Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Keith Klein and Eileen Blair among homes destroyed by fire in the Breezy Point section of Queens. More Photos ?
The New York region began the daunting process on Tuesday of rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a storm that remade the landscape and rewrote the record books as it left behind a tableau of damage, destruction and grief.
The toll ? in lives disrupted or lost and communities washed out ? was staggering. A rampaging fire reduced more than 100 houses to ash in Breezy Point, Queens. Explosions and downed power lines left the lower part of Manhattan and 90 percent of Long Island in the dark. The New York City subway system ? a lifeline for millions ? was paralyzed by flooded tunnels and was expect to remain silent for days.
Accidents claimed more than 40 lives in the United States and Canada, including 22 in the city. Two boys ? an 11-year-old Little League star and a 13-year-old friend ? were killed when a 90-foot-tall tree smashed into the family room of a house in North Salem, N.Y. An off-duty police officer who led seven relatives, including a 15-month-old boy, to safety in the storm drowned when he went to check on the basement.
On Tuesday, the storm slogged toward the Midwest, vastly weaker than it was when it made landfall in New Jersey on Monday night. It delivered rain and high winds all the way to the Great Lakes, where freighters were at a standstill in waves two stories tall. It left snow in Appalachia, power failures in Maine and untreated sewage pouring into the Patuxent River in Maryland after a treatment plant lost power.
President Obama approved disaster declarations for New York and New Jersey, making them eligible for federal assistance for rebuilding. ?All of us have been shocked by the force of mother nature,? said the president, who plans to visit New Jersey on Wednesday. He promised ?all available resources? for recovery efforts.
?This is going to take some time,? he said. ?It is not going to be easy for these communities to recover.?
There was no immediate estimate of the losses from the storm, but the scope of the damage ? covering more than a half-dozen states ? pointed to billions of dollars. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey called it ?incalculable.?
Rescuers looked for survivors in the wet rubble in places like Atlantic City, and state and local officials surveyed wreckage. Utility crews began working their way through a wilderness of fallen trees and power lines. And from Virginia to Connecticut, there were stories of tragedy and survival ? of people who lost everything when the water rushed in, of buildings that crumbled after being pounded hour after hour by rain and relentless wind, of hospitals that had to be evacuated when the storm knocked out the electricity.
The president spoke with 20 governors and mayors on a conference call, and the White House said the president would survey damage from the storm with Mr. Christie on Wednesday. Mr. Obama?s press secretary said the president would join Mr. Christie, who has been one of his harshest Republican critics, in talking with storm victims and thanking first responders.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Mr. Obama had also offered to visit the city, ?but I think the thing for him to do is to go to New Jersey and represent the country.?
Connecticut, New Jersey and New York reopened many closed roads and bridges, and the New York Stock Exchange made plans to resume floor trading on Wednesday after a two-day shutdown, its first because of weather since a blizzard in 1888.
There were no traffic signals on the walk from Fifth Avenue to the East River. Police officers were directing traffic; here and there, bodegas were open, selling batteries and soft drinks. In Times Square, a few tourists walked around, though some hotels still had sandbags by the doors.
Mr. Bloomberg said 7,000 trees had been knocked down in city parks. ?Stay away from city parks,? he said. ?They are closed until further notice.?
The mayor also said that trick-or-treating was fine for Halloween, but the parade in Greenwich Village had been postponed. The organizers said it was the first time in the parade?s 39-year-history that it had been called off.
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