Irene Leaves Behind Tales of Death

By VANESSA O'CONNELL, DIONNE SEARCEY and DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON As Hurricane Irene plowed toward the Northeast around midnight last Saturday, Celena Sylvestri, a 20-year-old music-education student in New Jersey, decided to drive to her boyfriend's home before the storm hit. The trip should have taken 20 minutes. Instead, at 12:51 a.m., Ms. Sylvestri dialed 911 in a state of severe distress, according to county 911 records. She told the dispatcher at the Salem County, N.J., department of emergency services that she had suddenly driven <a href="http://www.monclercoats-discount.com"><strong>moncler discount</strong></a> into deep water while traveling on Route 40 in Woodstown. She wasn't certain exactly where she was. The stream was pouring into her car and had already reached her neck. The line went dead just as she told the dispatcher that water had begun flowing over the top of the car. Her plea for help began a sequence of heroic, and at times highly risky, decisions over the ensuing eight hours that pressed to its absolute limit the emergency-response capacity of one corner of southern New Jersey. Ms. Sylvestri's life was lost, but another victim of the same flood was saved shortly after. Across the swath of the Eastern seaboard pummeled by Hurricane Irene and its remnants, at least 45 people died. Many, like 11-year-old Zahir Robinson in Newport News, Va., were the tragic victims of Irene's demonstrations of power. Zahir was napping with his mother in their apartment when a tree toppled by the hurricane crushed the building. The boy was killed instantly; his mother was unhurt. Others died after making arguably reckless choices—such as Frederick Fernandez, 55, a surfer in Florida who ignored danger warnings to ride huge waves churned up by Irene, and Joe Rocco, 68, who windsurfed after the storm passed Long Island, N.Y. Some government workers lost their lives while trying to prevent flooding or help others. Michael Garofano, 55, a veteran at the Rutland, Vt., public works department, went to the town's water reservoir on Sunday afternoon, apparently to make certain a valve built to keep Mendon Brook from flooding into the local water supply was properly closed. He took his son Mike, 24, along for the ride. It isn't clear what happened, but the brook rose suddenly and both men were swept away. Mr. Garofano's body was found downstream on Monday. His son is presumed dead; his body hadn't been recovered as of Friday. In a few instances, it's not even clear who was or wasn't killed by a storm. Jose Manuel Sarabia Corona, 21, died around 7:45 a.m. Saturday when his SUV veered off a North Carolina road, slamming into trees, as Irene was making its first U.S. landfall about 50 miles away. The North Carolina Division of Emergency Management has classified the death as Irene-related, but state highway trooper Marvin Williams, who arrived at the accident scene, thinks Mr. Corona might have fallen asleep or swerved to miss an animal. "We probably will never know exactly why he ran off the road,'' said Mr. Williams. Countless thousands of residents in the 11 states where the hurricane killed people were aided by police, firemen and other emergency responders. Michael Kenwood, 39, a lawyer and computer consultant who was also a trained emergency medical technician, died after his squad attempted to rescue a person in a car stalled in a flooded creek near Princeton, N.J. As it turned out, there was no one in the car they tried to reach, but Mr. Kenwood and another rescuer were swept away as they tried to escape the creek. The other rescuer lived. In the chaos of the storm—as in nearly all such enormous events—there were also breakdowns of communication and failures to follow procedure that might have exacerbated dangerous situations in unpredictable ways. After 11 a.m. on Sunday, in Spring Valley, N.Y., David M. Reichenberg, 50, was electrocuted by a live wire as he was trying to help Reuven Herbst, a young boy who had already been shocked by the wire. Mayor Noramie Jasmin said the town's police dispatcher twice asked the local electric utility to turn off power to the wire before it killed Mr. Reichenberg. "They were aware of it…they called them to fix it. It's not a hard thing to do," she said. "We are still investigating," said a spokeswoman for Orange &amp; Rockland Utilities Inc. She declined to comment further. The boy was in critical but stable condition Friday at Westchester Medical Center. Three minutes after Ms. Sylvestri placed her frantic call just before 1 a.m. Sunday, the local 911 center in Woodstown radioed for help from the New Jersey State Police, according to police records. One firefighter urgently asked county emergency-management officials to locate a trained "swift water rescue team" that could rush to the scene, according to Dan Bestwick of Pilesgrove Township, N.J., who monitors emergency-scanner frequencies. The center of Irene was still far away, off the coast of Maryland, nearly 200 miles to the south. Forecasters were projecting the storm would officially make landfall hours later on Long Island, almost 120 miles from Woodstown. The weakening hurricane wasn't packing the kinds of winds that could obliterate buildings with the force of the most powerful tropical cyclones. But it was distinctive among hurricanes for one <a href="http://www.ghdstraightenerscheapest.com/ghd-iv-new-rare-styler-p-5741.html"><strong>best hair straighteners</strong></a> striking feature: Irene's width and reach were extraordinary. Even with the center of the storm so distant, bands of rain on the edge of its rotation were deluging communities like Woodstown hundreds of miles away, with six to 12 inches of rain. "These rains, combined with heavy rains over the past few weeks, could cause widespread flooding, life-threatening flash floods," said a warning from the National Hurricane Center two hours before Ms. Sylvestri dialed 911. Ms. Sylvestri had unwittingly driven into the floodwater of the Salem River, at a location where, at most times, it is an unnoticeable stream, fed by a series of small lakes in various towns of southern New Jersey. A few miles to the west, it widens noticeably and then makes its way through the marshlands lining Delaware Bay. On Saturday night, it was rising. The dam at one of the lakes upstream had failed. A tide of floodwater was barreling through the streambed. Before Ms. Sylvestri's call, local authorities notified the state police in the area that they had opened an additional floodgate at Memorial Lake in Woodstown to relieve pressure from the rising water—though that also meant more water raging into the Salem River. At 9:51 p.m., Salem County emergency officials issued a tweet saying: "Route 40 bridge east of Kings Highway will be closed within the next 4 hours due to flooding." But the bridge was neither blocked nor were police sent to prevent cars from crossing it. Shortly after midnight, the bridge where Ms. Sylvestri hit water was still passable, according to State Police Sgt. Michael Donahue, who had come on duty at 6 p.m. that day. But less than an hour later, when he arrived at the scene after Ms. Sylvestri's 911 call, the river had overtaken the bridge and was more than 100 yards wide. "It was really, really fast-moving water," he said. "It destroyed whatever it hit." Mr. Donahue and Sgt. Jay Miller found landmarks provided by the dispatcher—a nearby Sunoco station and a Richman's Ice Cream shop—but the troopers couldn't see Ms. Sylvestri's car in the water. "We couldn't find her," said Mr. Miller. Other rescue workers, including local firemen, also rushed to the scene. Unable to spot Ms. Sylvestri in the darkness, the troopers made a heroic but dangerous decision. They went into the water. At 1:08 a.m., according to the Salem County 911 system, a fireman called the county 911 center to document the fact that the state police were in the water and not tethered to shore: "NJSP in water. Chest high. No tethering." The troopers said later they knew they weren't following standard procedures for such a rescue but they were willing to take the risk. "We were trying to save the girl's life," Mr. Miller said. Holding onto a guardrail of the bridge, the troopers inched through the water, holding on to one another, scanning the river and feeling with their feet. But unable to spot Ms. Sylvestri or her car, the troopers left the water. At some point during the night, members of a New Jersey State Police underwater recovery team, based about 30 miles away in Buena Vista Township, showed up, according to witnesses. But the water was too strong for the rescue team to go in, and they left. While the state troopers were looking for Ms. Sylvestri, another vehicle driven by James Troy, 68, from Cape May, N.J., drove into the water from the other side and floated off the road. Trooper Daniel Cunning brought out a long rope, tied it around his chest, connected the other end to a telephone pole and ventured into the water, according to the officers. Shouting <a href="http://www.northfacestores-discount.com/north-face-jackets-lightslategrey-for-men-p-5905.html"><strong>north face down jacket</strong></a> for any signs of life, Mr. Cunning heard a voice call back. Waving their flashlights in the dark, the troopers spotted Mr. Troy. Mr. Cunning swam to Mr. Troy, who was clinging to a tree, and the other state troopers pulled the two men back to safety. At 1:58 a.m., an ambulance took Mr. Troy to a hospital, where he was treated and then released. Hours later, after dawn, Mr. Bestwick, a local auto-repair-shop owner and trained volunteer rescue diver, went out to the flooded bridge. With the help of state troopers, Mr. Bestwick went into the water in his wetsuit, harness and flotation device, tied to a 275-foot rope. Forcing his feet to drag the ground underwater, one foot finally hit a metal object. It was Ms. Sylvestri's Honda Accord under about four feet of water. &mdash;Arian Campos-Flores, Cameron McWhirter, Jennifer Levitz and Mike Esterl contributed to this article.