Imagine dropping your iPhone in a pool of muddy water. That's a poor analogy to what's occurring to New York city right now.
The entire place is an intricate technological marvel. Immerse it in salt water, especially with its thousands of miles of aging underground services, and you're talking the likely destruction of something that will take years and many billions of dollars to repair.
The people of New York are going to be hard pressed to maintain anything approaching a normal operating basis under those conditions, and the fact that New York is a central hub to the rest of the US economy, and....well, the repercussions are potentially mind blowing.
Your post just happens to be #666. Oy vay....