NY Daily News
(10/29/2013 5:09 PM, Celeste Katz)

Gov. Cuomo hopscotched lower Manhattan Tuesday on a tour highlighting New York’s efforts to shore up its defenses a year after Hurricane Sandy struck. But memories of that day -- and the fear he felt as the elements assailed the city -- remain with him.

As a former HUD secretary, "I had been working on disaster repair and disaster situations all across the country for years, and I had a lot of experience in it," Cuomo told reporters at LaGuardia Airport near the end of his tour.

"But for me, the night of Hurricane Sandy, standing in front of that Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and just watching the Hudson River cross the West Side Highway and fill the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and fill Ground Zero with nothing -- and there’s nothing anyone could do about it. Governor of the state of New York, NYPD, Fire Departments, nothing anyone can do. You’re just waiting to see when the tide crested, and you’re totally at the hands of Mother Nature.

"That was a feeling of powerlessness and fear, frankly, because you didn’t really know when it was going to stop..."

The anniversary of the devastating storm "is first a moment to remember what we went through, remember the lives we lost, remember the pain the families went through," said Cuomo, who kicked off the day with a big presentation on the damage and comeback effort. "It’s a point to pause and look at what progress we have made, and where we’re going from here and what we need to be doing from here."

Cuomo visited projects at Ground Zero, as well as the South Ferry subway station and LaGuardia, after a morning presentation on storm resiliency at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Along for the trip: HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy, and MTA chief Thomas Prendergast, as well as US DOT Undersecretary PollyTrottenberg.