A few pieces of the boardwalk, above, are scattered on the beach in Ocean Grove the day after superstorm Sandy ravaged the coastline. Right, a bicyclist enjoys the rebuilt boardwalk this year. PHOTOS BY STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER ERIC SUCAR Ryan Fletcher does not go a day without remembering how close he and his co-workers came to their deaths on Oct. 29, 2012, when superstorm Sandy struck.
Fletcher, who lives in Sandy: Manalapan, works as an operating Then & engineer in a New now, York City office building. pages During Sandy, he saved two 6, 18 & 19 of his co-workers from 5 million gallons of rushing water that poured into their building and nearly trapped them.
“I guess something like that stays with you,” said Fletcher, who was 23 at the time of the storm. “I thought about that every single day after. I’m never going to forget it — that near-death experience.”
From plumbing to fire safety, Fletcher and his co-workers with Rudin Management maintained the skyscraper at 80 Pine St. in Lower Manhattan. Prior to Sandy’s arrival, they put barriers in place to guard the building against the expected floodwaters.
But the storm surge busted through the city’s seawall and soon displaced the barriers. Water rushed into the lower levels of the structure, gaining access to the basement through an underground power vault, Fletcher said.
Fletcher, his partner Joe Brennan and his boss Bob Hirst initially scurried to protect the equipment and paper records stored below ground. As water poured from the walls and ceilings, the men abandoned their efforts. They went to the switchgear room to care for the building’s electrical infrastructure, Fletcher said.
The power vault soon dispensed smoke into the basement. Fletcher said he grabbed a fire extinguisher and heard a loud “boom” before the room went dark. “All of a sudden, I saw a tidal wave coming around the corner,” he said. Fletcher’s adrenaline kicked in and he ran to a staircase before being swept away by the torrent of water. Brennan made it, too.
“Then we saw something yellow floating down the hallway. It was the raincoat Bob was wearing,” Fletcher said.
Brennan jumped into the water to try to snatch Hirst. The force of the water kept the two men from swimming to the staircase. Fletcher said he fought to keep the steel door open as he screamed for his colleagues. Sandy:
A crew of 15 engineers Then & and porters who were in now, the building’s lobby heard pages Fletcher’s yells and 18 & 19 charged the stairwell. They tossed a nearby fire hose to Fletcher, who tried to reel in Brennan and Hirst.
The hose was too short. An engineer cut another fire hose and tied the two together. They wrapped the device around Fletcher and gave it another go.
Ryan Fletcher of Manalapan, above, and two of his co-workers almost lost their lives in a building in Lower Manhattan when superstorm Sandy sent millions of gallons of water into an area where the men were working. At left is the aftermath. “We really had no time left. With the water, there was about a foot of space between our heads and the ceiling,” he said.
Fletcher felt a strong yank. He shouted for his team to pull harder as the men played a game of tug-of-war against Sandy, with two lives at stake.
“I really thought one of them was on the hose. Of course, we would never give up, but there was really no more time,” Fletcher said. “When we pulled them out and I saw both of them on the hose, grabbing together, it was the craziest thing. It was joy.”
The ordeal lasted only 20 minutes, but Fletcher and his crew had warded off a grave feeling of fear — a sense that death had come for them, he said. Instead, Fletcher walked away a hero, however modest, with a torn shoulder and several misplaced ribs.
“The team effort is really what got everybody out safely,” he said. “People could have just run from the lobby and up the stairs.”
The next day, the forever-bonded crew began pumping the ocean of water from the basement. It would be three months until tenants were able to return to the building, Fletcher said.
After a few days of labor, Fletcher returned home to his family.
Trish Fletcher, his mother, said she was blown away by the courage exhibited by her son.
“His decision to go back down that stairwell when he heard Bob screaming — that showed his character and that made me proud,” she said. “I am just so proud of his decisions that day and that they had a good outcome for everyone involved. If he made different choices, he would have had to live with it and he always would have questioned it.”
Should another major storm strike, Fletcher and his colleagues will not have to make such daring choices. If they receive word of a grim forecast, the workers will simply kill the power in the basement and leave, he said.