Fire and water don't mix? Tell that to the shell-shocked residents of New York's Breezy Point, an entire neighbourhood wiped out in a hellish blizzard of fire and flood during superstorm Sandy.
More than 80 houses vanished in the blaze. Simultaneously, hundreds of others were left sodden and shaken by water.
No one has been confirmed to have died in the district, but many residents compared the devastation to a battlefront.
Carol Anderson, whose nearby house escaped the fire but instead was hammered by flooding, even had trouble identifying where streets had been.
"This is Ocean Avenue," she said hesitatingly, picking her way over charred beams and under scorched, dangling telephone and electrical lines.
Nearby, a fire crew hosed down a still-burning wall. There were small flames and columns of smoke everywhere. Flames even flickered at the top of a broken telegraph pole, like a ghastly candle.