Water Everywhere, and the Damage Is Just as Ubiquitous

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

A tree pushed over by high winds took power lines with it on Newtown Lane.

The blue skies over East Hampton on Tuesday were clear of any trace of a hurricane. Only the balmy breeze, heady with the scent of fir, elm and maple sap hinted at the storm's destruction; it came from scores of toppled trees and hundreds of snapped branches. Many limbs yanked down telephone and electrical wires as they fell; some crashed into houses.

On Cooper Lane in East Hampton, crews with chain saws tackled felled trees, including one, more than 40 feet tall, that toppled when the wind kicked up the day before. Underneath it was 33 Cooper Lane, its roof smashed. “I felt a shudder in the house, and it came down,” said Taylor Smith, who lives a few doors down.

As of Monday afternoon, more than 40,000 people from Southampton to Montauk, at the very tip of Long Island, were without power, according to the Long Island Power Authority.

On Georgica Beach, a passer-by made a grisly discovery on Tuesday morning: the body of a woman, washed up on the beach. The woman has not been identified.

West Lake Drive, on the edge of Long Island Sound in Montauk, was unrecognizable. The road, buckled in parts, could not be seen; it was completely covered in thick sand and rubble. Boats in Montauk Harbor, which had floated to the top of the pilings as the water rose several feet overnight, straining their moorings, had settled back down with the tide.

Two police cars guarded the foot of Gerard Drive, a spindly 1.5-mile-long cape bounded by Gardiners Bay on one side and Accabonac Harbor on the other. Every few minutes, residents drove up, anxious about the fate of their homes. Every house still stood, the police said, but it was not safe to return: the peninsula had been breached, and parts of the road were washed out.

“You come down here and you just don't know if there is going to be a house,” said Mary Trabona, after the police had confirmed that her childhood home was still standing, “or if the bay will have reclaimed it.”

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

Concetta Zagami was rescued from her home in Dongon Hills by the Police Department's Emergency Service Unit.

Pedro Correa, 36, and Robert Gavars, 35, stood on the edge of a sodden field in the Oakwood section of Staten Island and assessed their luck.

The area before them was littered with parts of houses, including Mr. Correa's.

When the storm struck on Monday, his home had been about 500 yards farther east. So had the two men.

Earlier Monday, Mr. Correa, who has lived in the neighborhood for six years, had evacuated his family to Brooklyn.

But he and Mr. Gavars, a close friend, returned to Mr. Correa's house to set up a generator. When they tried to leave about 7 p.m., their car stalled in high water. So they decided to ride out the storm at the house, a two-story building.

But the surge began to swallow it.

They scrambled to the top floor, but within 15 minutes the water level went from ankle-high to chin-high.

They broke the legs off a dining room table and tried to use the tabletop to float, but that did not work.

A neighbor's house had been knocked off its foundation and began floating by, so they leapt to its roof from Mr. Correa's house.

It was pitch black and they had no idea where they were, but they sensed they were heading inland.

After perhaps 45 minutes, they dropped from the roof and used boards to push themselves through debris and 15-foot-deep water to higher land.

“Somebody opened up a door in a house and we sat there for a while,” said Mr. Correa, a correction officer at Sing Sing prison and an Army veteran.

“I made it through Iraq, I made it through the World Trade Center,” he said, “but I didn't think I'd make it through this.”