Statue of Liberty Is Fine After Hurricane, but Liberty Island Isn’t

Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Equipment on Liberty Island has been moved to high ground to dry out after Hurricane Sandy. The statue was not damaged. More Photos »

Add the following to the long list of items that took a beating when Hurricane Sandy blasted by: a dock that was refashioned in the twisting, turning shape of a water slide; a sea wall that started to pull away from the shoreline; and a fence that took on a gaptoothed look when long sections were extracted.

Do not add the figure in the green dress that towers 305 feet over all that. The Statue of Liberty is fine, said David Luchsinger, the superintendent of the Statue of Liberty National Monument and probably the last full-time resident of Liberty Island.

Those last eight words mean: Put his house on the damaged list, too.

Until the storm hit, the superintendent had lived on the island in a house owned by the federal government that had postcard-perfect views of Lower Manhattan.

"It was pretty much demolished," Mr. Luchsinger said during a tour of the island on Friday.

He closed the door and left the day before the hurricane arrived, and waited it out at a relative's house in Holmdel, N.J., about 70 miles from where the storm charged ashore. "Closer to the hurricane than we were here," he said, "but on dry land."

By contrast, about 75 percent of Liberty Island's 12 acres was underwater during the storm. Mr. Luchsinger (pronounced LOO-sing-er) said that water swirled toward the star-shaped early-19th-century fort that serves as the statue's base. "It got close to the base," he said, "but it didn't make the base."

Still, the information building and an administration building were flooded, as was the building that housed transformers for the island's electrical system. Its backup generator was also ruined.

The statue, designed to sway in the wind, was unharmed. The National Park Service says it can move three inches in 50 mile per hour winds. The highest wind recorded during Hurricane Sandy was 94 m.p.h., at Eatons Neck, on the North Shore of Long Island.

On Liberty Island, the storm showered bricks from the walkways around the island and splintered boards on a dock that did not appear to have sustained major damage.

Mr. Luchsinger said that when he returned to the island on Oct. 30, the day after the storm hit, marble blocks that had anchored plaques by the sea wall had been carried halfway across the island. Trash-hauling bins, too, had migrated from one side of the island to the other.

The damage will keep the island closed for some time. Mr. Luchsinger said it was still too soon to know how much the repairs would cost or when the island or the statue might reopen. "Optimistically, I would say months," he said. "I would not say weeks."

Since the storm, a lot of work has been done to clean up Liberty Island. The half-dozen trees that came down have been cleared. Seaweed and debris churned up from New York Harbor have been swept away. Bulldozers and carts for Park Service rangers that were in garages have been pushed to the center of the island to dry out.

Divers have gone into the water to check dock pilings.

The statue has been lighted by temporary floodlights with electricity supplied by a generator. The hurricane hit the day after the crown had reopened to the building on the 126th anniversary of the statue's dedication.

The reopening was a milestone in a $30-million renovation project to make the statue safer, with new elevators and fire alarms as well as a new air-conditioning system to make it more comfortable inside. Mr. Luchsinger said none of the new equipment inside the statue was damaged.

But his house now has what so many houses that were ravaged in the storm have: boarded-up windows and a doubtful future.

It "got walloped" when water surged through, blowing out windows and splitting the front door in two, he said. In all, the house took on about five feet of water.

"Coming in and seeing all your stuff just shoved to one side of the room was amazing," he said, "but the really amazing part was all of my pictures were hanging on the wall." A wind chime just inside the blown-out door was still where it had been before the storm.

Mr. Luchsinger said a guitar was on the mantel above the fireplace when he and his wife left before the storm. When he returned, it was in the kitchen, under the refrigerator, and the mantel was nowhere to be seen.

The house will probably be torn down, he said, and it will probably not be rebuilt. "Between climate change and sea-level rise, we want to build responsibly and sustainably," he said. "The buildings on the back side of this island are not sustainable."

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