An 85-year-old man was killed in Queens on Saturday night when a falling tree crushed him in Forest Park during storms that swept across New York City. NYPD officers found Zenon Reynarowych dead at around 8:30 p.m., making the fatal tree strike the most severe damage reported as the weather moved through the five boroughs.
The storm’s reach was wide beyond that one death. New York City Parks said it got more than 250 calls for downed trees across the city, while firefighters in Brooklyn and Queens rescued two people from the water Saturday night. One of them said only, “I’m thankful to be alive,” a reminder of how quickly the weather turned dangerous.
By Sunday morning, Con Edison said it was still working to restore service to more than 10,000 customers. The outages and tree damage left a trail of disruption that was still being cleared as daylight returned, and the utility gave no estimate for when all power would be back.
The hard part for many residents was how fast the storm arrived. Some people said they did not know what was happening before the damage was already underway, a detail that fits the scattered, sudden way the storm hit neighborhoods from Queens to Brooklyn. What remains unanswered is what exact conditions in Forest Park brought the tree down on Reynarowych, but the consequences were already clear by Sunday: one man dead, thousands still without power and crews still dealing with the cleanup.
