Lethal Tornados Tear Through New York City
2:15pm Sunday September 19, 2010
Jon di Paolo
Two tornados have torn through New York City during a 30-minute storm that left one person dead, thousands of trees uprooted and tens of thousands without power.
Car crushed by a tree brought down in the storm
The National Weather Service (NWS) said wind speeds touched 125mph (200km/h) during the cloudburst, adding that the two tornados were only the ninth and 10th seen in the Big Apple since 1950. Restaurant owner Billy Levakis, 60, was sitting alongside wife Aline, 30, in their car on Grand Central Parkway when a falling tree branch crushed the car.
She died, but he was left with only minor injuries. "(She was) the best thing that happened to me," Billy, 60, told his family after the fatal accident, the New York Post reported. "She would watch out for me; she was scared for losing me. But it happened the other way."
Roofs were peeled back, windows smashed and some 40,000 people left without any electricity as the storm rampaged 14 miles through Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn. Kyle Struckmann, a meteorologist at the NWS, said it was a miracle that only one person had died. "The destruction caused by this storm was swift and sudden," Senator Charles Schumer told Fox News.
"Our first priority is to ensure that our residents are safe and our neighborhoods and streets get back to normal as quickly as possible. "We have reached out to Fema (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) to ensure they are doing everything possible to help and I will continue to press Washington for any assistance we may need as New York City assesses storm damage and begins the clean-up."
