It is two minutes past midnight on the east coast. This is msnbcs live coverage of Hurricane Sandy. Im chris jansing. We will be here all through the night along with meteorologist bill karins. Lets get you caught up on how things are looking and start in new york city right now. Where it is eerily dark. Over pretty much all of lower manhattan. More than 300,000 new yorkers without power. More than 3 million up and down the east coast are i want sesti the dark at this hour. Some of the worst damage here in new york is downtown, by battery park, where a near 14foot wall of water has flooded the streets as well as the brooklyn battery tunnel which connects brooklyn and manhattan. That is one of two major commuter tunnels in new york that flooded tonight. This storm has left a path of destruction in its wake. The Associated Press reports at least 15 deaths associated with sandy. Mostly the result of falling trees. Stormrelated deaths have been confirmed in new york, new jersey, west virginia, pennsylvania, connecticut. Within the last hour, weve learned that a firefighter in connecticut died after a tree hit his vehicle as he was responding to an emergency. The new York City Mayors Office reports that local 911 operators have been overwhelmed getting 10,000 calls in half an hour. Ten times the normal number. One of the most Critical Situations that theyre dealing with right now involves a big hospital here in new york. Thats the nyu langone Medical Center. 215 patients, even as we speak, from adult Critical Care, pediatric Critical Care, neonatal intensive care, all being evacuated out of that hospital, moved to nearby facilities because the backup generator at nyu went down. Lets get a check of the latest. Lets go back to nbc news meteorologist bill karins. Bill, what have you got for us . These things are going to continue to develop through the night but all the big issues that were caused in the new york city area was because of the high tide, the historic, epic if you want to call it that high tide. The only reason they use epic is thats never happened before. We shattered the previous record high tide we had in 1960 with donna. Thats why new yorksy were talking so much about it, not because were here. If it was any other city in the country this would have been a huge, big deal with this much of a storm surge. The same as it was for Atlantic City, new jersey. Might as well just draw the line on the map from Atlantic City up to new york because all of those coastal communities in new jersey were hit extremely hard by this storm surge. What are we left with right now at this hour . Take a look at the size of this storm. We still have clouds from the storm all the way down in atlanta, georgia, all the way up well up into canada, and now the clouds, as the storm has been moving the wrong way, have pushed all the way back past chicago toward iowa. I mean, this storm is just ridiculous in its size and scope. We didnt see the storm close to maine but have 50,000 people without power all the way up there because of the gusty winds. Just shows you the intensity and the size and now the duration of it is really whats going to get to us. We probably already have a majority of our people that have lost power. We may additionally maybe add a couple hundred thousand or so, but those numbers should be dwindling. The high Wind Warnings continue through new england. We still have some high wind gusts but this is the first time probably in about 12 hours we dont have any locations on here above 55 or near 60. Atlantic city is the highest there at 52. So good signs that winds are slowly beginning to drop down. Were in the 40 and 30 range throughout the delmarva, d. C. Washington, d. C. , by the way, you had a windy late night. You had some gusts up to 60 Miles Per Hour which caught some people by surprise. Further to the north in new england, finally the winds are dying off there, too. We shouldnt see too much more damage. The concern i have overnight besides additional winds is the heavy snow through areas of west virginia, pennsylvania, and also through areas of extreme mountainous maryland. Chris, its going to snow another 1 to 2 feet on top of the foot that is already on the ground. People are already stuck in numerous locations because of that heavy snow and downed trees. So just a multifaceted historic storm. The name sandy is almost guaranteed to be retired by the National Hurricane center. Im sure this will be a multibillion dollar storm damage. We probably had close to 1 billion in new york city, alone. Were just getting to get a sense of the scope of the damage. Well see much more obviously when the sun rises. The jersey shore when we get that helicopter up and show people the beaches and the homes there, its going to be ugly. Thanks so much, bill. Again, youll be with us throughout the evens and speaking of new jersey, on the known now is don zimmer, mayor of hoboken which is right across the river from us here in new york city. Mayor, thank you very much for joining us. Give us an update on the situation in hoboken. Were facing a really challenging, very challenging situation here in hoboken. We got the hudson river has breached the city, north end of hoboken and the south end of hoboken. We, our hospital was thankfully evacuated yesterday, but has had to shut down, you know, evacuated safely, but has had to shut down and so now were bringing in the National Guard. We have a couple of people that we need to, you know, that are some seniors who are on oxygen. We need to get them more oxygen tanks and need to either get them, you know, hopefully we will. Im sure we will be able to get them out of hoboken eventually but right now you cannot get in or out of hoboken and weve had a we have live wires, a couple of locations that are in the floodwaters, psg e cant get here. Weve had fires that were dealing with. We called for assistance from other communities and, of course, they cant get here as well. So its a challenging situation. But weve got all hands on deck working really hard to keep our Community Safe and so far i can say that, you know, all hoboken residents are safe. Theyre a little wet right now, but, you know, all reports are that theres been no injuries so far today. Which is amazing given the fact that as you mentioned that there have been some fires and other situations where its very difficult or impossible to get to. I had seen reports earlier today that there was 4 feet of water in some areas. How bad is it . Its very bad. I mean, weve got, id say, like, half the city is, you know, is flooded right now, and so passage is very difficult to different areas. Fact you literally right now cannot get into or out of hoboken, so, yeah, and the fact weve got, you know, like i said, weve got these live wires where, you know, im extremely concerned where, you know, you have some people coming out trying to check out whats going on and, you know, in some areas if they step into the floodwaters theyre really risking their life. So were just trying to make sure that everyone is aware that its a dangerous situation and we absolutely want them to stay indoors and, you know, were hopeful well be able to get pse g in here as soon as possible so they can, you know, make sure those wires are at least cut and theyre, you know, deenergized so that its safe for the community to come out. Thats the major concern right now and also just trying to make sure that, you know, weve got some seniors we need to make sure to get more oxygen tanks. Were working, totally focus on that as well. Dawn zimmer, mayor of hoboken, new jersey. Good luck. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you. Also joining me now is christy geldart, director of d. C. Emergency management agency. Its good to talk to you. The National Weather service had been warning up the potomac was seeing some of the worst flooding theyve had since 96. Whats the situation there . Yeah, weve seen the waters rising pretty rapidly. Were really paying attention to our high tide time at just after 9 00 tomorrow morning. So well see where that crests at. Weve been running models all day. It could be a pretty bad situation down along the potomac. Do you have a sense of the kind of damage that youre going to see once light comes . Weve got some pretty good estimates coming in. Weve got several trees down on major roadways. Weve got several houses, about four or five reported so far with trees on the houses, themselves. Major roadways and intersections out of power. We havent seen such widespread Power Outages amongst our customers and residents, however, weve got some major intersections that are down right now and, you know, the power crews cant get out until we get below that 35 mile an hour sustained wind to start doing some of the restorations that we need to get done and were concerned about some of our Critical Infrastructure as well. Some of the backup generation has come down. So were pretty concerned about some of those areas as well. So were hoping those winds die down and we can get the crews out there to start doing some restoration. I dont know if you had a chance to hear dawn zimmer, the mayor of hoboken who was just on talking about the difficulty of getting help to people who need it. Fact, that mayor has had to call in help from the National Guard. What kinds of calls you been getting in to 911 . And have you been able to answer them . Yes, weve actually been keeping up both with our 9111 and 311 which are the nonemergency calls were getting for assistance. Weve had our National Guard on board pretty much all afternoon and evening. And our fire crews and police crews running pretty much continuous with our larger vehicles. So weve been able to sustain a pretty good show as the storm has gone on and made sure weve done so, the calls we need to. However, with the sustained winds that continue through the morning and the rain continuing, i dont think were out of this yet. So the advice for people tomorrow is just to hunker down for another day . Absolutely. And then were thanking the federal government for not being open so we can do the work we need to do in our city. Chris geldart. We appreciate it. Let me bring in jonathan dientz, reporter for wnbc. Hes been covering the tristate area here. Youve been in since early this morning, john than. Thank you for sticking around. Lets go through major things weve been talking about in this area. Maybe the most dramatic visually is that crane. You have this super highrise. They call it a billionaires Apartment Building in manhattan. What happened there . Whats the situation now . 2 30, 3 00 this afternoon, huge wind gusts began hitting manhattan and this crane that had been inspected suddenly, you know, basically blew with the wind and went backwards and over and literally began dangling precariously over west 57th street here in midtown. So the Fire Department, the police department, Emergency Management officials responded to the scene, evacuated the surrounding buildings including a major hotel right there an 57th street. Parker meridian. Yeah. Theyre trying to figure out, what do we do with this . Theres really not much they could do because the wind gusts, its not safe to go up there and try to secure it at this time. They inspected it, said, look, we hope it holds. Right now weve at least cleared the area and hope it holds until the winds die down and we can secure it or replace it. Theres the remarkable video of it. It actually collapsing. So it may be a little while thats 70 stories up. And the mayor actually said it may not have been that this was any negligence on the part of the company that owns and operates the crane. It may just have been a weird gust of wind that caught it in the wrong place. They really dont know what happened, do they . The cranes are put up there allowed to sway in the wind. That gives it give so it makes it less likely to fall and collapse. An investigation is going to be done. Theyre going to look into ha happened here. We had crane collapses in 2008 where people were ikilled. The city cracked down on the installation and operation of the cranes over the last several years so theyre going to take a very hard look at what went wrong here. We were hearing maybe about 20 minutes ago or so from rehema ellis who was dispatched to nyu Medical Center where they had a backup jgenerator problem. Now an evacuation. It would be hard to overstate the drama. You have patients, Critical Care patients who are being taken out of hospital when theres literally no light anywhere around. Lower manhattan has been plunged into darkness. Right. This is nyu Medical Center which is right along the east river. So its right in that zone. Just a few blocks down at 14th street con Ed Substation suffered an explosion, so its unclear if that caused some Power Outages. Theres the video. Its a pretty remarkable piece of video when you see that explosion going off in the middle of your screen. The hospital is 20 blocks from there. Unclear if thats what caused the initial pow er outage or problems. The east river overflowing its banks on the east side of manhattan causing flooding. Unclear if thats what caused the backup generators to go in the hospital. Regardless, a major problem at nyu Medical Center that they have to evacuate 215 patients, ambulances literally lining up out front. Patients, neo nates, babies, adult elderly patients in Critical Care units literally being carried down the steps, loaded into ambulances and sent to other hospitals here in manhattan. Mt. Sinai, for example, saying theyre accepting them. The problem so bad at nyu now the phones arent working so they are having a tough time contacting families to alert them. And that its the other hospitals, mt. Sinai, for example, when it receives a patient it will then call the next of kin to advise them that the patient has been moved there. We also have video in the neighborhood thats called chelsea, where i live in manhattan. I think this is along 8th avenue. And the front of a building just came off. I mean, it looks like a dollhouse. You can actually look into the rooms in that old Apartment Building. Right. I believe it was a fourstory building. Had a business down front and several tenants living above. The whole facade came down. Fortunately no one injured in that case. It was a 100yearold building here in the city. The Fire Department called in and amid the tough winds literally tried to work to render that building safe and residents on either side of that building also had to be evacuated. We havent talked a lot about connecticut but its been a very bad night, day and night in connecticut for a number of communities. I know some of these towns. You live in connecticut now. Some of these towns have been flooded. And in greenwich, which is one of the probably, you know, most expensive places to live in the manhattan suburban area, got hit with some fires tonight. Yeah. You have right along the waterfront in the shore communities some multimillion dollar homes and one of them caught fire. And the Fire Department because of the flooding that was going on and the electrical problems was having a very digital tiffie getting to this one home. They couldnt. They were able to rescue the residents but couldnt put out the fire. They had to back away because of the flooding and concerns about electrical lines down. That house burned and spread to three other homes in this waterfront community. So much so that emergency officials up there say at least four houses burned down as a result of this fire. And they literally have hundreds of residents who did not heed warnings to get out because of the flood warnings. So now in greenwich, connecticut, youve got police, youve got the National Guard going in and rescuing people and trying to help evacuate them under very difficult conditions with flooding, with winds, with rain, with fire, with power lines down. Its a very tough situation in greenwich. On top of that, further north in easton, connecticut, you had a firefighter responding to an emergency and a tree literally came down on his vehicle and apparently he suffered some sort of head injury and also suffered a cardiac arrest and he died in the line of duty trying to respond to a fire there. You have towns like westport, connecticut, where 80 of the residents are without power. In new york city, 670,000 customers without power. It is the biggest outage in new york city history. According to con ed. And that they say at least four days, there were certain areas that was intentionally shut down because of the sea water. Four days for them. At least seven days for people who have power lines down. The overhead power lines. Seven days for repairs there. Lots of damage. Lots of inconvenience. And, of course, tragically some deaths as well. Were also, im being told we now have a chunk of tape from earlier today. This is some of what we saw in connecticut. Just over the last 20, 30 minutes the wind has been unbelievable. This house, hours ago, was in fine shape. But the waves have just been relentless. Just pounding through. Ripping away part of the outer wall. Goodness gracious. Part of the foundation of the house being sheered away. Unbelievable. Winds have been out of the north. Powers out all over the peninsula. Not expecting much improvements over the next several hours. My, goodness. The wind has just been insane. We havent seen much of a shift in the nd, either. Everything has been from north to south. Not much in terms of rain. Its all coming in. All coming in just right off the water, itself. Again, in sheets. Some streets are flooded on the other side of the peninsula. Some roadways are covered with water. Its coming up on that side, too. Trees, huge trees, some of them look like theyve been around for over a century, knocked down. Branches, over many of the roadways. People are going to wake up and this community is going to look very different. The rhythm of. [ whistle blowing ] where do you