Tornado Hits Brooklyn; Subway Back in Service

Most of the New York City subway system was back in service by this evening’s rush hour after a fierce morning storm disrupted transit service throughout much of the region and unleashed a rare and destructive tornado that whipped southwestern Brooklyn with winds of up to 135 miles an hour.

The storm dropped about 3 inches of rain on the New York metropolitan area in about an hour, flooding major thoroughfares, cutting off power to thousands of homes and causing confusion that lingered through a humid, sweaty day.

The tornado set off by the storm raged through Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, ripping the roofs off five brick rowhouses, yanking thick trees out by their roots, turning cars sideways and shattering countless windows.

According to the National Weather Service, the tornado touched down in Bay Ridge just after 6:30 a.m. and traveled northeast, damaging homes and tearing the roof off a Nissan car dealership before dissipating.

The tornado forced the evacuation of 20 buildings, leaving 32 families without shelter, the city buildings department said. Another 50 buildings experienced some damage.

On 58th Street in Sunset Park, Lanie Mastellone watched her ceilings collapse one by one. “Then when I opened the door to get out of the actual apartment,” she said, “that’s when I realized I had no roof.”

Jeffrey M. Warner, a meteorologist at Penn State University, said that the tornado was the first one to hit Brooklyn since at least 1950, when modern record-keeping began. It was the first tornado to hit New York City since 2003, when a weak tornado touched down in Staten Island, and only the sixth tornado recorded in the city since 1950, Mr. Warner said.

Although service was restored on most subway lines by this evening — including the Nos. 4, 5 and 6 lines, and the Nos. 1, 2, and 3 lines — the V and W lines remained suspended. Shuttle buses are being run in some areas of Queens.

Service on the Metro North railroad lines was mostly restored by the afternoon, and officials with both New Jersey Transit and Long Island Rail Road said they expected service to be nearly back to normal.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York o said this was the third time in seven months that a sudden downpour had brought the transit system to its knees. Mr. Spitzer ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to conduct a review of how the transit system failed and urged New Yorkers to remain patient.

“The timing and intensity of the storm took us by surprise,” said Elliot G. Sander, the chief executive of the M.T.A. “The intensity of the storm brought torrential rainfall in a short period of time, overwhelming both our pumps and the sewer system that is needed to accept the pump water.”

As the storm knocked down power lines, more than 4,000 customers throughout the city lost power, said Alfonso Quiroz, a Consolidated Edison spokesman. Most of those customers had their power restored a short time later, and by 3 p.m., the number of customers still coping with outages had dwindled to about 800.

The destruction inflicted by the heavy rains was magnified in Brooklyn by intense winds that tore up trees and ripped apart homes and buildings. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials said that at least 40 buildings had been damaged, 100 to 200 cars were smashed or hit by trees, a woman in Staten Island was killed, and at least a half a dozen people were injured — sending the toll of the damages into the tens of millions of dollars.

One commuter, Pete Chiaramonte, 41, who was on his way to work at a towing company in Brooklyn this morning, said he saw what he thought was the storm touching down at around 5.30 a.m. near the corner of 37th Street and 13th Avenue. “It was a funnel shape,” he said. “It looked kind of black and blue,” adding, “it was way up high and came right down on the roof of” a department store. “Pieces of the roof were all over the place. It was a big bang.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/nyregion/08cnd-weather.html