Staffers returned to find UN headquarters on

Staffers returned to find UN headquarters on  Thursday with the dome over the General Assembly building stripped of most of its protective covering, the Delegates Entrance security canopy destroyed and communications within a challenge.

All were victims of the wrath super storm Sandy waged on New York City.

Senior UN officials in briefings Thursday said that on Sunday the complex was ordered closed as Sandy barreled up the Atlantic Ocean along the U.S. eastern seaboard towards New York after clobbering parts of the Caribbean last week.

They said they acted in consultation with local authorities and all city bus and subway service had been ordered suspended because of the storm.

Staffers would find it well near  impossible to get to work.

What staff was able to report for duty Thursday not only found challenges at work but still had a challenge getting to work. Subway service in the metropolis was limited and driving was near impossible with severe gridlock, despite restrictions on only cars with three or more people allowed to cross city bridges into Manhattan.

There were many, many empty desks both in the compound and in satellite offices around the East Side of Manhattan, officials said. The homes of many UN employees suffered flood, wind damage or electricity loss.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon escaped the storm's fury. He was in the Republic of Korea and returned to New York Wednesday,

His chef du cabinet, Susana Melcora, was in Geneva during the storm, returned only at 3 a.m. local time Thursday. She had been coordinating headquarters recovery efforts by telephone, she said.

However, Melcora found on return to her Manhattan home she was a storm victim too, she said. There was no electricity.

Nearly half of Manhattan, below 39th Street lost power Monday night when waters of the East and Hudson rivers and New York Bay surged under gale-force winds. Most of the Xinhua correspondents assigned to the UN also were without electricity.

One of those many empty UN desks was assigned to a Filipino staffer whose home in Jersey City, in the hard hit adjacent U.S. state of New Jersey,  was flooded. However, a UN safety and security officer assigned to an entrance was at his regular post despite his Toms River, NJ, home being "hit hard." In both cases there were no injuries.

"Everyone is fine, that's all that matters," the officer told Xinhua, seemingly shrugging off the disaster.