It came to the megacity at dusk, deceptively and unequally … In the lowlands, near the seashores, the harbors, the bays, the Sound, the river: apocalypse. The very ocean rose, tsunami-like, relentless, terrifying, bringing devastation by flood and wind and wind-shipped fire, and for some ten million people in a swath a thousand miles wide and encompassing sixteen states, darkness and dread.*

—Hendrik Hertzberg on Hurricane Sandy,
The New Yorker, November 12, 2012

* Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Originally published in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission.