Five years later, superstorm Sandy's legacy is still being shaped.

Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of displaced Shore residents and flood insurance policyholders, who are still struggling to be made whole, would testify to that.

But the images of that Monday and the ruin revealed by the following daybreak are more easily defined: fear, chaos, tragedy, heroism, unity.

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Michael G. Mastronardy, now the Ocean County Sheriff, was chief of Toms River's police department on Oct. 29, 2012. He didn't expect Sandy to be much different from other storms he'd experienced.

"I remember going to Third Avenue in Ortley Beach in 1992, where the water broke through. I remember LBI and the destroyer on the beach (the USS Monssen, which was beached on the south end of Long Beach Island during a vicious nor'easter in 1962). I thought at most, it would be that. In fact, I told some people, the day before, that I didn't think it would be that bad."

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But on the night of Oct. 29, Mastronardy found himself on the barrier island shortly before Sandy came ashore, with the water rapidly rising.

"I was driving through Pelican Island, trying to get over the bridge to get off the barrier island. I was driving on the wrong side of the road because there were three poles down on the westbound side."

"I had been there 15 or 20 minutes before and there was no water on the roadway, maybe about half an inch. When I got back there, the water was up so high that the only thing showing above the water was about half an inch, or an inch of my headlight (he was in a Ford Expedition)."

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"I was going zero miles an hour; it was dark, it was windy, I couldn't believe the truck was becoming a motorized boat. The truck was making noises; I didn't know how deep the water was. That's when it really hit me how bad it was; this wasn't a typical nor'easter. This is something I've never seen before."

The Asbury Park Press interviewed a dozen people who had front-row seats to the devastation and aftermath of Sandy.

Homeowners, elected officials, first-responders, meteorologists and more, each with their own unique recollections of that evening and the days, months and years that have followed.

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David Robinson, New Jersey State Climatologist and Rutgers professor

"As (Sandy) got closer we were able to hone in on the exact path. Five days out there was talk of the left turn and when it was going to happen, but it had narrowed into about a 200-mile stretch of the coast where (Sandy) would make landfall."

"It was already quite apparent that it was going to be a major event and one of extreme nature. Anytime you get something like that you might not be fully prepared for it."

Scott Woolley, former chief of the Union Beach Police Department

"Not many evacuated, unfortunately. They figured we lived through hurricanes before, bad storms before, and we’d gotten through that so we'll get through this."

Gary Szatkowski, former head meteorologist in New Jersey for the National Weather Service

"Normally when the briefing packages are prepared you prepare a draft first. You print out all the weather-related information, all the technical information, everything, and I’d say (to my team), ‘You guys look at this and tell me if you need me to change anything’ because this is sort of the sheet of music that we’re going to be singing for the next 6, 12 hours."

"This time I didn’t do that because I thought that it (Szatkowski's "personal plea" for residents to evacuate) might scare some of my co-workers. I got the draft back and I put that slide back in."

"After I sent it out, I told the staff what I did and there was some shock. I kept them out of the loop on purpose in case this turned out to be a bad idea — then if somebody would get yelled at it would be me. That was the one time I broke the ground rules.”

Lori Dibble, homeowner in the Paradise Park mobile home community in Highlands

“I evacuated on Sunday to New York City, the Upper West Side. I already had a suitcase packed — I was going to go to a conference in Washington D.C. the next weekend — and then I also packed a suitcase to take for my evacuation."

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"But I didn’t think what happened was going to happen. I thought I might get some water, so picked things up off the floor and covered furniture with drop cloths and tarps.”

Edwin Byk, resident of Little Egg Harbor's Mystic Island section

"Me and my daughter Alyssa were in the house. She was 21."

"We took everything off the bottom floor of the house. We put everything up on top of the tables, at least three feet off the floor. In the garage we put everything in Tupperware containers. We thought that would protect everything even if a little bit of water came in."

Thomas Boyd, chief of the Seaside Heights Police Department

"We realized it was going to be bad. But I don't think I knew how bad it was going to be until about 6 o'clock that night. I saw the water break through at Carteret Avenue."

"That was still a couple of hours before the storm came onshore. I saw it come across and I thought, 'This is going to be really bad.' When that wind was coming through the Ferris wheel (on Casino Pier), it sounded like a pack of wolves howling."

Michael G. Mastronardy, sheriff of Ocean County and former chief of the Toms River Police Department

"We had a mandatory evacuation on the barrier island but we had no evacuations on the mainland. We never expected what happened on the mainland, that there would be that much water. We never envisioned that."

George Nebel, mayor of Mantoloking

"We had a mandatory evacuation and we decided that pretty early. We told people, 'The police, office of emergency management and the fire department are all leaving. No one from the borough government is going to stay in town.'"

"We were very clear about that, that there is no help, if you decide to stay. But people did stay. You can't force them to leave."

Richard Buzby, chief of the Little Egg Harbor Police Department

"We had mandatory evacuations for Irene and most people heeded the evacuation orders. But the storm turned out to be a 'flop' in our area."

"By the early hours of October 29, it was apparent to me that a lot of our residents were not planning to leave. I put out a call for support and we received help from the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office and the Sheriff's Department, and we formed teams of four and went door-to-door in the most vulnerable areas until the flood waters had risen so high that people were getting swept off their feet and even our largest vehicles couldn't function."

Scott Woolley, former chief of the Union Beach Police Department

“We had people calling us to rescue them and we had no way to get to you. We just have no way to get to you until this water goes down. You feel helpless (as a first responder). If there was a way we could get to you, we’d be there."

Michael G. Mastronardy, former chief of the Toms River Police Department

"I was on the barrier island when I heard on the radio that the ocean had broken through. I started to turn around by the A&P. When I turned around, the water started coming up so quickly all around me. It was like a tub filling up, it came up so fast."

Edwin Byk, resident of Little Egg Harbor's Mystic Island section

"When the water started to come in, we went up to the second floor. We looked down and I could see everything just floating around. We were watching the water come up, up, up. The refrigerator started floating, the washer and dryer were floating."

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"I thought I'd be protected with the stuff in the Tupperware but forget it. It was a floating mess. About three feet of water came into the house."

Thomas Boyd, chief of Seaside Heights Police Department

"It started getting really bad and I went out to find people who were in trouble. I was with (former fire chief) Jim Sammarelli in a deuce and a half (a large military transport vehicle), and the water just picked us up and moved us a block. That's when I knew we were in trouble."

"We saw pieces of the boardwalk, parts of houses, lifeguard boats, a lifeguard stand, a yellow Volkswagen, floating by. A kid was hanging onto a tree, he jumped out and swam toward us, like a puppy. When he jumped in the water, he was up to his neck. We got him in the truck. We saved a woman with a couple of kids, they were up in the attic of a little bungalow."

Michael G. Mastronardy, former chief of the Toms River Police Department

"When I was coming up to the bridge, I saw guy in a black wetsuit, he had a battery light on his head. I opened up the car door to communicate with him and he expressed to me that he had jumped out of his second story window in Seaside Heights and paddled on his surf board to the bridge.

He said he just wanted to get back to his ex-wife and kids on James Street (in Toms River). I told him to get in my truck. We went up onto the bridge, but as we came down on the other side, now we're in a situation where I've got the same water to go through at the bottom of the bridge. I had lost the electric power to the windows. The truck was making all sorts of noises. We made it through."

Richard Buzby, chief of Little Egg Harbor Police Department

"Eventually, conditions got so bad that I couldn't allow our first responders to go out. We're in the help business, and when you can't go out...it had a devastating effect on all of us."

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"We were getting calls from panicked people who hadn't evacuated. We were telling people to get to the highest point in their houses. The hours that we could not respond seemed endless to us."

"Some of our communications people, some people emotionally could not handle it, with all these panicked people calling. Some of them had to be relieved."

Thomas Boyd, chief of Seaside Heights Police Department

"The worst thing was people were calling for help. We were inundated; we couldn't go out. As a chief of police, I couldn't put my men in harm's way."

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"We stayed in, police headquarters, we had a generator up high so we still had lights. We just kept watching the water rise. It was a scary night. It's the worst I've ever seen."

Dina Long, mayor of Sea Bright

“I remember getting a call at 5:30 in the morning from the Sea Bright EMS coordinator (Dan Drogin). We had evacuated — my family and I — so I got this call. 'You need to prepare yourself,' he said. 'For what?' 'Sea Bright is gone.' I was like, 'What do you mean it's gone?'"

Edwin Byk, resident of Little Egg Harbor's Mystic Island section

"I had five docks in my yard. My pool had floated up two feet. I had a sailboat in my yard. I had to get a crane to get it out. All my decks were gone. The whole neighborhood was a complete mess. I had about three feet of water in my house."

"There was so much debris; they plowed everything into a big pile on the corner by my house. It must have been 200 feet long by 40 feet high. It was unbelievable."

Scott Woolley, former chief of the Union Beach Police Department

“Brook Avenue — it was like the whole block was gone. There was nothing left. You would come up to a couple places and you might have the stairs and the railing but there was no house.”

Richard Buzby, chief of the Little Egg Harbor Police Department

"At about 2:40 a.m. Oct. 30, it seemed that the storm had abated a bit. I asked my public works superintendent if he thought that we could make it to the victims in high-wheeled loaders. He said that it was iffy, but yes, we might. We had those vehicles and two five-ton trucks and crews that had arrived from the National Guard, and we headed out."

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"We got to the corner of Twin Lakes Boulevard and Cala Breeze Way; I knew we had to go out into the flood waters and I looked up into the faces of the rescue workers and it occurred to me that I might be sending these brave people to their deaths."

"I was working up the courage to send them when I looked down the boulevard and saw a faint light flashing about a mile away. I knew we had to go. We found the man with the flashlight; he said he had gone out into the storm to get help for his handicapped brother who was trapped in a nearby house. We were able to rescue both of them, along with dozens of other people."

George Nebel, mayor of Mantoloking

"I couldn't get back to town until Wednesday. I got into Point Pleasant Beach, walked through Bay Head, and there was an inlet where the road had been. I had to get a boat to cross the inlet and see the rest of town."

"The ocean had actually made three inlets in town; the biggest one was by the Mantoloking Bridge. I toured the whole town. It was terrible. I went to Downer Avenue and looked north and south on the highway. The smell of gas was everywhere. I could see gas bubbling up through the puddles. There were houses smashed against the bridge."

Lori Dibble, homeowner in the Paradise Park mobile home community in Highlands

“It was chaos. It was like a bomb had dropped. Many of the homes were all twisted up and broken open. The contents of the homes were everywhere. You couldn’t see the roads because of all the debris.”

Thomas Boyd, chief of the Seaside Heights Police Department

"I couldn't get off the island for a couple of days, most of the town was still under water. The morning after the storm, we had gas pipes that broke on Ocean Terrace, you could hear the gas pipes whistling."

"We went from house to house to check on people who had stayed. I drove down Hiering Avenue, where I was born and raised and we were driving on top of a 6-foot sand dune. There was debris everywhere."

Scott Woolley, former chief of the Union Beach Police Department

"There was a gentleman who came up from Georgia. His first name was Chris, I can't remember his last name off-hand. He owned a couple diners and restaurants down there in Georgia. He came up with a trailer and all he wanted to do was be able to cook for people."

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"We put him behind our headquarters and he cooked us three meals every day. Eggs and grits in the morning, which was the first time a lot of the (officers) had grits.”

Dina Long, mayor of Sea Bright

“Imagine telling a thousand people that you can’t go home and that I don’t know when you can go home.”

MIchael G. Mastronardy, former chief of the Toms River Police Department

"We had to tell people that they couldn't go back home right away. That was difficult. There were sinkholes in Ortley Beach; there was no water, no gas, no electricity. I remember how frustrated people were and I felt for them. I was able to go home, take a shower, get something to eat. These people weren't able to do that. They couldn't go home."

Maria Clohosey, homeowner in the Shark River Hills neighborhood of Neptune

“My youngest was 7 when Sandy happened. We moved in with (my husband’s) sister in Avon for like six-and-a-half weeks and then we got it to where we could move back in upstairs (at our home). It was right before Christmas. At that time, (my son) was only worried about how Santa was going to find him.”

George Nebel, mayor of Mantoloking

"We had a curfew at night for months. We were worried about people stealing, coming into town, because so many of the houses were wide open. We couldn't let people over the bridge for many months."

Thomas Boyd, chief of Seaside Heights Police Department

"We're not all the way back, when 68 percent of our town was under water, it takes a long time. They say after a catastrophe like that, it takes at least 10 years to come back. We're just about at five years and we're still hurting."

"A lot of the people that had older bungalows, they were hand-me-downs, a lot of those people did not come back. A lot of the old houses have been ripped down and replaced with new houses."

Richard Buzby, chief of Little Egg Harbor Police Department

"When I see a storm in the Atlantic, I get itchy. We had a huge number of homes, virtually entire neighborhoods, wiped out. We're still not really recovered, five years later. Some folks just didn't recover. And we had contractor fraud, which is despicable, people taking advantage of these people who had been through so much."

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"But a lot of folks have really demonstrated remarkable resiliency. Their neighborhoods are actually better. It has been an awful hard and long pull for everyone involved. I hope never to see it again."

George Nebel, mayor of Mantoloking

"The town is much stronger than it was in 2012. So many houses are raised and rebuilt, new houses are on pilings. We are in much better shape than we were before Sandy. Nobody wants to see a storm like that again."

Edwin Byk, resident of Little Egg Harbor's Mystic Island section

"I'm still not back home (he was victimized by a contractor who took his initial grant money and did not complete work to elevate his house). As soon as I get the CO, I'm going to get the hell out of here. I'm going to sell the house. I'm probably one of the last ones down here who isn't finished yet."

David Robinson, New Jersey State Climatologist and Rutgers professor

“The death toll in a state of 9 million people stayed under 40, and I think many of those were from after the storm."

"There was a high tide on Monday morning that exceeded that of (Hurricane) Irene just a year earlier and that gave people the idea that 'Whoa, the storm isn’t even supposed to be here until tomorrow.' People who thought that they were going to ride it out saw that and decided no. And also it wasn’t tourism season, which would have complicated things."

"I'm not looking for silver linings — there's nothing silver about that storm — but it's not difficult to think of worse outcomes.”

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Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com; Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050, jmikle@gannettnj.com