Last night, Hur­ri­cane Sandy — which is now being called Super­storm Sandy — made land­fall in New Jer­sey, near Atlantic City. The worst hours have now passed, but as news broad­casts show, Sandy’s arrival was every bit as destruc­tive as mete­o­rol­o­gists and local offi­cials had warned it could be.

Schools, air­ports, the New York Stock Exchange, pub­lic trans­porta­tion, and many busi­ness­es remained shut for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day as author­i­ties tried to assess the dam­age and get help to strand­ed indi­vid­u­als. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma signed dis­as­ter dec­la­ra­tions for New York and New Jer­sey last night, free­ing up addi­tion­al fed­er­al resources for storm response and recov­ery efforts.

The death toll from the storm cur­rent­ly stands at thirty-eight.

Sev­en­teen peo­ple were killed in New York, five in Penn­syl­va­nia, four in New Jer­sey, three in Con­necti­cut, and two each in Mary­land and Vir­ginia. One per­son was killed in West Vir­ginia and one in North Carolina.

An overnight fire in New York’s Breezy Point neigh­bor­hood destroyed at least eighty homes, includ­ing a home belong­ing to Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Bob Turner.

In Chelsea, the facade of a build­ing crum­bled to the street after hav­ing been sub­ject­ed to the ele­ments of the storm. In Mid­town, the storm col­lapsed a crane boom being used to con­struct a new high­rise build­ing, One57.

A fall­en tree in New York’s Asto­ria neigh­bor­hood (Pho­to: Explor­ing the Right Brain, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty pub­lished a lengthy advi­so­ry on its web­site warn­ing it would take days for the city’s mass tran­sit net­work to resume nor­mal oper­a­tions. Ser­vice will resume in stages, offi­cials predicted.

The MTA’s statement:

Thou­sands of MTA work­ers have begun to fan out through the sys­tem to inspect and begin repair of the dam­age caused by Hur­ri­cane Sandy, a mas­sive­ly destruc­tive storm of his­toric pro­por­tions.  In the peri­od of a few hours, sev­en East Riv­er sub­way tubes, two Long Island Rail Road tubes link­ing Man­hat­tan with Queens and two vehic­u­lar tun­nels were inun­dat­ed by a wall of water, along with one sub­way bridge, three sub­way yards and six bus depots. How­ev­er, there are some ear­ly signs of recovery.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuo­mo announced that five of the MTA’s sev­en bridges, the Robert F. Kennedy, Ver­razano-Nar­rows, Bronx-White­stone, Throgs Neck and Hen­ry Hud­son bridges, were ful­ly inspect­ed and reopened at noon. The two Rock­away bridges, Cross Bay Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al and Marine Park­way-Gil Hodges bridges, and the Hugh L. Carey and Queens Mid­town Tun­nel remain closed.

The gov­er­nor also announced par­tial restora­tion of bus ser­vice at 5 p.m. Bus­es will oper­ate on a fare-free basis and on a Sun­day sched­ule. A full sched­ule is expect­ed for Wednes­day. Rides will con­tin­ue to be fare-free. “Our trans­porta­tion sys­tem has nev­er faced a dis­as­ter as dev­as­tat­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy, which has caused an unpar­al­leled lev­el of dam­age,” said MTA Chair­man Joseph J. Lho­ta after inspect­ing many of the hard­est-hit areas.  “The chal­lenge that we face now is one of assess­ment, inspec­tion, repair, and restora­tion. This will not be a short process, but it will be one that puts safe­ty as its major focus.”

The pow­er­ful storm affect­ed ser­vice through­out the MTA ser­vice region.  Metro-North Rail­road lost elec­tric pow­er from 59th Street to Cro­ton-Har­mon on the Hud­son Line and east to New Haven on the New Haven Line. The Long Island Rail Road sus­tained dam­age in its West Side Yards and suf­fered flood­ing in two East Riv­er tunnels.

Bridges and Tun­nels also suf­fered major dam­age with flood­ing of the Hugh L. Carey Tun­nel from end to end and the Queens Mid­town Tun­nel also tak­ing on water.  Six bus depots sit­u­at­ed in low-lying areas were also dis­abled by high water.  The MTA and its oper­at­ing agen­cies have begun the lengthy process of assess­ment and repair.  Dam­age has been extreme­ly heavy in down­town Man­hat­tan where sev­er­al sub­way lines con­verge.  The South Fer­ry sta­tion is filled track to ceil­ing with water as are sev­er­al of the sub­way tunnels.

It is too ear­ly to say how long it will take to restore the sys­tem to full ser­vice. There is a sep­a­rate process that must be fol­lowed for each divi­sion.  Bridges and Tun­nels’ two Rock­away bridges did not suf­fer any major dam­age but remain closed due to flood­ing in the sur­round­ing adja­cent road­ways and neigh­bor­hoods. Water remains in both the Queens Mid­town and Hugh L. Carey tun­nels. Once water lev­els sub­side, the water must be pumped out and the tun­nels thor­ough­ly inspect­ed by engi­neers. Sub­way trains and bus­es must be inspect­ed along with 5,600 bus­es, 6,200 sub­way cars, 600 miles of tracks and 468 sub­way sta­tions.  Metro-North Rail­road and the Long Island Rail Road must take a close look at hun­dreds of miles of tracks, switch­es, rail­road cross­ing and cars and locomotives.

At first light today, Metro-North dis­patched diesel-pow­er patrol trains on all three lines, Hud­son, Harlem and New Haven, to inspect tracks and remove fall­en trees along the way.  In Ossin­ing, they encoun­tered a 40-foot boat block­ing the tracks. Car­ry­ing track work­ers with chain saws, sig­nal main­tain­ers and pow­er depart­ment per­son­nel, the trains made slow progress as they encoun­tered numer­ous trees snapped and lying across the tracks and hung up in the over­head cate­nary wires that pow­er the New Haven Line.

In some cas­es, the wires were torn town.  Else­where, heavy trees have crushed the third rails that pow­er Hud­son and Harlem line trains.  How­ev­er, on a pos­i­tive note, shops and yards in New Haven and Stam­ford appear to have been unscathed by the storm.

This is will be an exhaus­tive, time-con­sum­ing process with one goal: to restore safe and effi­cient ser­vice to 8.5 mil­lion dai­ly MTA cus­tomers.  It must be not­ed, how­ev­er, that this process could have tak­en much longer had we not tak­en the pre-emp­tive mea­sure of sus­pend­ing all ser­vice to safe­guard our equip­ment and pre­pare facil­i­ties to the best of our ability.

Chair­man Lho­ta added, “Our employ­ees have shown remark­able ded­i­ca­tion over the past few days, and I thank them on behalf of every New York­er. Our employ­ees have nev­er faced a chal­lenge like the one that con­fronts us now. All of us at the MTA are com­mit­ted to restor­ing the sys­tem as quick­ly as we can to help bring New York back to normal.”

All three of New York’s major air­ports remained closed on Tues­day, though Port Author­i­ty offi­cials sug­gest­ed JFK might reopen on Wednes­day. Both JFK and LaGuardia saw flood­ing last night as Sandy came ashore. Jet­Blue’s cor­po­rate blog has post­ed pic­tures of some of the flood­wa­ters at LaGuardia.

Broad­way shows and per­for­mances were can­celled for Tues­day, but many the­aters and con­cert halls announced that they would be open for busi­ness tomorrow.