“Well, the streets do seem a lot cleaner, in some places,” he told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.  

But the rodent expert quickly came to his senses. There’s a reason rats are so often compared to humans (like a “rat in a cage”)—they’re resilient, like we are. And there’s also a reason for the myriad water-related rat metaphors in the vernacular (“rats fleeing a sinking ship”): they’re particularly good swimmers.

“They’re going to be like us,” Sullivan said. “Get washed out, try to come back in.”

People keep asking him about the tunnels, he said, hoping maybe rats will get sucked out of the city via the Holland Tunnel, for example. But that’s based on the assumption that tunnels are full of rats—a misperception, Sullivan said.

The relatively relaxed scene came as a relief to locals after Hurricane Sandy terrorized Long Island, killing four people as of Tuesday, including one person whose body had washed ashore in tony East Hampton, just seven miles from Sag Harbor. Across Suffolk and Nassau counties, the devastation was immense: homes were destroyed, roads submerged, piers and beaches wiped out altogether. Officials estimate the damage inflicted across the East Coast from Sandy will top Hurricane Irene's $15 billion price tag.

“By far it is the most devastating storm we’ve had on Long Island,” said Mark Gross, director of the Long Island Power Authority, which estimates residents of the East End could be without power for 10 days or longer. “Right now, we’re in the assessing stage but, obviously, with this many outages customers should be prepared to hang on for an extended period of time.”

From reports on Main Street here in Sag Harbor, about half of people had lost power, and you could tell those who had been able to shower before venturing to town, and those who had not.

The more that New York and New Jersey are the story, the more Washington has been eclipsed. It’s not just that the nation’s capital survived the storm without massive blackouts, but that its business is politics, which for the moment seems like a beached whale.

President Obama canceled his campaign events for Tuesday and Wednesday, preferring the role of chief emergency coordinator. Rather than stumping in Ohio, the president is going to New Jersey to inspect the hurricane damage and meet with affected residents, a decision that makes strategic sense on several levels.

First, for all the media focus on Manhattan, New Jersey is the hardest-hit state, so Obama can go there without appearing to play politics.

Second, he gets to hang with Chris Christie, who happens to be one of Mitt Romney’s most visible surrogates. The New Jersey governor praised Obama’s handling of the storm after the president called him, so this is like picking off a star player from the other team and getting him on your squad, at least temporarily. Every day that Christie is rhetorically hugging Obama is a day when he’s not making the case for Romney. Christie went even further in an interview on Fox and Friends Tuesday morning, professing little interest when told Romney might visit to tour some of the damage in his state. “I have no idea” [if Romney is coming], “nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” Christie said. “I have a job to do in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics.”

But the insured losses for insurance companies may not reflect the sum total of economic damage suffered by the region. Hurricanes can cause damage to property in a few ways: storm surges and flooding, wind, and inland flooding.  Although there has certainly been substantial wind damage, like trees falling onto homes, the truly catastrophic damage up and down the coast of Long Island and New Jersey largely comes from the storm surge flooding.

Wind damage is covered by standard homeowner’s insurance. But water damage from flooding is provided through the federally subsidized National Flood Insurance Program, which covers 5.6 million individuals and business. There is a small “excess flood insurance” market, but the overall flood-insurance market is dominated by the feds. Which means private insurance companies aren’t on the hook for losses tied to coastal flooding.

The storm also did a number on New York City’s transportation system. Keogh said that the city’s infrastructure isn’t designed to deal with that much salt-water sloshing through the city and, especially, its subway tunnels. That will impose direct costs on the city, as crews work to pump water out of tunnels, restore electricity, and repair storm damage.

But it will also impose massive indirect costs. With the subway and commuter rail shuttered, commerce in Manhattan and other parts of the city will fall dramatically, as shoppers and workers simply can’t get very far from where they live. (Your correspondent is working from his apartment in Brooklyn right now as The Daily Beast’s Chelsea offices are closed). So, a business owner who suffered relatively little wind or water damage may nonetheless suffer a dramatic decline in income for the next week. “They have to look very closely at their policy” to see exactly what damage they can claim, said Keogh. New York City’s economy is also propelled in large part by tourism. In 2011, some 50 million tourists visited the U.S. But with air and train routes shut down for the next week, hotels, restaurants, and shops that cater to tourists will likely see lower revenues.

Republicans opposed disaster relief that wasn’t paid for after Hurricane Irene battered much of the East Coast last year. Democrats hammered them for supporting tax cuts for the wealthy without such “pay-fors.” Recognizing they were losing the public-relations wars, Republicans backed off.

If more money is needed for rebuilding efforts after Sandy, Republicans will have to decide whether this is a fight they want to wage again. A Republican leadership aide, asked if there was any discussion of a supplemental funding bill, said simply: “Not yet.”

Nor did Christie soften as Sandy came ashore. At a Monday evening press conference announcing that rescue missions were being suspended until morning, Christie accused Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo Langford, a Democrat with whom he shared a preexisting political feud, of encouraging residents not to evacuate. Not to be outdone, Langford fired back, slamming Christie for dishonesty and for playing politics. But the governor held the larger megaphone and thus the upper hand. As for the residents themselves who’d stayed behind: “This is now your responsibility,” the governor barked. Nothing left to do but “hunker down.”

“Hunker down” was also the advice given—though much more avuncularly—by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Vastly lower-key than Christie, Bloomberg urged New Yorkers to “hunker down, take a sandwich out of the fridge, and watch some TV”—as though they were waiting out a rain delay of game 7 rather than bracing for a meteorological calamity. Then again, such keep-calm-and-carry-on nonchalance is vintage Bloomberg. (The New York Times was quick to recall how, as last winter’s blizzard loomed, the mayor advised his citizenry to relax and take in a show.) At this point, if the mayor showed genuine passion over a brewing storm, he’d throw 8 million people into paranoid hysteria.

Down the coast, as the Washington, D.C., area hunkered down (and sandwiched up, if the rush on grocery stores was any indication), Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley knew exactly what loomed in the minds of his people: how much they loathe the local power company, PEPCO. Well aware of the utility’s most-hated status among constituents, the mayor informed The Daily Beast on Monday that he had a “boot up the backside” of PEPCO. Message to voters: hundreds of thousands of you will no doubt wind up in darkness, but rest assured I will make someone pay.