The New York Times: Staten Island Was Tragic Epicenter of Storm’s Casualties
By JAMES BARRON, JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and KIRK SEMPLE
Published: November 1, 2012Enlarge This Image
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
A house was swept by the storm into a marsh in the Oakwood neighborhood of Staten Island.
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Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Thousands of homes on Staten Island were searched for the dead and survivors, including this house, swept into a marsh in Oakwood. Neighbors helped recover items from the house.
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
Glenda and Damian Moore, whose two sons were swept away from her after her S.U.V. stalled as she tried to escape the storm.
Among the dead were two little boys. One, a 2-year-old, was swept out of his mother’s arms in a surge of water on Monday night.
In all, the death toll from the storm in the United States and Canada reached 95, with 48 deaths in New York State, 40 of them in the city. Twelve deaths have been reported in New Jersey and four in Connecticut. The storm also killed at least 69 people in the Caribbean before it whipped toward the Northeast, including at least 54 in Haiti and 11 in Cuba.
The New York Fire Department said Thursday that with help from search and rescue teams from three other states, firefighters had searched thousands of homes and buildings in Queens and on Staten Island, including more than 19,000 in the Rockaways and Howard Beach in Queens. Firefighters found no bodies or survivors in those Queens communities on Thursday, and were expected to end their search there.
The door-to-door canvass was personal for many. More than 600 active-duty members of the department live in the Rockaways, said Sean Johnson, a department spokesman.
“We realized we were bumping into people we know,” Mr. Johnson said, “so there’s a bit of emotion that was involved in this assignment.”
Thousands more buildings were searched on the shore of Staten Island, where search teams from Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia joined city firefighters in going from what was left of one house to the next, hoping against hope to find survivors of the storm, not victims. But with each new discovery, it became apparent that Staten Island would be the city’s tragic epicenter of casualties: 19 of the 40 victims have been found here.
The search crews knocked on doors, asked neighbors whether they knew the whereabouts of people who did not answer and checked for dangerous structural or utility issues. To avoid adding to security problems, they did not break down doors, Mr. Johnson said.
The police found the little boys’ bodies in the cattails at the end of a dead-end street. The police said their mother, Glenda Moore, 39, had packed them into her blue sport utility vehicle and was trying to flee the storm by driving to her sister’s home in Brooklyn.
The storm thwarted her getaway, first by stalling the engine, the police said.
Ms. Moore managed to step out of the S.U.V., taking 2-year-old Brendan in her arms and leading 4-year-old Connor by the hand. But a wave slammed into them, driving her and Brendan into the marsh and breaking her hold on Connor’s hand. Another wave carried him away moments later.
About six miles away, rescuers searching a wooded lot found the bodies of an 89-year-old man and his 66-year-old wife on Thursday; the couple had lived less than 500 yards away. The police said the lot was still “overrun with water” and that sudden flooding could have kept them from escaping in their car during the storm.
“Their car had been gone from the driveway,” the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. “We thought they may have left or attempted to leave Staten Island.”
By night’s end, rescuers had concluded their efforts, and were also expected to end the search in Staten Island.
That the borough was the scene for so much loss of life had a lot to do with the storm’s path and the island’s own evolution, and what happened was not entirely a surprise to Staten Islanders like Dr. William J. Fritz, the interim president of the CUNY College of Staten Island, and Dr. Alan I. Benimoff, a geology lecturer there.
Dr. Benimoff said Staten Island was in the wrong place at the wrong time for a storm that scored a perpendicular hit on the New Jersey coast. “That put Staten Island in the bull’s eye” for the surge, he said. “The water didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Dr. Fritz said Staten Island no longer had “what I like to call sponges, that absorb the energy of hurricanes.”
“Jamaica Bay is a natural sponge with dunes and marshes that can do that,” he said. “Barrier islands in North Carolina did that. What have we done on Staten Island? We’ve hardscaped our sponge. We’ve made roads and parking lots and houses and paved over the sponge. We’ve created an urban area, and you no longer have a sponge.”
Dr. Fritz said the development was “one of the reasons we have that much property destruction, and I think some of the deaths.”
Among the 19 dead were two neighbors who drowned in their homes, on Grimsby Street. Beatrice Spagnuolo, 79, a truck driver’s widow, had lived in her green single-story cottage for most of her life, according to her daughter Lucy, 45, who on Thursday was cleaning out debris at the house.
Lucy Spagnuolo said she was there with her mother when the storm hit. As the water rose, Lucy ran outside to start the car, but the water was already high and the engine would not turn over. She said she waded down the block in chest-high water, looking for help. Her mother remained inside.
Then a power line fell. “I panicked,” Lucy Spagnuolo said.
She could not make it back to the house.
Lucy Spagnuolo’s brother Vincent, also 45, said he had called his mother on Monday afternoon and told her to leave. “She was getting her things — her medication, for her heart,” he said. “She was getting her things to leave, and didn’t have time.” He said that another brother tried to reach the house, but by then the water was neck deep. A grandson who is a police sergeant also made an attempt, Vincent Spagnuolo said.
“She just couldn’t get out,” he said.
The victim next door was identified as Anastasia Rispoli, 73, a good friend of Mrs. Spagnuolo’s. She, too, had moved there before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964.
“When they first started building up the beach community in Staten Island, that’s when those houses were built,” said Vincent Spagnuolo’s wife, Donna. “You could well imagine, settling in Staten Island 50 years ago, it was all country.”
The storm also claimed the lives of a father and son: John K. Filipowicz, 51, and John C. Filipowicz, 20. Suzanne Santiago, the sister of the father, said the men were found together in the basement of their home on Foxbeach Avenue.
“They were hugging each other,” Ms. Santiago said on Thursday. She said her brother was a Marine who loved his home, and did not want to leave despite the mandatory evacuation order.
“They were supposed to evacuate but quite a few people down there had stayed,” she said. “But my brother, being a Marine, figured it was not going to be that intense.”
By JAMES BARRON, JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and KIRK SEMPLE
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
A house was swept by the storm into a marsh in the Oakwood neighborhood of Staten Island.
Live Updates
New York Area Services
Related
Gasoline Runs Short, Adding Woes to Storm Recovery (November 2, 2012)
At Bellevue, a Desperate Fight to Ensure the Patients’ Safety(November 2, 2012)
.
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Thousands of homes on Staten Island were searched for the dead and survivors, including this house, swept into a marsh in Oakwood. Neighbors helped recover items from the house.
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
Glenda and Damian Moore, whose two sons were swept away from her after her S.U.V. stalled as she tried to escape the storm.
Among the dead were two little boys. One, a 2-year-old, was swept out of his mother’s arms in a surge of water on Monday night.
In all, the death toll from the storm in the United States and Canada reached 95, with 48 deaths in New York State, 40 of them in the city. Twelve deaths have been reported in New Jersey and four in Connecticut. The storm also killed at least 69 people in the Caribbean before it whipped toward the Northeast, including at least 54 in Haiti and 11 in Cuba.
The New York Fire Department said Thursday that with help from search and rescue teams from three other states, firefighters had searched thousands of homes and buildings in Queens and on Staten Island, including more than 19,000 in the Rockaways and Howard Beach in Queens. Firefighters found no bodies or survivors in those Queens communities on Thursday, and were expected to end their search there.
The door-to-door canvass was personal for many. More than 600 active-duty members of the department live in the Rockaways, said Sean Johnson, a department spokesman.
“We realized we were bumping into people we know,” Mr. Johnson said, “so there’s a bit of emotion that was involved in this assignment.”
Thousands more buildings were searched on the shore of Staten Island, where search teams from Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia joined city firefighters in going from what was left of one house to the next, hoping against hope to find survivors of the storm, not victims. But with each new discovery, it became apparent that Staten Island would be the city’s tragic epicenter of casualties: 19 of the 40 victims have been found here.
The search crews knocked on doors, asked neighbors whether they knew the whereabouts of people who did not answer and checked for dangerous structural or utility issues. To avoid adding to security problems, they did not break down doors, Mr. Johnson said.
The police found the little boys’ bodies in the cattails at the end of a dead-end street. The police said their mother, Glenda Moore, 39, had packed them into her blue sport utility vehicle and was trying to flee the storm by driving to her sister’s home in Brooklyn.
The storm thwarted her getaway, first by stalling the engine, the police said.
Ms. Moore managed to step out of the S.U.V., taking 2-year-old Brendan in her arms and leading 4-year-old Connor by the hand. But a wave slammed into them, driving her and Brendan into the marsh and breaking her hold on Connor’s hand. Another wave carried him away moments later.
About six miles away, rescuers searching a wooded lot found the bodies of an 89-year-old man and his 66-year-old wife on Thursday; the couple had lived less than 500 yards away. The police said the lot was still “overrun with water” and that sudden flooding could have kept them from escaping in their car during the storm.
“Their car had been gone from the driveway,” the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. “We thought they may have left or attempted to leave Staten Island.”
By night’s end, rescuers had concluded their efforts, and were also expected to end the search in Staten Island.
That the borough was the scene for so much loss of life had a lot to do with the storm’s path and the island’s own evolution, and what happened was not entirely a surprise to Staten Islanders like Dr. William J. Fritz, the interim president of the CUNY College of Staten Island, and Dr. Alan I. Benimoff, a geology lecturer there.
Dr. Benimoff said Staten Island was in the wrong place at the wrong time for a storm that scored a perpendicular hit on the New Jersey coast. “That put Staten Island in the bull’s eye” for the surge, he said. “The water didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Dr. Fritz said Staten Island no longer had “what I like to call sponges, that absorb the energy of hurricanes.”
“Jamaica Bay is a natural sponge with dunes and marshes that can do that,” he said. “Barrier islands in North Carolina did that. What have we done on Staten Island? We’ve hardscaped our sponge. We’ve made roads and parking lots and houses and paved over the sponge. We’ve created an urban area, and you no longer have a sponge.”
Dr. Fritz said the development was “one of the reasons we have that much property destruction, and I think some of the deaths.”
Among the 19 dead were two neighbors who drowned in their homes, on Grimsby Street. Beatrice Spagnuolo, 79, a truck driver’s widow, had lived in her green single-story cottage for most of her life, according to her daughter Lucy, 45, who on Thursday was cleaning out debris at the house.
Lucy Spagnuolo said she was there with her mother when the storm hit. As the water rose, Lucy ran outside to start the car, but the water was already high and the engine would not turn over. She said she waded down the block in chest-high water, looking for help. Her mother remained inside.
Then a power line fell. “I panicked,” Lucy Spagnuolo said.
She could not make it back to the house.
Lucy Spagnuolo’s brother Vincent, also 45, said he had called his mother on Monday afternoon and told her to leave. “She was getting her things — her medication, for her heart,” he said. “She was getting her things to leave, and didn’t have time.” He said that another brother tried to reach the house, but by then the water was neck deep. A grandson who is a police sergeant also made an attempt, Vincent Spagnuolo said.
“She just couldn’t get out,” he said.
The victim next door was identified as Anastasia Rispoli, 73, a good friend of Mrs. Spagnuolo’s. She, too, had moved there before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964.
“When they first started building up the beach community in Staten Island, that’s when those houses were built,” said Vincent Spagnuolo’s wife, Donna. “You could well imagine, settling in Staten Island 50 years ago, it was all country.”
The storm also claimed the lives of a father and son: John K. Filipowicz, 51, and John C. Filipowicz, 20. Suzanne Santiago, the sister of the father, said the men were found together in the basement of their home on Foxbeach Avenue.
“They were hugging each other,” Ms. Santiago said on Thursday. She said her brother was a Marine who loved his home, and did not want to leave despite the mandatory evacuation order.
“They were supposed to evacuate but quite a few people down there had stayed,” she said. “But my brother, being a Marine, figured it was not going to be that intense.”
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