Tiny NYC beachfront burns in floodwaters
Damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point is shown Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in New York. A fire department spokesman says more than 190 firefighters are at the blaze in the Breezy Point section. Fire officials say the blaze was reported around 11 p.m. Monday in an area flooded by the superstorm that began sweeping through earlier. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Homes damaged by a fire at Breezy Point, in the New York City borough of Queens smolder Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
New York Police officers turn back traffic entering the Long Island City section in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, Oct. 29, 2012. Much of New York was plunged into darkness Monday by a superstorm that overflowed the city's historic waterfront, flooded the financial district and subway tunnels and cut power to nearly a million people. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point is shown Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, in the New York City borough of Queens. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
People assess damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point in the New York City borough of Queens Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in an area flooded by the superstorm that began sweeping through earlier. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Officials assess the damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point in the New York City borough of Queens, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in New York. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A landscape of destroyed homes is at Breezy Point, in the New York City borough of Queens Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A landscape of destroyed homes is at Breezy Point, in the New York City borough of Queens Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A man photographs a home damaged during a storm at Breezy Point in the New York City borough of Queens Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in an area flooded by the superstorm that began sweeping through earlier. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Keith Klein walks through homes damaged by a fire at Breezy Point in the New York City borough of Queens. Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in an area flooded by the superstorm that began sweeping through earlier. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A rainbow forms over Breezy Point in the New York City borough of Queens, in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in New York. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Eileen Blair, second from right, and Keith Klein, right, assess the damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point, in the New York City borough of Queens Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in New York. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
The New York skyline remains dark Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, as seen from the Williamsburg neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York. In an attempt to lessen damage from saltwater to the subway system and the electrical network beneath the city's financial district, New York City's main utility cut power to about 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan. But a far wider swath of the city was hit with blackouts caused by flooding and transformer explosions. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
The New York skyline remains dark Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, as seen from the Williamsburg neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York. In an attempt to lessen damage from saltwater to the subway system and the electrical network beneath the city's financial district, New York City's main utility cut power to about 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan. But a far wider swath of the city was hit with blackouts caused by flooding and transformer explosions. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point is shown Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in New York. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses in the flooded neighborhood. More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire in the Breezy Point section, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Damage caused by a fire at Breezy Point is shown Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, in in the New York City borough of Queen. The fire destroyed between 80 and 100 houses Monday night in the flooded neighborhood. More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire in the Breezy Point section, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
A fire burns at least two dozen homes in a flooded neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. A fire department spokesman says more than 190 firefighters are at the blaze in the Breezy Point section. Fire officials say the blaze was reported around 11 p.m. Monday in an area flooded by the superstorm that began sweeping through earlier. (AP Photo/Stephanie Keith)
This aerial photo shows burned-out homes in the Breezy Point section of the Queens borough New York after a fire on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. The tiny beachfront neighborhood told to evacuate before Sandy hit New York burned down as it was inundated by floodwaters, transforming a quaint corner of the Rockaways into a smoke-filled debris field. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
NEW YORK — A tiny beachfront neighborhood told to evacuate before Sandy hit New York burned down as it was inundated by floodwaters, transforming a quaint corner of the Rockaways into a smoke-filled debris field.
By Tuesday morning, charred foundations of from 80 to 100 buildings were left in the sand at Breezy Point, a coastal community on Jamaica Bay known for its marshland and shorebirds.
Firefighters arrived at 11 p.m.
Monday to find water chest-high in the streets, and used a boat to make rescues as orange flames engulfed home after home. The water and high winds whipping the coast from Sandy kept the blaze raging for several hours as firefighters hauled hoses while sloshing in ankle-high water.
“We watched the whole place go up in flames. It was hell night. It was the devil’s night,” said resident
Thomas Reicherter.
One firefighter suffered a minor injury and was taken to a hospital. Two civilians suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene.
Firefighters had to rescue several more, climbing onto an awning to take trapped people from an upstairs apartment with a roof that was catching fire from the house next door. A row of about 25 businesses, including a shoe repair store, burned with apartments above many of them.
More than 190 firefighters were sent to the blaze, still putting out some pockets more than nine hours after it erupted, training hoses on the inside of a medical center.
As daylight broke Tuesday, a stone statue that appeared to represent the Virgin Mary stood next to wooden slats and debris-caked mud, surrounded by no homes. Two logs not attached to anything crushed the top of a red Ford SUV. Residents walked aimlessly through water-filled streets with electrical wires dangling down in front of them.
The neighborhood was among the low-lying areas the mayor said were a flood danger a day before Sandy came ashore, shuttering the nation’s largest city and cutting power to hundreds of thousands. Gene Morizzo, a security guard at an ocean apartment complex in nearby Rockaway Park, said about half of the 300 or so residents insisted on staying behind, noting that Irene didn’t hit the shore hard a year ago amid the same warnings.
“I kept telling people it’s a mandatory evacuation. They said, ‘Oh it’s nothing, Irene this. Irene that.”
Residents couldn’t wait to get out on Tuesday. They were directed to a nearby firehouse in Far Rockaway, but that firehouse had been evacuated because it was under 5 feet of water and had no power.
John Frawley, 57, said he made a mistake by staying behind. “I stayed up all night,” he said. “The screams. The fire. It was horrifying.”
Frawley lived about five houses from the fire’s edge and said he spent the night terrified, “not knowing if the fire was going to jump the boulevard and come up to my house.”
In September, the same neighborhood was struck by a tornado that hurled debris in the air, knocked out power and startled residents who once thought of twisters as a Midwestern phenomenon.
The community of 12,000 borders Rockaway Park, where a historic boardwalk had been strewn around the sand, popped up in some spots like an opened can and heaved 30 to 40 feet in others. The beach’s lifeguard shack and restrooms were destroyed. Allison Miller stood on what was left of the buckled boardwalk in tears.
“My home is gone,” she said.
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