FIVE YEARS LATER
HE 18TH named storm of the 2012 hurricane season began Oct. 11 as a tropical wave off the west coast of Africa, an ocean away from Times Square. By the time the festering storm reached the mid-Caribbean 11 days later, it had become a tropical cyclone.
One week later, on Oct. 29, the natural disaster known now and forever as Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City with cataclysmic power, a meteorological monster unseen across the region since the lethal 1938 “Long Island Express.”
“Make no mistake about it: This was a devastating storm, maybe the worst we’ve ever experienced,” declared then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The rain was incessant, driven by deadly 80 mph winds that took down power lines and trees, flooded tunnels on Manhattan’s East and West Sides, and brought the perpetually hectic city to a terrifying standstill. The damage was immense: 44 New Yorkers dead, including eight drowned in their own homes — some whose neighbors heard their screams for help, but couldn’t reach them. Another 800,000 city residents were without power, and 700,000 tons of debris remained in the storm’s wake. Raging, oily waters flooded subway tunnels, paralyzing the nation’s busiest mass transit system. A power boat somehow landed in the middle of the Metro-North commuter line in Ossining. The streets were no better: 3,500 traffic lights were blown away. The Hugh Carey Tunnel flooded from top to bottom, with 45 million gallons of water pouring in from the inundated Battery. Even the New York Aquarium on Coney Island was flooded. “Unprecedented,” said Tom Prendergast, then the head of NYC Transit. “I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude.” He was right: Estimates of the total property damage run above $70 billion. A record 14-foot storm surge — 4 feet higher than the previous record — turned Water St. in lower Manhattan into a brackish roiling river wreaking havoc on everything in its path. One wave in New York Harbor was measured at a staggering 32½ feet. An NYPD rescue craft capsized at one point as officers