Sandy's U.S. death toll reaches 12; two N.Y. hospitals evacuated NEW YORK - More than 200 patients were being evacuated from two Manhattan hospitals late Monday after backup power systems failed in the wake of Sandy, a massive storm that roared ashore in New Jersey, swamping New York, killing at least 12 people and wreaking havoc across a huge swath of the Northeast. The backup generator failed at NYU Langone Medical Center, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said. Nearly 50 of the patients were described as "critical" and were being taken to the Mt. Sinai Medical Center. A second New York facility, Bellevue Hospital Center, had a similar problem and had to evacuate, the New York Fire Department said. In the evacuated Breezy Point area of Queens, a fire devoured 15 homes, authorities said. Chaos pervaded a wide area of the East. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission declared an alert at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey after floodwater rose 6 feet above sea level. The plant powers more than half a million homes but was already out of service for a previously scheduled refueling. The water was expected to recede, and the alert was the second-lowest of the NRC's four "action levels." According to official accounts and media reports, falling trees killed an 8-year-old boy in Franklin Township, Penn., and a 62-year-old man in Boytertown, Penn. Authorities said a firefighter in Easton, Conn., was killed in the line of duty, but they did not release details. Falling trees also killed people in the New York borough of Queens; in the community of Roslyn on Long Island; in Mendham Township and Hawthorne, N.J.; and in Mansfield, Conn. A woman died in a storm-related car crash in Maryland, and in Toronto, a woman was killed by a falling sign. Earlier Monday in North Carolina, a replica of an iconic British transport vessel sank in churning seas, killing at least one crew member. It was en route to St. Petersburg, Fla., when it began to take on water southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C. The storm's center crashed ashore a little after 8 p.m. EDT, delivering a powerful blow to the most populous region of the United States, paralyzing epicenters of power and commerce and plunging smaller coastal communities into crisis. More than 3 million homes and businesses, including the lower third of Manhattan, were without power. Shortly before midnight, Sandy was near Philadelphia, moving northwest at 18 mph and carrying sustained winds of 75 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Turbulent days lay ahead: In New Jersey, the Hudson River had invaded Hoboken. In West Virginia and Maryland, a blizzard was underway. In New York, water poured into subway tunnels and the World Trade Center site; exploding transformers lit up the dreary sky and 300 calls to 911 flooded in each minute. Bloomberg said downed power lines had sparked numerous fires. Sandy's center passed over land just south of Atlantic City, N.J., but the precise landfall site didn't matter. Sandy was a freak event - a late-season hurricane hemmed in by weather bands, gobbling up the energy of the Gulf Stream while growing into a ragged, 1,000-mile-wide storm. By the time it came ashore, authorities had changed Sandy's formal description from a hurricane to a "post-tropical cyclone," a non-tropical weather event. The scientific distinctions seemed lost on the storm. As Sandy grew, so did its power to push a wall of sea water onto shore - with such force that some rivers were expected to run backward. The metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York were most immediately in the cross hairs, but Sandy cast tropical-storm-strength winds from the Carolinas to Maine. Because of its size, Sandy was more than a coastal event. Officials predicted 33-foot waves in Lake Michigan and high winds in Indiana. In Ohio, high winds were predicted to generate 20-foot waves on Lake Erie, posing a flood risk. There were formal government warnings of one variety or another in 23 states, and 60 million people - nearly 1 in 5 Americans - could weather the storm before the end of the week. The storm's impact was so varied and widespread that Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley called his state "America's weather in miniature." Maryland was being pounded on both ends of the state.