nearly 7 million are without power tonight, including about 750,000 here in new york. amazingly, no one died in the building you see behind me here. the entire facade of this building collapsed. we're in a neighborhood called chelsea, really on the border of chelsea and greenwich village. but the picture says a lot. take a look at that. the entire facade of the building, which was being used frankly as an illegal hotel, mostly for overseas visitors, the entire facade is gone. the four rooms tell the story of this storm in miniature. thankfully, we understand, nobody was killed in there. it could have been much worse. uptown, about 2 miles north of where i'm standing right now in chelsea, a dangling crane. that is another story entirely. a dagger pointed 90 stories down. thousands in a nearby hotel and apartment, all have been evacuated. the building is lit up tonight, but you see the crane there, the boom hanging down, the tension there is palpable. about a seven-block area all around there has been cordoned off. relief elsewhere, well, it redeems almost anything. i want you to take a look at perhaps the most beautiful thing to come out of this storm. her name is alice rosenbaum. she is the tiny one in her father's arms. the fact that she is in fact safely home tonight, especially after what she went through, it would make anyone smile. born in a hospital where they lost power and the backup generators failed. even here, even now, it's almost enough to redeem everything else you're going to see tonight. almost. starting with jason carroll. >> reporter: a disaster still ongoing. the images overwhelming. >> this was a devastating storm. >> a tanker on shore. >> it is beyond anything i thought i'd ever see. >> reporter: miles of shoreline washed away. home after oceanfront home surrounded by water, yet consumed by fire. in west virginia and across the appalachians, ice and snow. all of it, all of this, the legacy of sandy, a super storm that's living up to the name as bad as the billing, as terrible as the forecast. >> just these massive -- look at these waves coming through behind me. >> new jersey caught some of the first of it, and much of the worst. >> we're at a moment now where evacuation is no longer possible, and we won't be able to come and rescue people. >> reporter: those who stayed woke up to this. in toms river, new jersey and elsewhere, ems phones rang nonstop and rescues continued today until nightfall. crews pulling several hundred people to safety. >> we're not sure if it was a levee, a compromise -- something was compromised there. >> reporter: inland and farther north, the police chief of bergen county, new jersey describes a brief that left several towns and one trailer park as much as five feet deep in dangerous water. >> i may have lost my home. i may have lost my car. but i'm alive. >> as everyone knows in new york, sandy packed a punch for the metropolitan area yesterday. i don't think words like catastrophic or historic are too strong to explain the impact. i saw people put themselves in the way of danger that was really inspirational. and if it wasn't for the national guard and the state police and nypd and what the agencies at this table did, i think that the number of -- the loss of life would have been much greater. >> reporter: manhattan is an island. lower manhattan is at sea level in the best of times and nearly 14 feet below it last night. water filled the riverfront, then the streets, then tunnels, cars, and subways, then at a con ed power plant serving lower manhattan a spark, a transformer explosion, and a massive fireball. it's the last night the skyline would see and might see for the next several days. 750,000 without electricity. and somewhere down there in the darkness, producer rose arcy reported -- >> it's completely dark. there's absolutely nobody outside. the police earlier were driving up and down the street where the water comes up to and had bullhorns, telling people if you're on the first floor, you should get out, you should evacuate, you should move to higher ground. >> reporter: new york university's massive riverfront hospital lost power, backups failed and evacuations began for 260 patients, including critically ill babies. but even this wasn't the worst of it. >> the danger is of course that it will continue to spread with the embers blowing in the wind. >> reporter: out where new york meets the atlantic ocean, new york city's breezy point, home after home, 80, maybe more, went up in flames. jason carroll, cnn, new york. >> the devastation in breezy point is really hard to kind of wrap your mind around. 80 homes went up in flames. homes that are very close to one another and that high wind just brought those flames leaping from one house to another. our deborah feyerick is live in breezy point, queens, right now with the latest. deborah? >> reporter: you know, anderson, somebody who lives here summed it up best. they said fighting a fire in a hurricane is a lesson in futility. all the homes here, completely obliterated. you can see some foundations, but pretty much nothing else. you can see cars that were incinerated. this we believe is a jeep. this we believe is a honda. it is hard to make out anything in the massive debris. there were 200 firefighters who were who trying to put out this six alarm blaze. it followed the exact path of the wind last night, southeast. taking out all the homes almost in a pie-shaped direction. one official earlier, anderson, said there were probably as many as 100 homes which may have been devastated. this is such a tight community. as i was walking through, folks would actually come to see if anything was salvageable. one man checking out his sister's home saying not only his sister's home was burned to the ground but his father-in-law's home. three sisters, homes side by side by side. that kind of community, anderson. one home which miraculously was spared belongs to a 9/11 widow, we're told, and apparently only the siding melted but the intensity of that heat so dramatic. but right now we can tell you the smell of smoke so heavy in the air, firefighters spent the better part of the day, simply trying to put out blazes that kept erupting, one of the wires. it's pitch dark, anderson, because you can't really see -- all the electricity is off. they don't know whether the fire was caused by a transformer or caused by some downed power lines. but even one of those posts holding all those power lines, that was on fire at one point today. so this is still very much in progress. people just trying to figure out exactly what they're going to do next right now. they're simply trying to catch their breath, anderson. >> yeah. no loss of life, though, among those 80 homes, correct, deborah? >> reporter: that's correct. they haven't gotten in to search all of the homes. but right now they do believe that all of them were evacuated. one firefighter said the water got so high, he thought he was simply going to drift off and heard people screaming for help, came back, rescued 15 people. >> one blessing, no loss of life there. deb feyerick, appreciate that report. hoboken, new jersey now, home to 50,000 people. it sits just across the hudson river from manhattan, just west of where i'm standing. and today it woke up to this. the city occupies one square mile and much of its southern end is underwater. the mayor has been asking for help from the national guard. tonight there is late word they are on the way. gary tuchman joins me with the latest. gary, we learned that information about two hours ago. that is certainly welcome news to the mayor and everybody there. she is desperate to get some help there. >> reporter: very desperate. a very unusual situation here, anderson. you have almost the entire city without power. you have 50% of the city underwater. but most alarmingly, the mayor says there are thousands of residents who are trapped inside their homes in the cold and the dark. now, there are search missions going on for priority situations, for emergency situations, they are taking a front loader, not a boat, a front loader through the water. i went with the mayor, we sat on the shovel as we went through the town and saw people in the windows waving at us. children, men, women, old people. most of them were smiling because, unlike new orleans, we saw the same scenes, they know the water is receding. the hope is that most of these people can get out on their own tomorrow. but if not it's just that the water is making them more stuck. water, dangerous to walk around and people are still in their homes. we saw people trying to walk out and that was scary, trying to drive their cars through four feet of water. their cars got stuck and then they started to try to push their cars. and at that point, a police officer got out of the vehicle we were in, grabbed three of the people, one at a time, put him on his shoulder, put one woman on his shoulders, got her on the front loader, the mayor and i helped to get two more people on the frontloader, then they were rescued. right now, they are hoping all this water recedes enough tomorrow that all the people can get out. there are literally thousands of people inside these homes, it's cold, it's dark, most of them have some food. but it is very alarming. and when we talked to the mayor, she was very concerned at that point she had no help at all from new jersey. listen. >> we have 50,000 people in hoboken, and probably half of hoboken is flooded. there's anywhere from, you know, 15 to 25,000 people that are -- >> still in those homes. >> that are still in their homes. and they can't get out. i'm asking for the national guard to come in. we are desperate for the national guard to come in. we need their specialized equipment to be able to get to our city streets and be able to safely get to people and evacuate those -- >> who did you ask at the national guard? >> i've been asking them. there's a chain of command we've been going through -- >> what are you hearing? what are they saying to you? >> they're coming, they're coming, they're coming, but they're not here. i just had to tell a grandmother i'm sorry, we can't get in to get your grandchildren. 7-month-old twins running out of food. she last spoke to her grandchildren -- her daughter this morning and she said i think i have enough food to get through the night. 7-month-old twins, i cannot get to them. >> gary, i want to ask about the situation with the national guard. before i do, those images of that police officer carrying folks on his shoulders putting them in that front-loader, we've seen so many first responders who have suffered losses of their own yet they're out there, he's in waist-deep water doing that. that's such an amazing picture and testament to the dedication of a lot of folks there right now. there's a heavy police presence in new york. do you see them out on the streets riding around. a lot of fire trucks. fire trucks about to pass me by right now. they have been working nonstop. these folks, really, the folks from the mta trying to get the subways back online. there's a lot of folks working round the clock right now. let's talk about the national guard right now, gary. two hours ago you got word that they are going to go to hoboken, correct? >> reporter: yes. literally, when i talked to the mayor two hours ago we were about to go on the air and we got the word from the town they just heard from the state of new jersey the national guard is coming in. the national guard will be arriving in hoboken tomorrow to help with rescues. they expect the water will go down a little bit but perhaps not enough for people to walk out on their own so they will start going in behind me and getting people out of their homes. we've got to remember, anderson, this is very difficult from other hurricanes. we're dealing with very cold weather. these people have no heat. >> yeah, incredible. gary, appreciate the reporting. it's been a long 26 hours for you. and again, more fire trucks passing. we've been hearing a lot of sirens all day long. there's just so many places first responders are trying to get to. it is going to be a long several days. and as i said, new york itself, below 31st street on the west side, below 39th street on the east side all without power, without cell phone service, e-mails. folks are trying to get e-mails wherever they can. they're actually gathered around our satellite truck for several hours because there is wi-fi in the sat truck and there are groups of 30, 40 people sometimes just with their mobile devices trying to get in touch with their friends, their loved ones. you can follow me on twitter @andersoncooper. tweet us where you are and what you have been seeing. just ahead, the mayor of atlantic city and the mayor of seaside heights where the homes took a pounding. the pictures there are extraordinary and so difficult to see. but the people are made of tougher stuff and you will hear from them tonight. also, the remarkable rescue effort going on all across new jersey. that as gary said is not over yet, not by a long shot. we'll be right back. ñ? 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>> we had one casualty. we haven't determined as of yet whether or not it was an atlantic city resident. but one of the shelters where some of our residents had been moved to did realize a fatality, i should say. and that's the only reported fatality that we've heard of. and in addition to that we are blessed from the standpoint that we've had no serious injuries, loss of limbs or anything like that. so the human toll, damage has been minimal. and one death is certainly too many. but we've been blessed in that respect. >> yeah, that's amazing, considering what we saw earlier. are you getting the federal, the state help that you need? and if not, what do you need from them? >> well, we were on the phone twice today, as a matter of fact, with fema and also with the president directly and his staff and they have assured us that the full weight of the government in terms of their resources, is at our beckoning and certainly once we have had an opportunity to do a full assessment with respect to our needs we will be calling the federal government and asking for those resources. >> you had quite a dust-up with the governor of your state, chris christie. he basically accused you of ignoring state-issued evacuation orders, criticizing you for telling people to take shelter in place as a last resort. what do you make of that? earlier, you said governor christie should call you and be man enough to own up to what you said is his mischaracterization of what you'd advised residents. have you heard anything from him? >> i have not. i expect at some point tomorrow our paths will cross. listen, what's important is to make sure that all of us, the governor, the mayor, and every elected official, make sure we keep what's really important first and foremost, and that's the safety of the constituents that we serve. anything personal between the governor and i, i look beyond that. i'm more magnanimous than that. i'm not about personalities, i'm about principle. we have a job to do, and from that side that's exactly what i'm going to do. >> mayor langford, i know it's been an extraordinary 26-plus hours for you. i appreciate your time. we'll continue to check in with you in days ahead. farther ahead in bergen county, new jersey, major parts are underwater. several towns flooding when a natural levee broke. hundreds had to be rescued from rooftops, from porches. cnn's maggie lake has been covering the story for us. maggie, what's the latest there? >> reporter: anderson, we have rescue operations suspended for the most part for the moment. they will resume again tomorrow. but we have watched thousands of people stream into this site today with little more than the clothes on their back, their pets, their children, and maybe a small bag. this is a community that is absolutely in shock. we knew where we were on the coast when the storm hit asbury park. they were expecting flooding. no one here expected this. there was no evacuation order. this is not a community that's seen anything of this magnitude before. we were in the towns of little falls and moonachie today touring around and the water even at low tide, still waist deep. cars floating in the street. people have water on the first floor of their homes. but i have to say, i'm from new jersey. the people here