They stepped in the wrong puddle. They walked the dog at the wrong moment. Or they did exactly what all the emergency experts instructed them to do — they huddled inside and waited for its anger to go away.

The storm found them all.

Hurricane Sandy, in the wily and savage way of natural disasters, expressed its full assortment of lethal methods as it hit the East Coast on Monday night. In its howling sweep, the authorities said the storm claimed at least 40 lives in eight states.

They were infants and adolescents, people embarking on careers and those looking back on them — the ones who paid the ultimate price of this most destructive of storms. In Franklin Township, Pa., an 8-year-old boy was crushed by a tree when he ran outside to check on his family’s calves. A woman died in Somerset County, Pa., when her car slid off a snowy road.

There were 22 deaths reported in New York City, where the toll was heaviest, and 5 more fatalities elsewhere in the state.