[Update Below] The post-Sandy situation on Staten Island is really serious. At least 80,000 power customers are in the dark, dead bodies are being discovered, and the National Guard is on the scene. After all, this was a storm that was able to bring a tanker ashore. Things looked even worse last night, when troubled Republican Representative Michael Grimm told WABC that the situation was "a Katrina situation all over again. People on roofs. People are Facebooking elected officials."
The major issue on the Island, as elsewhere, appears to have been that a number of citizens in evacuation zones chose not to leave until it was too late, causing serious problems for rescue crews. And then there was the power outages. "I'm here at Richmond University medical center literally praying that our generators hold out," Grimm went on last night. "Because of what's going on at NYU and Bellevue, it's very unlikely that we're going to get through the night." Luckily, the generators on Staten Island held and there were no storm-related hospital fatalities there. But the storm did take some lives in the borough, including at least two in the borough's evacuation zones. One teenage girl's body was found beneath some rubble in Tottenville earlier this morning.
Meanwhile, pols on the island are begging people to stay in and get off the roads while cleanup and rescues continue (especially with supplies stretched thin). As State Senator Diane Savino put it today: "They think it's fun to gawk at other people's tragedy. People need to stay home. People's homes have literally been blasted through by force of water and they need to be tended to right now."
Update 5:30 p.m.: According to the Staten Island Advance, police now say the body count on the island is at five.
