Sandy's savagery shocks New York: Wodonga expat

“To be honest myself and (my) friends were a little shocked that the storm lived up to the hype,” said Nichols, former Border Mail journalist now a Manhattan resident.

From her second-floor apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, she looks over streets strewn with branches, trees and leaves.

A few blocks away the front wall of a small apartment building fell off during superstorm Sandy, while closer to Lower Manhattan buildings have flooded.

Counting the cost: The aftermath of Superstorm Sandy

Getting access to information has been difficult, with power and internet blackouts, but Nichols said she knew at least 18 people were killed across the city.

As New York begins to tally the immense human and physical costs of the natural disaster, the former Wodonga student says she now realises she and her friends she should have never been out on the street.

On Monday afternoon as the first gusts of wind and rain had blew in they had ventured out for lunch, finding a bar that had stayed open because the workers had decided to spend the night in the office upstairs.

They didn’t leave the bar until 8pm and when they stepped out onto the street the power was cut.

“It was a little scary to see the streets of New York go dark,” Nichols said.

“We walked a couple of blocks to back of a friend’s place where I stayed on the couch.

“The wind was ferocious.”

Nursing a sore head after her evening drinking, the Reuters United Nation correspondent knows she is lucky to have escaped the experience unscathed.

One of her Australian friends, who lives in a 25th-floor apartment, bunkered down during the storm as his building swayed, the lobby flooded and a big gas leak had his neighbours worried about an explosion.

Earlier today, Tuesday New York time, Nichols said the streets were filled with people surveying the debris, walking their dogs to find phone reception and coffee.