STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When Tropical Storm Irene hit last August, siblings Charlotte Breuers and David Hagley stayed put in their rear bungalow in Midland Beach, because they didn’t want to leave their pets.

The water only covered two of their front steps, they told their landlord, so they decided to stay for Sandy as well.

That choice proved fatal for both – police discovered both Ms. Breuers and Hagley, 77 and 65, dead inside their 1025 Olympia Blvd. home Friday and first publicly reported their deaths that day, without identifying them by name. Police publicly released their names Sunday night.

The borough’s death toll has remained steady at 23 victims since Friday – 22 were found on Staten Island, while a 23rd died in Lower Manhattan. That number includes Ms. Breuers and Hagley.

ISLANDERS LOST TO SANDY:

Beatrice Spagnuolo, 79,

164 Grimsby Ave.

Anastasia Rispoli, 73,

158 Grimsby Ave.

John Filipowicz, 51,

72 Fox Beach Ave.

John Filipowicz Jr., 20,

72 Fox Beach Ave.

Leonard Montalto, 53,

176 Fox Beach Ave.

Ella Norris, 89,

728 Buel Ave.

Artur Kasprzak, 28,

20 Doty Ave.

Angela Dresch, 13,

687 Yetman Ave.

Andrew Semarco, 61,

146 Mills Ave.

James Rossi, 85,

575 Quincy Ave.

Jack Paterno, 65,

787 Nugent Ave.

Patricia Bevan, 59,

638 Hunter Ave.

Anna Gesso, 62,

299 Naughton Ave.

Eugene Contrubis, 62,

162 Kiswick St.

Connor Moore, 4,

end of McLaughlin St.

Brandon Moore, 2,

end of McLaughlin St.

Walter Colborne, 89,

23 Harbour Court.

Marie Colborne, 66,

23 Harbour Court.

George Dresch, 55,

Brighton St.

George P. O’Regan, 79,

70 New Lane

Frank Suber, 55,

90 Broad St., Manhattan

David Hagley, 65,

1025 Olympia Blvd.

Charlotte Breuers, 77,

1025 Olympia Blvd.

“She was an animal lover. She had two or three dogs in the house. Maybe three cats. Rabbits, birds,” said landlord Dave Troise Sr., who lives in the front bungalow at the same address. “All the pets are gone, as far as I know... I just saw the wing of the parrot in the middle window.”

Ms. Breuers, a retired home health aide, would regularly walk her black pug, Lucky, throughout the neighborhood, and used to work at Aunt Phyllis’ Dog Grooming Plus Pet Shop, where she’d groom the animals, Troise said.

Hagley was “semi-retired,” Troise said – he had once lived in Texas, where he installed sprinkler systems.

When Irene hit last year, Troise said, Ms. Breuers was adamant about seeing her pets through the storm – “She would not leave the animals. She said, ‘I’m staying with them. I’m not going anywhere.’”

Irene fizzled out, Troise said, and based on her first-person account of the 2011 storm, he decided to ride out Sandy as well. “They said this storm is a little worse than that one. How high could it go, then? I never thought it was going to be a wall of water.”

So Troise, 58, and his girlfriend, Loretta DeSio, 57, stayed behind as well, at one point giving three others – a father, an adult son and his girlfriend – shelter. The storm waters started rising, though, and their three guests made it across the street to a neighbor’s two-story house.

But by then, the waters were too high to cross – “By then, the cars were drifting down the street. There was debris.”

With water rising through the floor, Troise said he went into the bedroom, “and I just punched out the drop ceiling there.”

He had a ladder nearby, and he sent his girlfriend up, then threw up his go bag, then followed.

“When I got up there, I had to punch out the attic window,” he said, in case they needed a fast escape to the roof. They shone a flashlight across the street to let their houseguests know where they were, and they shone a flashlight back.

And the waters kept rising, up to within a foot of the attic entrance, he said.

He saw one man and his child up on a nearby roof – he speculates they stayed up there through the night before getting rescued, and he worried about a fire he could see from down the street. But the two remained safe in the attic until a helicopter could get them out in the morning.

He found out about Ms. Breuers and Hagley days later, he said, when he spotted Ms. Breuers’ head through her living room window.

“Mine was up higher, we had a little more time,” he said of the two bungalows.

And despite what they had said about staying, Troise said he was never quite sure on Monday if they had stuck around. “We thought they might have left,” Troise said, noting that Ms. Breuers didn’t greet his girlfriend when she came out during the day Monday.

“That afternoon, it was funny because they weren’t around,” he said. “Usually they’ll come out. We assumed they must have left.”