Plea for the Fifth

October 29, 2012

Hurricane Sandy made landfall in the United States about 8 p.m, with winds of 80 mph. A full moon made high tides 20 percent higher than normal and amplified Sandy's storm surge.

53 people died across NYC
Nearly Half of them - 24 on Staten Island

The square mile of Midland Avenue to Seaview Avenue from Hylan Blvd to Father Capodanno Blvd was the very hardest hit with 11 fatalities. — the highest concentration of deaths in the United States attributable to the storm, which killed more than 100 people across the country. Most lived alone, and one John Paterno, 65, had cerebral palsy and, paralyzed from the waist down and legally blind, was largely bedridden.

A 79-year-old widow and mother of six, Beatrice Spagnuolo, was in her small home on Grimsby Street in Midland Beach as the storm approached. She had survived colon cancer, but she was frail. Her next-door neighbor was her best friend, practically family.

Her daughter helped her into their car and was pulling away from the house. Then the mother told her to stop.

“Let me go get my pills,” she told her daughter. She went back inside. A huge wave struck the block. “All the lights went black,” Mr. Spagnuolo said, repeating what his sister later told the family. “There were wires from the telephone pole, electrocuting. Sparks.”

When the waters receded, Ms. Spagnuolo’s body was found in the house. Next door, her old friend, Anastasia Rispoli, 73, was dead, too.

A 67 year old Eugene Contrubis on Kiswick Street heard the many warnings about Hurricane Sandy but decided to ride it out in his drafty, one-story bungalow at 162 Kiswick Street. Eugene talked by phone with his brother-in-law. The wind had felled some branches, he reported, nothing more. But around 6:45 p.m., water from Lower New York Bay breached the beachfront road and poured into Mr. Contrubis’s neighborhood, knocking out power and eventually swallowing entire blocks.

At some point, Mr. Contrubis left a message on the voice mail of his sister, Christina Contrubis.

“The water’s coming in,” he said softly.

His body was found in his house the next day.

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