N.J. reels; NYC inches back

Thousands in Hoboken still trapped

Damaged houses sit Wednesday near a walkway ripped away by Hurricane Sandy in Seaside Heights on a narrow barrier island that is part of New Jersey’s shoreline. More photos are available at arkansasonline.com/galleries.
Damaged houses sit Wednesday near a walkway ripped away by Hurricane Sandy in Seaside Heights on a narrow barrier island that is part of New Jersey’s shoreline. More photos are available at arkansasonline.com/galleries.

— National Guard troops sought Wednesday to rescue thousands of people still trapped by sewage-laced floodwaters in this city on the Hudson River, as local officials pleaded for volunteers to help.

Large parts of Hoboken remained under several feet of water after most of the low-lying land on the west side fell victim to water swept in by Hurricane Sandy.

Across the river, New Yorkers took steps to get back to normal in the aftermath of the storm despite continuing power failures, a snarled transportation system and the shock of floods and fire.

Hoboken, a city of 50,000 people, is directly across the river from Manhattan, and many of its residents work in Manhattan.

When the storm surge hit Monday night, the Hudson River topped the sea wall at the north and south ends of Hoboken, in a devastating westward torrent that made an island of the slightly higher, eastern half of the city.

“This is flooding like we’ve never seen in Hoboken,” Mayor Dawn Zimmer said. “It filled the city like a bathtub.”

After Zimmer appealed for aid Tuesday, saying as many as 20,000 people could be trapped in their homes, the first National Guard trucks arrived just before midnight.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that 10,000 Army and Air Force National Guard personnel had been mobilized to provide support in the 13 states that were hit hardest by the storm.

It also said the Navy was sending three large-deck amphibious ships to waters off New York and New Jersey to assist in storm recovery and relief, and that the U.S. Transportation Command airlifted about 120 medical personnel to New York City to reinforce staff members providing care to nursing-home residents and at-risk elderly patients.

In Hoboken, National Guard trucks traveled along streets that were still passable on the west side, responding to people who waved from windows for help. By midday Wednesday, 12 National Guard trucks and two humvees were in the city for the rescue effort.

National Guard officials said they sent 2,000 emergency meals to the city and were prepared to distribute them.

Interviewed in the basement of City Hall, where rescue officials in a makeshift operations center were down to one working phone line Tuesday, Zimmer said the city had only a single pump station on the south end of town to drain its streets and, eventually, its basements. At its peak performance, that station can pump out 75 million gallons a day, she said, but that still means days, not hours, before the city can begin drying out.

The Hoboken fire chief, Richard Blohm, said two of the city’s fire stations were out of service, including his headquarters. On Monday night, he said, 5 feet of river water had surged into that station in five minutes, forcing the firefighters to evacuate to save their own lives.

Blohm said another fire station, including a hazardous-materials unit, had been damaged but might be back in service sometime Wednesday. There had been few fires, he said Wednesday, and city officials had not reported any fatalities.

Meanwhile, the full extent of the devastation on New Jersey’s delicate barrier islands was revealed Wednesday. Nearly all of the homes in wealthy enclaves such as Bayhead and Mantoloking were seriously damaged, and many were destroyed.

New Jersey has 127 miles of Atlantic Ocean shoreline. Most of the beach destinations, including famed spots such as Seaside Heights, Atlantic City and Wildwood, are on barrier islands that range in width from a few hundred feet to a couple of miles. The islands are so narrow that the bay met the ocean during the height of the storm, with water covering entire islands.

Bridges to many of the barrier islands buckled, preventing residents from even inspecting the damage to their properties.

Localities across New Jersey imposed curfews to prevent looting. In Monmouth, Ocean and other counties, people waited for hours for gasoline at the few stations that had electricity. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare.

Others parts of the Northeast also suffered significant losses. Across the region, the death toll rose to at least 72, and searchers continued looking for victims Wednesday.

New York struggled to get back to normal. Flights from its airports resumed, but slowly. The New York Stock Exchange got back to business, but on generator power. And with the subways still down, great numbers of people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said parts of the subway system would begin running again today, and that three of seven tunnels under the East River had been pumped free of water. However, Cuomo said there still would be no subway service in Manhattan south of 34th Street, an area that includes the city’s financial district and many tourist sites.

“We are going to need some patience and some tolerance,” Cuomo said.

Bus service was free Wednesday, and 330 buses were being put into service, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. But schedules were delayed, and New Yorkers packed aboard, crowding the buses so much that the vehicles skipped stops and rolled past hordes of waiting passengers.

Limited service also resumed Wednesday on two of the city’s commuter rail systems, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road.

The transportation agency said later Wednesday that it would waive fares for all the city’s functioning subways, buses and commuter rails today and Friday to help ease the storm recovery.

Electrical service was still off as far west as Wisconsin and as far south as the Carolinas. More than 6 million homes and businesses, including about 650,000 in New York City, were still without power Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Also, he said 500 patients were being evacuated from Bellevue Hospital because of storm damage. The hospital has run on generators since the storm knocked out power. About 300 patients were evacuated from another Manhattan hospital Monday after it lost generator power.

Bloomberg also canceled school in the city for the rest of the week.

Flights resumed at Kennedy and Newark airports on what authorities described as a very limited schedule. Nothing was taking off or landing at LaGuardia, which suffered the worst damage. Amtrak said trains would start running again in and out of New York City on Friday.

The United Nations Security Council held a makeshift meeting Wednesday as storm damage forced the world body to remain mostly inactive until the Secretariat Building’s partial re-opening today.

The council needed to meet Wednesday because the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Somalia was expiring. It voted to renew the force’s mandate for one week.

In Manhattan at night, it was possible to walk downtown along an avenue and move in an instant from a mostly normal New York scene — with delicatessens open and people milling outside bars — into darkness with only police flares marking intersections.

People who did have electricity took to social media to offer help to friends and neighbors.

“I have power and hot water. If anyone needs a shower or to charge some gadgets or just wants to bask in the beauty of artificial light, hit me up,” Rob Hart of Staten Island posted on Facebook.

Owners of a respected New York steakhouse in the blackout zone, Old Homestead, realized that the restaurant’s meat was going to go bad and decided to grill what was left and sell steaks on the sidewalk for $10. A center-cut sirloin usually goes for $47.

“Give back to the people of New York,” said Greg Sherry, the steakhouse’s co-owner. He said the restaurant had served nearly 700 people Wednesday.

In the nation’s capital, there were few signs left of the storm, as government workers packed onto commuter trains and tourists flocked to the National Mall.

The Potomac River was swollen and muddy after receiving 7 inches of rain from Sandy, but Washington was mostly spared the damage seen by other East Coast cities.

By Wednesday afternoon, storm and flood alerts lingered across parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, but the remnants of Sandy were weakening, forecasters said.

“It is more or less what they would say is officially dead,” said Rob Carolan, a meteorologist at Hometown Forecast Services Inc. in Nashua, N.H. “It is no longer a storm system.”

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The New York Times, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/01/2012

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