Once the surge levees break, the water level just soars and covers everything in a "reverse Titanic" as the following pictures demonstrate:
Ground Zero (via AP)
[2]
Hoboken PATH station (via @garywhitta)
[3]
Avenue C and 13th Street (via iWitness Weather [4]):
Lower East Side:
The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is flooding... (via @NewsBreaker)
[5]
The Belt Parkway fully underwater
[6]
Stunning view of the lower manhattan black out (via @nicksummers)
[7]
14th Street Transformer exploding! (via @georgeweld)
[8]
Floating Cop cars in lower east side (via David Schulz)
[9]
More as we see it.