Hell and high water wipe out New York neighbourhood

Fire and water don't mix? Tell that to the shell-shocked residents of New York's Breezy Point, an entire neighborhood wiped out in a hellish blizzard of fire and flood during superstorm Sandy.

On Tuesday, isolated outbreaks of orange flames still licked at the sprawling, blackened pile that was all that remained of one of Breezy Point's most beloved beachfront areas following the hurricane-strength storm.

More than 80 houses vanished in the blaze. Simultaneously, hundreds of others were left sodden and shaken by water.

No-one has been confirmed to have died in the district, but many residents compared the devastation to that of a battlefront.

Carol Anderson, whose nearby house escaped the fire but instead was hammered by flooding, even had trouble identifying where streets had been.

"This is Ocean Avenue," she said hesitatingly, picking her way over charred beams and under scorched, dangling telephone and electrical lines.

Nearby, a fire crew hosed down a still-burning wall. There were small flames and columns of smoke everywhere. Flames even flickered at the top of a broken telegraph pole, like a ghastly candle.

"What a disaster, it's like a warzone," said Anderson, 53.

It's not clear yet what ignited the fire in the middle of a storm that brought intense rain and an Atlantic surge pouring through the entire Breezy Point community.

Lifelong resident Rob Kirk, who installs fire sprinkler systems for a living, said houses in the tightly packed beach portion of the community were required to have walls able to contain fires for up to two hours.

But those building standards never took into account winds of up to 95 miles (153 kilometers) an hour.

"When you basically have a blowtorch going, that two hours is out the window. It's more like five minutes," said Kirk, 55. His own house escaped the blaze by about 10 feet (three meters), but was badly damaged by flooding instead.

Nearly every street in Breezy Point, which has a year-round population of just under 5,000, remained underwater hours after Sandy had passed.

Cars carried away by the storm surge sat at odd angles to each other, as if parked by drunks, and many houses had been turned into miniature islands.

Furniture lay where it had washed into the street, a garden bench straddled a big red SUV and a pair of basketball hoops ended up at a bus stop.

The "warzone" comparison made by many witnesses seemed even more apt when a camouflaged National Guard Hummer rumbled down one of the flooded streets, joining legions of emergency services workers as a helicopter swept overhead.

The task of putting isolated Breezy Point back on its feet will be one of the sterner tests of New York's resolve, post Sandy. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Chuck Schumer toured the area, listening sympathetically to locals.

A woman left homeless jokingly asked if multi-billionaire Bloomberg could put her up. "I don't think my girlfriend would be very happy," Bloomberg quipped back.

Police and firefighters made huge efforts to help, first battling the fire all night, then using big trucks and sometimes rubber dinghies to ferry locals to and from the ruins and through the floodwaters.

There was even a unit with a police jet ski.

Dan O'Leary, 62, said Breezy Point regulars respect the power of the sea and sky. But he'd never imagined seeing such destruction.

"You live by the sea. You expect water, you can live with that. But not fire," he said. "This is a close community. It makes you want to cry."

Kirk surveyed the smoking remnants of his neighbors' houses and recalled his father telling him that to live on Breezy Point, so close to nature, carried risk.

"It's the price you pay for living on the water," he said. "What God gave you, God can take away."