September 8, 1998 3 Killed as Storms Batter New York ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forum •Join a Discussion on New York News of the Day ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By FRANK BRUNI NEW YORK -- Punishing thunderstorms and brutal hurricane-force winds wrought destruction across a broad area of upstate New York and around New York City Monday, battering houses, toppling power lines, capsizing boats and causing at least three deaths. In the Bronx, a 19-year-old woman was killed when high winds sent a tree branch crashing down on her head as she attended a Labor Day barbecue in the courtyard of a housing project, authorities said. Housing Authority officers at the Edenwald Houses, on East 229th Street at Baychester Avenue, said the woman, whom officials identified as Iesamama Neal, was sitting at a concrete chess table with her 2-year-old brother when the branch plummeted. "She was able to push the 2-year-old under the table, which saved him," said Rosa Morales, the first Housing Authority officer to arrive on the scene. Earlier, two men were killed on the New York State Fair Grounds in Syracuse shortly after 1 a.m., when winds gusting more than 75 miles an hour ripped the roofs from several buildings and branches from trees and hurled the debris on top of the structures in which the men were sleeping, according to state police and fair officials. Elsewhere around the city and state, the storms disrupted the Labor Day holiday in ways both large and small, life-threatening and pleasure-spoiling. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses lost power; in the Syracuse and Rochester areas, utility company officials said electricity might not be restored to some customers for as long as a week. Fallen trees left many upstate roads impassable, and fallen power lines rendered them perilous, prompting several counties, cities and towns to prohibit any traffic other than emergency vehicles and repair crews. In the New York City area, sudden torrential downpours between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. sent spectators at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing, Queens, and the West Indian American Day Carnival parade in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, scurrying for shelter. And the rains and winds stranded some boaters off the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey, forcing the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct water and air rescues. National Weather Service officials said that although the storm systems that hit different areas of New York state were not identical, they were born of the same conditions: the violent collision of a late-summer heat wave with the leading edge of a cold front auguring autumn. "What energizes weather systems in general is strong temperature contrasts," Fred Gadomski, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, explained Monday afternoon. "And this morning, just ahead of this cold front, it was in the low 90s." By contrast, temperatures may drop into the low 70s and even the 60s for the rest of the week, Gadomski and other meteorologists said. Although people reported tornadoes in Syracuse, Bethpage and Great Neck on Long Island, and in Rahway, N.J., National Weather Service officials said Monday evening that they could not definitively confirm that tornadoes had touched down in those spots. Some of the people caught in the storms, which in some areas included rapid-fire lightning and balls of hail, said they had seldom witnessed anything like it. "We're in a state of disbelief," said Terry Kennedy of Dewitt, a suburb of Syracuse. One tree had fallen into Kennedy's roof, another had flattened his daughter's car, and yet another had ended up in a neighbor's swimming pool. But Kennedy, his wife and their children expressed something akin to relief. "Everybody's happy that we're alive," Kennedy said. The Syracuse and Rochester areas were perhaps the hardest hit. Gov. George Pataki declared nine counties in that region to be in states of emergency, which meant that the state would provide financial and other resources to those counties if help was requested. Dennis Michalski, a spokesman for the New York State Emergency Management Office, estimated that about 300,000 homes and residences along a geographic band between Buffalo and Albany had lost electricity. Utility company officials said that some might not regain power for many days, and a few upstate school districts said that the start of the school year, scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday, might have to be postponed for a few days. Scores of people had to seek refuge at temporary shelters because of damage to their homes, and signs of property destruction were abundant in and around Syracuse, where a prominent Catholic church, St. Lucy's in downtown Syracuse, lost one of its steeples. The New York State Fair, which was supposed to be open for its 12th and last day Monday, had to remain closed because of damage to the fairgrounds. Michalski said that in addition to the deaths at the fairgrounds of John Perry, 43, of Silver Creek, and Beryl Stone, 61, of Central Square, more than a dozen other upstate residents were injured, none critically. There were additional reports of people with storm-related injuries around New York City, including a man who was parasailing on Barnegat Bay at the Jersey Shore when he was trapped in the winds. Local law enforcement officials did not identify him but said that he had fractured his skull and was in guarded condition at Atlantic City Medical Center Monday night. According to officials for utility companies around New York City, about 34,500 customers in the city and Westchester County lost power, along with roughly 110,000 on Long Island; 60,000 in New Jersey, and 10,000 in southern Connecticut. Many had power back by Monday night.