Were it not for the outstanding work that they and their teams have already done, and will continue to do in the affected regions, we could have seen more deaths and more property damage.”
He said he had told officials in the affected states, “If they are getting no for an answer somewhere in the federal government, they can call me personally at the White House,” adding: “My message to the federal government is no bureaucracy, no red tape. Get resources where they are needed as fast as possible, as hard as possible, and for the duration.”
Mr. Obama praised first responders to the disaster.
“During the darkness of the storm, I think we also saw what’s brightest in America,” he said. “We saw nurses at NYU Hospital carrying fragile newborns to safety; we’ve seen incredibly brave firefighters in Queens waist-deep in water battling infernos and rescuing people in boats.” He continued: “That kind of spirit of resilience and strength, but most importantly looking out for one another, that’s why we always bounce back from these kind of disasters.”
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The New York TimesOpen or Not in New York City: SupermarketsThree of seven Whole Foods supermarkets are open in New York City: Columbus Circle, East 57th Street and the Upper West Side.
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The New York TimesOpen or Not in Manhattan: Movie TheatersAll AMC movie theaters are closed.
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The New York TimesOpen or Not in Manhattan: Cultural AttractionsNew York Public Library: Closed
Broadway theaters: Closed
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters: Closed
Carnegie Hall: Closed
The Metropolitan Opera: Closed
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Michael ShearPresident Obama to Tour New JerseyOn Wednesday, President Obama will join Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in viewing damage of the storm, the White House announced on Tuesday.
Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama delivered a statement about Hurricane Sandy during a visit to the Red Cross on Tuesday in Washington.
Mr. Obama’s press secretary said the president would join Mr. Christie — who has been one of his harshest Republican critics — in talking with victims of the storm and thanking first responders.
Read more on The Caucus
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The New York TimesOpen or Not in Manhattan: SupermarketsAll Gristedes supermarkets are open.
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The New York TimesObama to Visit New JerseyPresident Obama will tour New Jersey on Wednesday with Gov. Chris Christie to assess the storm’s damage, the White House said.
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Flooding at La Guardia Airport
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Andy NewmanMore Than 8 Million U.S. Homes Without PowerAbout 8.5 million households from Maine to Michigan to North Carolina, representing about 7 percent of the country’s population, lacked power Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
Here are the state-by-state figures from The Associated Press:
*New Jersey: 2.5 million.
*New York: 2.3 million.
*Pennsylvania: 1.2 million.
*Connecticut: 615,000.
*Maryland: 290,000.
*Massachusetts: 290,000.
*West Virginia: 271,000.
*Ohio: 250,000.
*New Hampshire: 210,000.
*Virginia: 180,000.
*Rhode Island: 110,000.
*Maine: 86,000.
*Michigan: 79,000.
*Delaware: 45,000.
*Washington, D.C.: 25,000.
*Vermont: 10,000.
*North Carolina: 6,600.
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Andy NewmanTotal Death Toll at 38As searches revealed grim scenes up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the overall death toll from the storm had climbed to 38, officials said.
Here are the state-by-state totals, reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday afternoon, with two deaths not listed:
New York: 17
Pennsylvania: 5
New Jersey: 4
Connecticut: 3
Maryland: 2
Virginia: 2
West Virginia: 1
North Carolina: 1
Off the coast of North Carolina: 1
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The New York TimesCultural CancellationsFor those interested in finding out about cancellations of cultural events, the Arts Beat blog has an updated list.
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The New York TimesObama Signs Disaster DeclarationPresident Obama signed major disaster declarations for New York and New Jersey on Tuesday, authorizing the distribution of direct federal assistance to victims of Hurricane Sandy from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
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Sam DolnickCongressman's Home Burned Down in StormRepresentative Bob Turner’s home in Breezy Point, Queens, was one of dozens that burned down in the storm, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.
Uli Seit for The New York Times Bob Turner at his home in Breezy Point, Queens, in September 2011.
Mr. Turner, a Republican, was home when the fire broke out early Tuesday morning, but both he and his wife are safe, said Jessica Proud, who was a spokeswoman for his campaign. “They made it out safely. They were there well into the storm,” she said.
Michael R. Long, chairman of the state Conservative Party, had a home nearby that also burned down, Ms. Proud said. It was not his primary residence and he, too, was safe, she said.
The fire in Breezy Point, fueled by the storm’s unrelenting winds, reduced more than 80 homes to smoldering ash. Flooded streets in the area prevented firefighters from reaching the blaze, compounding the devastation.
“If you and I were trying to walk in waist-deep water, it’s difficult — now picture doing that to fight a fire. It’s incredibly difficult,” said Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the city’s Fire Department. “Very high winds were creating blow-torch effects on the blocks, spreading the fire around.”
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Kim SeversonBlizzard Conditions in AppalachiansThe freak winter storm that crashed into the tropical storm from the Atlantic brought as much of two feet of snow to Appalachian states, spreading blizzard or near-blizzard conditions over parts of Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, officials said.
J. Miles Cary/Knoxville News Sentinel, via Associated Press Hikers clear off snow on Tuesday in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.
The storm dumped what may well be a record amount of heavy, wet snow in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“Our average snowfall for the month of October is two inches, and now here we are at over 22 inches and we still have another day to go,” Dana Soehn, a park spokeswoman, said on Wednesday morning.
More than a foot had fallen at Newfound Gap, Tenn., a small community at about 5,000 feet near the Tennessee-North Carolina border, according to the National Weather Service.
A few inches of snow had fallen in higher elevations in other parts of eastern Tennessee, as well, and in parts of the North Carolina mountains near Asheville, N.C.
Wet snow and high winds spinning off the edge of the storm also spread blizzard conditions over parts of West Virginia and Maryland, The Associated Press reported.
The National Weather Service said a foot and more of snow was reported in lower elevations of West Virginia, while higher elevations were getting more than two feet, according to The A.P.
Authorities closed more than 45 miles of Interstate 68 on either side of the West Virginia-Maryland state line because of blizzard conditions and stuck cars.
Meanwhile, gusty winds from the storm continued to be felt in eastern Alabama and parts of Georgia, some of them topping 35 miles per hour.
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Andy Newman and Sharon OttermanBus Service by 5 P.M., Cuomo Says; J.F.K. Open TomorrowGov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said that officials expected limited, and free, New York City bus service to be restored by 5 p.m. today.
“Basically, a Sunday schedule,” he said. “Hopefully tomorrow, there will be full service on the buses.” No fares will be charged on the buses today or tomorrow.
The governor said that he also expected Kennedy International Airport to reopen tomorrow, though not La Guardia Airport, “due to extensive damage.”
Mr. Cuomo also said that the state’s death toll from the storm had climbed to 15.
Other highlights from the governor’s 11:30 a.m. briefing.
*Lower Manhattan flooding: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has sent its National Unwatering Team to drain out downtown, and is offering other assistance.
*Power: About two million families are without power, nearly half of them on Long Island.
*Bridges: All bridges reopened at noon today. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel will remain closed.
*Global warming: “Anyone who thinks that there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns is denying reality,” Mr. Cuomo said. “We have a new reality, and old infrastructures and old systems.”
*Reflections: “What I saw last night in downtown Manhattan, on the South Shore of Long Island were some of the worst conditions I have seen,” the governor said. “The Hudson was literally pouring into the ground zero site, with such a force that we were worried about the structure of the pit itself. The Hudson River was pouring into the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel like a river at high velocity. The response of the first responders was as courageous as anything I’ve seen. They were running right into the face of danger. If it wasn’t for their heroism, things would have been much worse.”
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Joseph BergerFalling Tree Kills 2 Westchester BoysNorth Salem is horse country, known for some multimillion-dollar estates owned by film stars and other celebrities, but it is also mainly a working-class town with many winterized bungalows, and it was on one of those wood-frame cottages that a tree downed by high winds crashed through the roof Monday night and killed two boys.
“I lost my son,” Valerie Baumler told Danny Seymour, the boy’s uncle, as she clasped him and cried. “I lost my son.”
Jack Baulmer, 11, a sixth-grader known as one of the best Little League baseball players in North Salem, and his best friend and neighbor down Bonnieview Street, Michael Robson, 13, were killed by the tree that tore through the roof of the one-room cottage. It is one of a number of modest homes on Peach Lake, some of which were once summer cottages. Two other boys who were also in the house while the storm raged outside were slightly injured. Ms. Baulmer was physically unscathed.
“We lost two beautiful young boys last night,” said Mr. Seymour, choking back tears, in an interview outside the Baulmer house. “Our hearts are broken. The pain is raw. We believe faith will carry us through. North Salem has a huge heart, and they will wrap their arms around thee two families. These two boys exemplify everything that’s best about America. We’re so proud to have them in our lives.”
Mr. Seymour was helping neighbors clear out furnishings from the house. It was so badly damaged that a police officer guarding the street said it might have to be demolished.
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