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| FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012 file photo, a firefighter leaves the destroyed home in Pasadena, Md where Donald Cannata Sr. was killed overnight when a tree fell on it during superstorm Sandy. |
Death blew in on the
superstorm's wild winds and sea water torrents, claiming 90-year-olds
and children with capriciously toppling trees, taking tall-ship
adventurers in mountainous Atlantic waves and average folks just trying
to deal with a freakish snowstorm. It felled both heroes rushing into
harm's way and, ironically, people simply following advice to play it
safe at home.
At least 63 died as the
shape-shifting hurricane and winter storm ravaged the eastern U.S., and
searchers continued looking for victims Wednesday.
In
New York City, a college student went out to take pictures in the
borough of Queens and was electrocuted by a downed power line, while
across town on Staten Island, an off-duty policeman drowned after moving
his family to safety.
Lauren Abraham, who
went by the nickname LolaDiva on YouTube, was a makeup artist who worked
out of a studio in her parents' Queens home. The recent beauty school
graduate was studying at City University of New York's Lehman College,
according to her Facebook page. "In her time of reflection she learned
to find the beauty in even the darkest situations," her online bio
reads.
As the superstorm ravaged New York and
floodwater surged into his Staten Island house Monday evening, off-duty
NYPD officer Artur Kasprzak, 28, shepherded six adult relatives and a
baby to the attic.
Then, according to police,
Kasprzak, a six-year veteran of the force, told one of the women he was
going to check the basement. When he didn't return, she called 911.
Police came quickly with a SCUBA unit, but couldn't access the home
because power lines had fallen into the water.
"He
went to the basement. And the water just started washing in," his
sister Marta told the Daily News. "He was pushed into a window. ... The
water just kept coming in."
Bunting draped a
firehouse in Easton, Conn., honoring another first responder who rushed
to help. Lt. Russell Neary was killed when an enormous tree crashed down
on his fire truck as he and others tried to clear storm debris.
"We're
a small volunteer department, and so everybody knew everybody," said
Casey Meskers, the department vice president. Neary was the president.
An insurance executive, he had volunteered for 13 years, and also helped
with his children's sports teams.
"We've been
on the soccer fields with each other with our kids," Meskers said
Wednesday. "There's been a lot of tears shed, I'll tell you."
So many times, trees and heavy limbs that fell to the storm's powerful gusts left mourners along its path.
Two
people died when a tree fell on their vehicle in Morris County, N.J.,
and many others perished inside homes, where they thought they'd be safe
- from North Salem, N.Y., where two boys, 11 and 13, were killed when a
tree fell on their home, to Pasadena, Md.
Donald
Cannata Sr., 73, was at home in Pasadena, a leafy suburb between
Baltimore and Annapolis, when the storm knocked a large tree into his
house. The retired civil engineer lived alone with his cat and dog and
had stepped into the kitchen just when the tree fell.
He
loved photography and opera and was considerate, hardworking and
selfless, said his son, Donald Jr., an opinion shared by neighbors.
Cannata's son said his father's death "shook me so to the core," partly
because they had talked about taking down the tree.
"We talked about it so many times. I said, `Pop, the tree's getting pretty old,'" Cannata said.
An
elderly man trimming a tree in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County was
killed when a limb broke and fell on him, authorities said.
A
limb fall also killed John Rose Sr. as he and his wife checked fences
on his snow-covered 100-acre farm near Philippi, W.Va., on Tuesday. The
storm had dumped about seven inches of snow in the region, where Rose
was a Republican candidate for the House of Delegates. He had traveled
to Charleston regularly to lobby lawmakers on farming and other issues,
and he hoped to continue making the trip as a member.
Rose, 60, had previously run a power-washing business and worked as a coal miner, his son George Rose said.
"The whole county knew him," he said.
The
storm's blizzard threat was still far off when, churning in the
relatively warm Atlantic off Cape Hatteras, N.C., on Monday, Hurricane
Sandy engulfed the replica tall ship HMS Bounty. The ship, which was
featured in the films "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," took on water and eventually went down.
Coast Guard rescuers saved most of the 17 crew members, but a search continues for the ship's captain, Robin Wallbridge.
Swept
overboard with him was Claudene Christian, 42, who said she was a
direct descendant of the man who led the infamous 1789 mutiny on the
real HMS Bounty. In the 1962 Bounty film, Marlon Brando starred as lead
mutineer Fletcher Christian.
Searchers found
Christian - a novice sailor who was wearing an orange survival suit -
unresponsive in the water late Monday, about eight nautical miles from
where the Bounty sank. She was flown by helicopter to a hospital on the
mainland, where she was pronounced dead.
A
marketing specialist, she had lived in Alaska, Oklahoma and California.
She was a member of the University of Southern California cheering
squad, the Song Girls, from 1989 to 1991, said coach Lori Nelson.
"Claudene will always be remembered for her energetic and bubbly
personality on and off the field," the team posted on its Facebook page.
Endless accidents that would be described as freak twists of fate spun off from the superstorm.
Eugene
"Rusty" Brooks, 42, of Woodstock, N.H., died Tuesday morning when a
hillside construction site in the state's White Mountains collapsed
beneath him. Brooks, owner of Pemmi Contracting, had been preparing a
cellar on a home site on Loon Mountain in the ski resort town of
Lincoln, said Police Chief Ted Smith. The cellar hole had filled up with
rain from Sandy, and Brooks had just thrown a hose in to drain it off
when the ground gave way.
"The retaining wall
just liquefied with him standing there," Smith said. "He washed down
with all the boulders, mud and water into the street."
When police and rescue workers arrived, they found a bystander performing CPR on Brooks, who could not be revived.
"It
just basically was a freak, bizarre accident," the chief said. "It
could have given way prior to him being there or afterwards."
The
massive storm's unrelenting stress was blamed as a contributor to death
by some loved ones, and in other cases the paralyzing wind and water
compounded medical problems.
An Atlantic City, N.J., woman had a heart attack while she was being evacuated on Monday, officials reported.
In
Pennsylvania's Lehigh County, an 86-year-old woman was pronounced dead
of hypothermia after being found unresponsive in her yard following
exposure to the storm, and a 48-year-old woman died of carbon monoxide
poisoning in her home, the coroner's office reported.
A
90-year-old woman also died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a
generator in the Philadelphia area, one of two claimed by the storm at
age 90. The other was a Mansfield, Conn., woman who neighbors said left
her home after a small tree snapped and was killed by a larger one.
In
New York City, Herminia St. John, a 75-year-old grandmother of 14 who
suffered from congestive heart failure and diabetes, died after her
oxygen machine lost power and a backup failed. Her grandson, Claudio St.
John, rushed into the street and tried unsuccessfully to flag down an
ambulance. Finally, he went around the corner to Bellevue Hospital,
where his mother worked as a food supervisor for 30 years. But by the
time someone came it was too late.
"I hugged
her and she hugged and kissed me," Elsa St. John, 54, told the Daily
News. "She asked me to turn her to the window and she was gone."
