Photos From a Wind- and Water-Wasted Coney Island

[gallery] Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz called for the National Guard to come to Brooklyn's aid today, in part to help control looting in Sea Gate and Coney Island. The Observer spent an hour in the latter neighborhood yesterday, before duty called us to higher ground. While we didn't see evidence of looting with our own eyes, the scene on oil-slicked Neptune Avenue was severe. The fire trucks of Engine 318, Ladder 166 were parked on the avenue, after the firehouse flooded on Monday evening. There were awnings on the wrong side of 15-foot fences, and cars that had flown into trees in the night. "The water turned over a refrigerator in the downstairs apartment," said Marguerie Batts, a homeowner on Neptune Avenue near 29th Street. Her neighbor John Lloyd told us that a nearby bank and discount store had been torn apart by looters in the night. "I don't know how they managed to be out there," he said. "The water must have been six feet high," he said, gesturing to Neptune. "I heard someone calling for help, and I was like, 'How can I get out there to help you?'" A few blocks down the avenue, a Porsche SUV had been thrown against a fence in the night. "It was parked two blocks away," a woman who said she was the car's owner told us. "My car is a tourist attraction," she said, noting the passersby snapping photographs. In the most chilling scene, two men showed us a flooded basement apartment on West 20th Street. "There were 10 people living there," a spectator told us.