Hurricane Sandy Hits East Coast USA - HUGE!

[Neal]

[UPDATED: 8:00 p.m. ET]

"Superstorm." "The Perfect Storm." "Frankenstorm."

Whatever you want to call it, the East Coast is bracing for Hurricane Sandy, a "rare hybrid storm" that is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge to the mid-Atlantic coast, Long Island Sound and New York harbor, forecasters say, with winds expected to be at or near hurricane force when it makes landfall sometime on Monday.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the Category 1 hurricane was centered about 280 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C., and 485 miles south of New York City early Sunday, carrying maximum sustained winds of 75 mph and moving northeast at 15 mph.

[Slideshow: Latest photos from Hurricane Sandy]

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the immediate, mandatory evacuation for low-lying coastal areas, including Coney Island, the Rockaways, Brighton Beach, Red Hook and some parts of lower Manhattan along the East River.

"If you don't evacuate, you're not just putting your own life at risk," Mayor Bloomberg said at a news conference Sunday. "You're endangering first responders who may have to rescue you."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's message for residents was a bit more blunt. "Don't be stupid," Christie said Sunday afternoon, announcing the suspension of the state's transit system beginning at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

Earlier, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the suspension of all MTA service--including subways, buses, Long Island Railroad and Metro North--beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday. New York City Public Schools will be closed on Monday, the mayor said. The New York Stock Exchange said its trading floor will be closed on Monday, too--the first such shutdown in 27 years, according to the Wall Street Journal.

[Related: Superstorm could impact 60 million]

Sandy is expected to continue on a parallel path along the mid-Atlantic coast later Sunday before making a sharp turn toward the northwest and southern New Jersey coastline on Monday--with the Jersey Shore and New York City in its projected path.

But the path is not necessarily the problem.

"Don't get fixated on a particular track," the Associated Press said. "Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow."

(FEMA)

A tropical storm warning has been issued between Cape Fear to Duck, N.C., while hurricane watches and high-wind warnings are in effect from the Virginia to Massachusetts. The hurricane-force winds extend 175 miles from the epicenter of the storm, while tropical storm-force winds extend 500 miles--or roughly 1,000 miles end to end, making Sandy one of the biggest storms to ever hit the East Coast.

"We're looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press.

"The size of this alone, affecting a heavily populated area, is going to be history making," Jeff Masters wrote on the Weather Underground blog.

President Barack Obama received a briefing on the storm at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington on Sunday. "My main message to everybody involved is that we have to take this seriously," President Obama said. "[We will] respond big and respond fast."

[Also read: Big storm scrambles presidential race schedules]

"I can be as cynical as anyone," Christie said on Saturday, announcing a state of emergency. "But when the storm comes, if it's as bad as they're predicting, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical as you otherwise might have been."

Meanwhile, emergency evacuations were being mulled by state officials in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and even Maine.

In Virginia, Governor Bob McDonnell said 20,000 homes there had already reported power outages.

(Weather.com)

"This is not a coastal threat alone," said FEMA director Craig Fugate said during a media briefing early Sunday. "This is a very large area."

Forecasters also fear the combination of storm surge, high tide and heavy rain--between 3 and 12 inches in some areas--could be life-threatening for coastal residents.

According to the National Hurricane Center summary, coastal water levels could rise anywhere between 1 and 12 feet from North Carolina to Cape Cod, depending on the timing of the "peak surge." A surge of 6 to 11 feet is forecast for Long Island Sound and Raritan Bay, including New York Harbor.

The storm surge in New York Harbor during Hurricane Irene in September 2011, forecasters noted, was four feet.

[bruce_nyc]

Yes, we are braced for the hurricane here in New York City. The peak of it should be hitting in about 5 hours (1pm). The subways and buses have been shut down since 7pm last night.

At this moment, it just looks like huge solid clouds... moving along very fast over the Hudson... spraying a mist of a rain... but you can already hear the winds getting very strong... I woke up to hearing the building creaking as it moves with the wind ( we live on the 43rd floor ). I have never heard this building creaking so much. It's normally so quiet you could hear a pin drop. But as I come out of the bedroom (we have a large terrace with a lot of glass), you can clearly hear the roaring of the winds already. And the winds are not supposed to peak for another 5 hours....

But we are ok. Worst case, we can just go down to the lounge on the 9th floor. It has almost no windows, and I read somewhere ( during the last storm like this ) that the lower the floor, the lower the wind speeds. They have sent out an email that they will try not to shut down the elevators unless they are absolutely required to. Luckily, we are fit enough to take the stairs down if we really needed to. ( However, once we would be down and out of the apartment, we would not be running back up just to change our shoes! )

We told our Baby, "T", not to worry. We'll be fine.... :kap:

Live news updates: http://goo.gl/YDRav

Images: http://goo.gl/vGOCe

[bruce_nyc]

Oops... Didn't realize DaBoss had already started a thread on this topic, in Global... Please direct comments to here: hurricane-sandy-hits-east-coast-usa-huge-t27420.html (http://www.sawatdee-gay-thailand.com/forum/hurricane-sandy-hits-east-coast-usa-huge-t27420.html)

[Jellybean]

When I watched the Mayor of New York on the BBC news yesterday inform New Yorkers what precautions he was taking to protect the city and its inhabitants, my immediate thought was, I wonder how this affects Bruce_nyc.

I am glad you have taken the opportunity to let us know that you and your American boyfriend are safe and sound and that you are not one of the 400,000 people that have been asked to evacuate the city.

The progress of the hurricane was the lead item on the mid-day BBC news here in the UK. Several New Yorkers were interviewed and were comparing the situation in New York to scenes from a disaster movie.

I am sure, like me, many members here will be interested to read your personal account of how hurricane Sandy is affecting one of its members. If you have time do please keep us updated.

chook-dii le duu-l╔Щ╔Щ dtua-eeng (Good luck and take care of yourself!)

[Neal]

Sandy at work

[lexusgs]

Hey Bruce,

I've just been watching live coverage on I can't believe I'm gonna say it 'Fox News'. It's the only live coverage I can pick up in Pattaya. Their extreme weather centre is now stating
that Sandy is a 'once in a lifetime' event. Hope things don't get too bad for you guys and stay safe :salute:

[bruce_nyc]

Thanks for your concern, Guys. That means a lot to D and I. We just hung up with T, who is in Pattaya. He had messaged us that he had seen the news on TV and was worried about us both. We assured him that we will be fine. He promised, "I not worry."

Right now, from the living room of our 43rd floor apartment, we just see drizzle of rain, totally overcast but bright, periodically high winds of about 30-40 mph. Occasionally we are hearing the "boom" sound of a burst of super high winds.

They're now saying the storm will peak around 8pm ( about 5 hours from now ).

Breaking News on TV is saying that the highest residential building in Manhattan, which has been under construction for over a year, and is on our street... a few blocks East of us... has the tallest part of its crane bent all the way doenward and collapsed... but it has not completely broken off or fallen ( yet! )... We can see it from our living room windows.

We assume that the storm will get much worse between now and its peak, 5 hours from now.... and continuing through tomorrow morning.

Our building is directly on the Hudson River.... so our living room view is the Hudson River and New Jersey to the left, and Columbus Circle and Central Park, in the distance, to the right. When the storm gets really bad, we'll close the blinds. If it gets really really bad, we'll move to an inner room with no windows. If anything hits the glass, or any windows break, or the windows appear stressed AT ALL, we'll just take the stairs down to the 9th floor lounge... where there's only one very small window.

I've read that the wind speeds are significantly higher for every 10 floors higher you are...
They're saying 70-80 mph gusts at our height now.... and during the coming hours, up to 90-100 mph wind gusts... this high up.

Still 4.5 hours before its peak now.... A couple of times we've felt deep vibration from the table and the floor. That's STRONG wind.

Sandy hasn't even touched ground yet. Three to four more hours before that.

[bruce_nyc]

Our building is just across the street from the evacuation zone ("Zone A", as they call it) because we're right on the water. Couldn't get any closer to it without being forced to evacuate.

The hurricane is moving faster than expected. They've moved the estimated time it will hit ground from 8pm to 6pm. That's less than 2 hours from now.

We just heard on the news that that crane that is dangling from the 74th floor is just directly above Carnegie Hall. We pray no one gets hurt.

I'll continue to post updates here.... as long as electric and batteries last, and internet or cellular data stays available.

Wow, sitting here at my desk, I feel the wind coming in through the closed door that goes out to the outdoor terrace... as if it were open!

Just say a prayer and hold a vision of us all meeting up for a drink again sometime very soon. :-) Hold that vision in your mind clearly. We believe in the power of holding a clear vision in mind and heart. :-)

[Neal]

New picture Sandy

[bruce_nyc]

Seems a bit anti-climactic.... ( which is totally fine by me, by the way.... )

Still some high winds, but nothing that bad.... And supposedly the worst has already passed...?

Hope so.

There will be more high winds, coastal flooding, etc.... but not the disaster that some people feared.

[Neal]

Hmmm. No word from Bruce in the last few hours but there is that good possibility that the antennas on his rooftop may have been hit and he has no WiFi or that internet in that region is down. Also electric could have gone off.

Here is another new pic.

[Neal]

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Superstorm Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coastline and hurled a record-breaking 13-foot (4-meter) surge of seawater at New York City on Monday, roaring ashore and putting the presidential campaign on hold a week before Election Day. At least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm.

Sandy knocked out power to at least 5.2 million people across the U.S. East, and New York's main utility said large sections of Manhattan had been plunged into darkness by the storm, with 250,000 customers without power as water pressed into the island from three sides, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads.

Just before its center reached land, the storm was stripped of hurricane status, but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still packed hurricane-force wind, and forecasters were careful to say it remained every bit as dangerous to the 50 million people in its path.

Vehicles are submerged during a storm surge near the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Monday, Oct. 29, 2012, in New York. Superstorm Sandy zeroed in on New York's waterfront with fierce rain and winds that ...

The full extent of the storm's damage across the region was unclear, and unlikely to become known until day break. Heavy rain and further flooding remain major threats over the next couple of days as the storm makes its way into Pennsylvania and up into New York State. Near midnight, the centre of the storm was just outside Philadelphia, and its winds were down to 75 mph (120 kph), just barely hurricane strength.

The National Hurricane Center announced at 8 p.m. that Sandy had come ashore near Atlantic City. It smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor, from Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia, New York and Boston, with stinging rain and gusts of more than 85 mph (135 kph). The sea surged a record of nearly 13 feet (4 metres) at the foot of Manhattan, flooding the financial district and subway tunnels.

The 10 deaths were in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Police in Toronto said a woman was killed by a falling sign as high winds closed in on Canada's largest city.

As it made its way toward land, it converged with a cold-weather system that turned into a fearsome superstorm, a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high wind but of snow. Forecasters warned of 20-foot (6-meter) waves bashing into the Chicago lakefront and up to 3 feet (0.9 metres) of snow in West Virginia.

Storm damage was projected at $10 billion to $20 billion, meaning it could prove to be one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney suspended their campaigning with just over a week to go before Election Day.

At the White House, Obama made a direct appeal to those in harm's way: "Please listen to what your state and local officials are saying. When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate. Don't delay, don't pause, don't question the instructions that are being given, because this is a powerful storm."

The storm washed away a section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey. Water was splashing over the seawalls at the southern tip of Manhattan.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said late Monday that the worst of the rain had passed for the city, and that the high tide that sent water sloshing into Manhattan from three sides was receding.

Still, authorities also feared the surge of seawater would damage the underground electrical and communications lines in lower Manhattan that are vital to the nation's financial centre.

Water began pooling in rail yards and on highways near the Hudson River waterfront on Manhattan's far west side. On coastal Long Island, floodwaters swamped cars, downed trees and put neighbourhoods under water as beachfronts and fishing villages bore the brunt of the storm. A police car was lost rescuing 14 people from the popular resort Fire Island.

In downtown Manhattan, rescue workers floated bright orange rafts on flooded streets, while police officers with loudspeakers told people to go home.

"Now it's really turning into something," said Brian Damianakes, taking shelter in a bank vestibule and watching a trash can blow down the street in Battery Park.

A construction crane atop a luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and dangled precariously. Residents in surrounding buildings were ordered to move to lower floors and the streets below were cleared, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

The facade of a four-story Manhattan building in the Chelsea neighbourhood crumbled and collapsed suddenly, leaving the lights, couches, cabinets and desks inside visible from the street. No one was hurt, although some of the falling debris hit a car.

The major American stock exchanges closed for the day, the first unplanned shutdown since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Wall Street expected to remain closed on Tuesday. The United Nations cancelled all meetings at its New York headquarters.

Not only was the New York subway shut down, but the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed because of high winds.

Authorities had warned that New York City and Long Island could get the worst of the storm surge: an 11-foot (3-meter) onslaught of seawater that could swamp lower Manhattan, flood the subways and damage the underground network of electrical and communications lines that are vital to the nation's financial capital.

"Leave immediately. Conditions are deteriorating very rapidly, and the window for you getting out safely is closing," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told those in low-lying areas earlier in the day.

New York University hospital lost backup power and was being evacuated, Bloomberg said. The hospital is located near the East River in an area of lower Manhattan where flooding was reported.

Defiant New Yorkers jogged, pushed strollers and took snapshots of churning New York Harbor during the day Monday, trying to salvage normal routines.

Without most stores and museums open, tourists were left to snap photos of the World Trade Center site, Wall Street and Times Square in largely deserted streets.

Belgian tourist Gerd Van don Mooter-Dedecker, 56, wandered in to Trinity Church after learning that a planned shopping spree with her husband Monday wouldn't happen. "We brought empty suitcases so we could fill them up," she said.

As rain from the leading edges began to fall over the Northeast on Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people from Maryland to Connecticut were ordered to leave low-lying coastal areas, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City, 50,000 in Delaware and 30,000 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Obama declared emergencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, authorizing federal relief work to begin well ahead of time. He promised the government would "respond big and respond fast" after the storm hits.

Off North Carolina, a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" went down in the storm, and 14 crew members were rescued by helicopter from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot (5.5-meter) seas. Another crew member was found hours later and was hospitalized in critical condition. The captain was still missing.

[Neal]

NEW YORK (AP) тАФ As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.

New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island.

The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states, cut power to more than 7.4 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold.

The massive storm reached well into the Midwest: Chicago officials warned residents to stay away from the Lake Michigan shore as the city prepares for winds of up to 60 mph and waves exceeding 24 feet well into Wednesday.

"This will be one for the record books," said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Consolidated Edison, which had more than 670,000 customers without power in and around New York City.

An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater тАФ 3 feet above the previous record тАФ gushed into Gotham, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street, and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety. Skyscrapers swayed and creaked in winds that partially toppled a crane 74 stories above Midtown.

Right before dawn, a handful of taxis were out on the streets, though there was an abundance of emergency and police vehicles.

Remnants of the former Category 1 hurricane were forecast to head across Pennsylvania before taking another sharp turn into western New York by Wednesday morning. Although weakening as it goes, the massive storm тАФ which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada тАФ will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, said Daniel Brown, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

As Hurricane Sandy closed in on the Northeast, it converged with a cold-weather system that turned it into a monstrous hybrid of rain and high wind тАФ and even snow in West Virginia and other mountainous areas inland.

Just before it made landfall at 8 p.m. near Atlantic City, N.J., forecasters stripped Sandy of hurricane status тАФ but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still packed hurricane-force wind, and forecasters were careful to say it was still dangerous to the tens of millions in its path.

While the hurricane's 90 mph winds registered as only a Category 1 on a scale of five, it packed "astoundingly low" barometric pressure, giving it terrific energy to push water inland, said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.

Officials blamed at least 16 deaths on the converging storms тАФ five in New York, three each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, two in Connecticut, and one each in Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia. Three of the victims were children, one just 8 years old.

Sandy, which killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Eastern Seaboard, began to hook left at midday Monday toward the New Jersey coast. Even before it made landfall, crashing waves had claimed an old, 50-foot piece of Atlantic City's world-famous Boardwalk.

"We are looking at the highest storm surges ever recorded" in the Northeast, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for Weather Underground, a private forecasting service.

Sitting on the dangerous northeast wall of the storm, the New York metropolitan area got the worst of it.

An explosion at a ConEdison substation knocked out power to about 310,000 customers in Manhattan, said Miksad.

"We see a pop. The whole sky lights up," said Dani Hart, 30, who was watching the storm from the roof of her building in the Navy Yards.

"It sounded like the Fourth of July," Stephen Weisbrot said from his 10th-floor apartment.

New York University's Tisch Hospital was forced to evacuate 200 patients after its backup generator failed. NYU Medical Dean Robert Grossman said patients тАФ among them 20 babies from neonatal intensive care that were on battery-powered respirators тАФ had to be carried down staircases and to dozens of waiting ambulances.

Not only was the subway shut down, but the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed due to high winds.

The three major airports in the New York area тАФ LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Kennedy тАФ remained shut down Tuesday.

A construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and dangled precariously. Thousands of people were ordered to leave several nearby buildings as a precaution, including 900 guests at the ultramodern Le Parker Meridien hotel.

Alice Goldberg, 15, a tourist from Paris, was watching television in the hotel тАФ whose slogan is "Uptown, Not Uptight" тАФ when a voice came over the loudspeaker and told everyone to leave.

"They said to take only what we needed, and leave the rest, because we'll come back in two or three days," she said as she and hundreds of others gathered in the luggage-strewn marble lobby. "I hope so."

Trading at the New York Stock Exchange was canceled again Tuesday тАФ the first time the exchange suspended operations for two consecutive days due to weather since an 1888 blizzard struck the city.

Fire destroyed at least 50 homes Monday night in a flooded neighborhood in the Breezy Point section of the borough of Queens, where the Rockaway peninsula juts into the Atlantic Ocean. Firefighters told WABC-TV that they had to use a boat to rescue residents because the water was chest high on the street. About 25 people were trapped in one home, with two injuries reported.

Airlines canceled around 12,500 flights because of the storm, a number that was expected to grow.

Off North Carolina, not far from an area known as "the Graveyard of the Atlantic," a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" sank when her diesel engine and bilge pumps failed. Coast Guard helicopters plucked 14 crew members from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas.

A 15th crew member who was found unresponsive several hours after the others was later pronounced dead. The Bounty's captain was still missing.

One of the units at Indian Point, a nuclear power plant about 45 miles north of New York City, was shut down around 10:45 p.m. Monday because of external electrical grid issues, said Entergy Corp., which operates the plant. The company said there was no risk to employees or the public.

And officials declared an "unusual event" at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey Township, N.J., the nation's oldest, when waters surged to 6 feet above sea level during the evening. Within two hours, the situation at the reactor тАФ which was offline for regular maintenance тАФ was upgraded to an alert, the second-lowest in a four-tiered warning system. Oyster Creek provides 9 percent of the state's electricity.

In Baltimore, fire officials said four unoccupied rowhouses collapsed in the storm, sending debris into the street but causing no injuries. Meanwhile, a blizzard in far western Maryland caused a pileup of tractor-trailers that blocked the westbound lanes of Interstate 68 on slippery Big Savage Mountain near the town of Finzel.

"It's like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs up here," said Bill Wiltson, a Maryland State Police dispatcher.

Hundreds of miles from the storm's center, gusts topping 60 mph prompted officials to close the port of Portland, Maine, and scaring away several cruise ships. A state of emergency in New Hampshire prompted Vice President Joe Biden to cancel a rally in Keene and Republican nominee Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, to call off her bus tour through the Granite State.

About 360,000 people in 30 Connecticut towns were urged to leave their homes under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders. Christi McEldowney was among those who fled to a Fairfield shelter. She and other families brought tents for their children to play in.

"There's something about this storm," she said. "I feel it deep inside."

Despite dire warnings and evacuation orders that began Saturday, many stayed put.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie тАФ whose own family had to move to the executive mansion after his home in Mendham, far from the storm's center, lost power тАФ criticized the mayor of Atlantic City for opening shelters there instead of forcing people out.

Eugenia Buono, 77, and her neighbor, Elaine DiCandio, 76, were among several dozen people who took shelter at South Kingstown High School in Narragansett, R.I. They live on Harbor Island, which is connected to the mainland by a causeway.

"I'm not an idiot," said Buono, who survived hurricanes Carol in 1954 and Bob in 1991. "People are very foolish if they don't leave."

___

Hays reported from New York and Breed reported from Raleigh, N.C.; AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Washington. Associated Press writers David Dishneau in Delaware City, Del., Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, Emery P. Dalesio in Elizabeth City, N.C., and Erika Niedowski in Cranston, R.I., also contributed.

[Neal]

W YORK (AP) тАФ Millions of people from Maine to the Carolinas awoke Tuesday without electricity, and an eerily quiet New York City was all but closed off by car, train and air as superstorm Sandy steamed inland, still delivering punishing wind and rain. The U.S. death toll climbed to 39, many of the victims killed by falling trees.

The full extent of the damage in New Jersey, where the storm roared ashore Monday night with hurricane-force winds of 80 mph, was unclear. Police and fire officials, some with their own departments flooded, fanned out to rescue hundreds.

"We are in the midst of urban search and rescue. Our teams are moving as fast as they can," Gov. Chris Christie said. "The devastation on the Jersey Shore is some of the worst we've ever seen. The cost of the storm is incalculable at this point."

More than 8.2 million people across the East were without power. Airlines canceled more than 15,000 flights around the world, and it could be days before the mess is untangled and passengers can get where they're going.

The storm also disrupted the presidential campaign with just a week to go before Election Day.

President Barack Obama canceled a third straight day of campaigning, scratching events scheduled for Wednesday in swing state Ohio. Republican Mitt Romney resumed his campaign, but with plans to turn a political rally in Ohio into a "storm relief event."

Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damage and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, making it one of the costliest natural disasters on record in the U.S., according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm.

Lower Manhattan, which includes Wall Street, was among the hardest-hit areas after the storm sent a nearly 14-foot surge of seawater, a record, coursing over its seawalls and highways.

Water cascaded into the gaping, unfinished construction pit at the World Trade Center, and the New York Stock Exchange was closed for a second day, the first time that has happened because of weather since the Blizzard of 1888. The NYSE said it will reopen on Wednesday.

A huge fire destroyed as many as 100 houses in a flooded beachfront neighborhood in Queens on Tuesday, forcing firefighters to undertake daring rescues. Three people were injured.

New York University's Tisch Hospital evacuated 200 patients after its backup generator failed. About 20 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit were carried down staircases and were given battery-powered respirators.

A construction crane that collapsed in the high winds on Monday still dangled precariously 74 floors above the streets of midtown Manhattan, and hundreds of people were evacuated as a precaution. And on Staten Island, a tanker ship wound up beached on the shore.

Most major tunnels and bridges in New York were closed, as were schools, Broadway theaters and the metropolitan area's three main airports, LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark.

With water standing in two major commuter tunnels and seven subway tunnels under the East River, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was unclear when the nation's largest transit system would be rolling again. It shut down Sunday night ahead of the storm.

Joseph Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said the damage was the worst in the 108-year history of the New York subway.

Similarly, Consolidated Edison said it could take at least a week to restore electricity to the last of the nearly 800,000 customers in and around New York City who lost power.

Millions of more fortunate New Yorkers surveyed the damage as dawn broke, their city brought to an extraordinary standstill.


4 hrs ago

Men survey a large tree that fell during Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012 in Washington, DC. The storm has claimed at least 16 lives in the United States, and has caused massive flooding across ... more



.."Oh, Jesus. Oh, no," Faye Schwartz said she looked over her neighborhood in Brooklyn, where cars were scattered like leaves.

Reggie Thomas, a maintenance supervisor at a prison near the overflowing Hudson River, emerged from an overnight shift, a toothbrush in his front pocket, to find his Honda with its windows down and a foot of water inside. The windows automatically go down when the car is submerged to free drivers.

"It's totaled," Thomas said with a shrug. "You would have needed a boat last night."

Around midday, Sandy was about 120 miles east of Pittsburgh, pushing westward with winds of 45 mph, and was expected to make a turn into New York State on Tuesday night. Although weakening as it goes, the storm will continue to bring heavy rain and flooding, said Daniel Brown of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

In a measure of the storm's immense size and power, waves on southern Lake Michigan rose to a record-tying 20.3 feet. High winds spinning off Sandy's edges clobbered the Cleveland area early Tuesday, uprooting trees, cutting power to hundreds of thousands, closing schools and flooding major roads along Lake Erie.

In Portland, Maine, gusts topping 60 mph scared away several cruise ships and prompted officials to close the port.

Sandy also brought blizzard conditions to parts of West Virginia and neighboring Appalachian states, with more than 2 feet of snow expected in some places. A snowstorm in western Maryland caused a pileup of tractor-trailers that blocked part of Interstate 68 on slippery Big Savage Mountain.

"It's like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs up here," said Bill Wiltson, a Maryland State Police dispatcher.

The death toll climbed rapidly, and included 17 victims in New York State тАФ 10 of them in New York City тАФ along with five dead in Pennsylvania and five in New Jersey. Sandy also killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Eastern Seaboard.

In New Jersey, Sandy cut off barrier islands, swept houses from their foundations and washed amusement pier rides into the ocean. It also wrecked several boardwalks up and down the coast, tearing away a section of Atlantic City's world-famous promenade. Atlantic City's 12 waterfront casinos came through largely unscathed.

Jersey City was closed to cars because traffic lights were out, and Hoboken, just over the Hudson River from Manhattan, was hit with major flooding.

A huge swell of water swept over the small New Jersey town of Moonachie, near the Hackensack River, and authorities struggled to rescue about 800 people, some living in a trailer park. And in neighboring Little Ferry, water suddenly started gushing out of storm drains overnight, submerging a road under 4 feet of water and swamping houses.

Police and fire officials used boats and trucks to reach the stranded.

"I looked out and the next thing you know, the water just came up through the grates. It came up so quickly you couldn't do anything about it. If you wanted to move your car to higher ground you didn't have enough time," said Little Ferry resident Leo Quigley, who with his wife was taken to higher ground by boat.

[Neal]

more

[egel]

I'll continue to post updates here.... as long as electric and batteries last, and internet or cellular data stays available.



There will be more high winds, coastal flooding, etc.... but not the disaster that some people feared.

Seems a bit anti-climactic....

I bet you will regret writing that for a long time to come!

Seriously,I hope everything is OK and look forward to hearing your stories when you are back on line. Was enjoying reading your posts as the storm passed.

[bruce_nyc]

The news media sure does know how to exaggerate things!

We never lost power, I never lost internet, we never had any damage here.

In fact, the very next night we were out dining in a fine restaurant. No problems.

There was some damage to property, obviously. But I think it is being highly exaggerated.

There were some lives lost too, but there are lives lost in this city every day.

[joe552]

If the BBC TV reports I'm watching are accurate, your insensivity is astounding.

[bruce_nyc]

How so?

[joe552]

Millions without power, homes destroyed, 40 people dead. But at least you were able to go out for a nice meal.

[bruce_nyc]

I am not insensitive to the losses. I didn't mean to sound like I was. Not at all.

I'm just saying that the media loves to make things look much more devastating than they really are.

No one I know has been affected... except for a few that have no power. I mean no one.

We're out, walking down the street right now, on our way to a Broadway show. The streets are filled with people and cars and taxis.... all working.... just like any other day of the year.

New Yorker are VERY resilient.

If we didn't watch the news, you'd never know a storm just hit the city.... by the look of things riding all over town in a taxi.... or walking.

Just saying.... TV news makes money from viewers.

[Neal]

I'm sorry Bruce but Joe is correct. Just because you can dine in an ellegant restaurant does not mean that there is not devastation in other areas. Look at some of these pictures and I have been in touch with my former company whose headqurters is in Bensalem Pennsyvania who not only verify the stories but say that they have no power, food is being spoiled everywhere and the damage is just catostrophic.

Maybe you would like to rethink your position?

[joe552]

Thanks DaBoss - maybe bruce will be encouraged to look outside his little bubble and the hardship people are experiencing in New Jersey, for example. Somehow, I doubt it.

[bruce_nyc]

Sorry. I guess I just reserve words and phrases like catastrophic destruction And devastation... for things like Hurricane Katrina or the Thailand tsunami.

This was a very big bad storm.

However, I live here. And I know a lot of people. And NO ONE I know was affected at all --- Except two people who have no power. One lives in New Jersey and the other lives in Cleveland Ohio.

I have close friends and family who live in all 5 boroughs of New York and in New Jersey.

I'm serious.

We've even taken surveys of all our friends, and our friend's friends. Can't find a single person affected.... beyond the two with power out ---- one of which is in Cleveland.

We were just in a Thai restaurant for dinner tonight, and people were talking about how normal everything is.

This is NOT devastation.

To call it that is an insult to New Orleans and Phuket and Haiti.




It's only people who are not in New York City who seem to think that the place is a disaster zone.

[Neal]

I guess all these houses that are now in rubble and uninhabitable because of the storm are drawings out of coloring books. Just because your friends have not reported in to you with damage reports does not mean that other areas all up and down the Eastern Seaboard and Long Island were equally as untouched. Katrina had damage also but the reports coming in are that these devastated areas are even worse and yes the Tsunami had a great loss of life but I still really feel that you are down playing other peoples tradgedy.
Can we just no longer talk about this as I really feel it is offensive since there has been no tour by you of these areas.

[egel]

I just got off the phone with a friend who lives in North Dakota near the Canadian border. He said that since early this morning the snow has been nearly waist high and is still falling. The temperature is dropping way below zero and the north wind is increasing to near gale force. His wife has done nothing but look through the kitchen window and just stare. He says that if it gets much worse, he may have to let her in.

[Neal]

NEW YORK (AP) тАФ Homes grew chilly without heat. Food spoiled in refrigerators. Televisions remained silent. And people everywhere scurried for a spot to charge their cellphones.

Two full days after Superstorm Sandy ripped through the Northeast, most Americans who lost power tried to make the best of a situation that was beyond their control while utilities struggled to restore electricity тАФ a massive job they warned could last well into next week.

Sandy blacked out some of the nation's most densely populated cities and suburbs, instantly taking away modern conveniences from Virginia to Massachusetts and as far west as the Great Lakes.

For power companies, the scale of the destruction was unmatched тАФ more widespread than any blizzard or ice storm and worse than the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"It's unprecedented: fallen trees, debris, the roads, water, snow. It's a little bit of everything," said Brian Wolff, senior vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, a group that lobbies for utilities.

Initially, about 60 million people were without power in 8.2 million homes and businesses. By Wednesday night, that number had fallen to roughly 44 million people in 6 million households and businesses.

Even as power slowly returned to some pockets, a new headache emerged: Backup batteries and generators running cellphone towers were running out of juice. One out of every five towers was down, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

That тАФ plus more people relying on their cellphones to stay connected тАФ overwhelmed the system in some areas, making it hard to place calls.

With many businesses and schools closed, people looked for ways to keep themselves entertained.

John Mazzeo, of Monroe, Conn., had a small generator that doesn't really provide him much power. But it was enough to keep his 7-year-old daughter occupied with a Christmas movie. Meals consisted of McDonald's and cereal.

In New York, Vildia Samaniego traveled four miles uptown to a bar, the Blarney Stone, to watch the Boston Celtics play the Miami Heat.

"I really needed to watch the basketball game," she laughed. "The place was packed. It's amazing how much you miss television."

Peter Nikac, a teacher who lives in Fairfield, Conn., took a more old-fashioned route: His family spent their time playing board games and sorting through photos.

"You get back to when we were young with no electronics," he said. "You realize you don't need a lot of that material. You get back to just doing simple things which is somewhat pleasing."

For others, the outage had graver consequences.

"I have several hundred dollars' worth of insulin in the refrigerator," said Joan Moore of New York's Staten Island, who is diabetic.

In Bellington, W. Va., Stephanie Hinkle and her 10- and 12-year-old kids waited with about a dozen other evacuees at a Red Cross shelter.

"No heat, no way to cook, no way to keep two small children warm. You have to do what you have to do to keep them safe," she said. Hinkle is unemployed and relies on government help to feed her kids, so she didn't have stockpiled food, water and other supplies.

For New Yorkers living in the vertical city, a loss of power means much more than spoiled cold cuts and frozen dinners. Electricity is needed to pump water to upper floors. Many New Yorkers prepared for the storm by stocking up on bottled water. But without power, there's no way to flush the toilet.

There were encouraging acts of kindness, gestures made by the lucky ones with electricity.

"I have power and hot water. If anyone needs a shower or to charge some gadgets or just wants to bask in the beauty of artificial light, hit me up," Rob Hart, who also lives on Staten Island, wrote on Facebook.

Not everybody was so neighborly.

Jake Tschudy was busy selling generators out of a truck parked on the side of a Rhode Island highway. He bought 70 of the Hyundai generators prior to the storm and was now asking $699 or $1,399 each, depending on the size. Tschudy wouldn't say how much he marked up the price.

"I do OK," he said. "It's not gouging."

Many suburban and rural neighborhoods lost power after Sandy's winds, which reached up to 90 mph, knocked trees and branches into overhead wires.

Sandy's massive storm surge тАФ 14 feet of water that broke a record set in 1821 тАФ also frustrated efforts to quickly restore power. In New York City and along the New Jersey and Connecticut coasts, flooding knocked out substations and switching yards, the vertebrae of the electric distribution system.

Far from the coasts, utilities dealt with a different problem: Snow piled onto trees that still had leaves, knocking branches and whole trees onto major transmission lines.

In many neighborhoods, power companies can't even tell which blocks are without electricity because they need to get regional substations online first. Only then can automated signals help pinpoint the damage.

Once they identify affected blocks, tree limbs need to be cut, new power lines need to be strung and blown transformers replaced.

"Until we get these major assets back in service, we don't have the ability to say: Oh gee, Mr. and Mrs. Smith's home is out of service because of a tree on their line," said Ralph A. LaRossa, chief operating officer of New Jersey utility PSE&G.

In all, 53,000 utility workers from as far away as Minnesota, New Mexico and California have come east to help.

The cleanup cost for utilities adds up fast. There's travel, food and labor costs for all those of out-of-state workers, plus overtime pay. Baltimore Gas & Electric set up a tent at the stadium where the Baltimore Ravens play to help feed and do laundry for the 4,000 workers who came to assist.

Homeowners and businesses are likely to get stuck with the cleanup bill тАФ though not always and not right away. The process varies from state to state, but typically utilities ask regulators for permission to charge customers for the cleanup through rate increases.

If the storm was major and regulators conclude that utilities prepared and did a good job restoring power, they will allow small rate increases over a long period of time.

But utility regulators also have the power to force the companies and their shareholders to eat all or some of the costs.

Sometimes businesses opened, only to realize that might not be the best idea.

Wayne Edelman opened Meurice Garment Care on Wednesday in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, even though it didn't have power. A single employee took orders with a pen and pad. But when customers came to pick up their clothes, the employee couldn't find them on the store's conveyor belt. Rather than disappoint more customers, Edelman shut the store.

In Long Beach, on New York's Long Island, Rob Dimino, owner of a fast-food store called Pantano's was cleaning up flood damage from Sandy.

Dimino pointed to a line on the wall, 15 inches above the floor, and said that was how high the water had risen.

A dank odor mixed with the smell of rotting food lingered in the air. Dimino estimated he'd have to throw out thousands of dollars' worth of food. He said going without power for another week or two would be "crippling."

[Neal]

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NEW YORK (AP) тАФ Frustration тАФ and in some cases fear тАФ mounted in New York City on Thursday, three days after Superstorm Sandy. Traffic backed up for miles at bridges, large crowds waited impatiently for buses into Manhattan, and tempers flared in gas lines.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city would send bottled water and ready-to-eat meals into the hardest-hit neighborhoods through the weekend, but some New Yorkers grew dispirited after days without power, water and heat and decided to get out.

"It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big-time."

Rima Finzi-Strauss decided to take the bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.

"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."

The mounting despair came even as the subways began rolling again after a three-day shutdown. Service was restored to most of the city, but not the most stricken parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the tunnels were flooded.

Bridges into the city were open, but police enforced a carpooling rule and peered into windows to make sure each car had at least three people. The rule was meant to ease congestion but appeared to worsen it. Traffic jams stretched for miles, and drivers who made it into the city reported that some people got out of their cars to argue with police.






Rosemarie Zurlo said she planned to leave Manhattan for her sister's place in Brooklyn because her own apartment was freezing, "but I'll never be able to come back here because I don't have three people to put in my car."

With only partial subway service, lines at bus stops swelled. More than 1,000 people packed the sidewalk outside an arena in Brooklyn, waiting for buses to Manhattan. Nearby, hundreds of people massed on a sidewalk.

When a bus pulled up, passengers rushed the door. A transit worker banged on a bus window, yelled at people inside, and then yelled at people in the line.

With the electricity out and gasoline supplies scarce, many gas stations across the New York area remained closed, and stations that were open drew long lines of cars that spilled out onto roads.

At a station near Coney Island, almost 100 cars lined up, and people shouted and honked, and a station employee said he had been spit on and had coffee thrown at him.

In a Brooklyn neighborhood, a station had pumps wrapped in police tape and a "NO GAS" sign, but cars waited because of a rumor that gas was coming.

"I've been stranded here for five days," said Stuart Zager, who is from Brooklyn and was trying to get to his place in Delray Beach, Fla. "I'm afraid to get on the Jersey Turnpike. On half a tank, I'll never make it."


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Photos: NYC facing daunting commute


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12 hrs ago

A picture is worth a thousand words.

..The worst was over at least for public transportation. The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North were running commuter trains again, though service was limited. New Jersey Transit had no rail service but most of its buses were back, and Amtrak said it would run trains between New York and Boston Friday for the first time since the storm hit.

The storm killed at least 90 people in the U.S. New York City raised its death toll on Thursday to 38, including two Staten Island boys, 2 and 4, swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters.

In New Jersey, many people were allowed back into their neighborhoods Thursday for the first time since Sandy ravaged the coastline. Some found minor damage, others total destruction.

The storm cut off barrier islands, smashed homes, wrecked boardwalks and hurled amusement park rides into the sea. Atlantic City, on a barrier island, remained under mandatory evacuation.

More than 4.1 million homes and businesses, including about 650,000 in New York and its northern suburbs, were still without power. Consolidated Edison, the power company serving New York, said electricity should be restored by Saturday to customers in Manhattan and to homes and offices served by underground power lines in Brooklyn.

In darkened neighborhoods, people walked around with miner's lamps on their foreheads and bicycle lights clipped to shoulder bags and, in at least one case, to a dog's collar. A Manhattan handyman opened a fire hydrant so people could collect water to flush toilets.

"You can clearly tell at the office, or even walking down the street, who has power and who doesn't," said Jordan Spiro, who lives in the blackout zone. "New Yorkers may not be known as the friendliest bunch, but take away their ability to shower and communicate and you'll see how disgruntled they can get."

Some public officials expressed exasperation at the relief effort.

James Molinaro, president of the borough of Staten Island, suggested that people not donate money to the American Red Cross because the Red Cross "is nowhere to be found."

"We have hundreds of people in shelters throughout Staten Island," he said. "Many of them, when the shelters close, have nowhere to go because their homes are destroyed. These are not homeless people. They're homeless now."

Josh Lockwood, the Red Cross' regional chief executive, said 10 trucks began arriving to Staten Island on Thursday morning and a kitchen was set up to distribute meals. Lockwood defended the agency, saying relief workers were stretched thin.

"We're talking about a disaster where we've had shelters set up from Virginia to Indiana to the state Maine, so there's just this tremendous response," he said. "So I would say no one organization is going to be able to address the needs of all these folks by themselves."

In Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, Mary Wilson, 75, was buying water from a convenience store that was open but had no power. She said she had been without running water or electricity for three days, and lived on the 19th floor.

She walked downstairs Thursday for the first time because she ran out of bottled water and felt she was going to faint. She said she met people on the stairs who helped her down.

"I did a lot of praying: 'Help me to get to the main floor.' Now I've got to pray to get to the top," she said. "I said, 'I'll go down today or they'll find me dead.'"

[Neal]

NEW YORK (AP) тАФ The mother grabbed her two boys and fled their home as it filled with water, hoping to outrun Superstorm Sandy.

But Glenda Moore and her SUV were no match for the epic storm. Moore's Ford Explorer stalled in the rising tide, and the rushing waters snatched 2-year-old Brandon and 4-year-old Connor from her arms as they tried to escape.

The youngsters' bodies were recovered from a marsh Thursday тАФ the latest, most gut-wrenching blow in New York's Staten Island, an isolated city borough hard-hit by the storm and yet, residents say, largely forgotten by federal officials assessing damage of the monster storm that has killed more than 90 people in 10 states.

"Terrible, absolutely terrible," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said as he announced the boys' bodies had been found on the third day of a search that included police divers and sniffer dogs. "It just compounds all the tragic aspects of this horrific event."

The heartbreaking discovery came as residents and public officials complained that help has been frustratingly slow to arrive on stricken Staten Island, where 19 have been killed тАФ nearly half the death toll of all of New York City.

Garbage is piling up, a stench hangs in the air and mud-caked mattresses and couches line the streets. Residents are sifting through the remains of their homes, searching for anything that can be salvaged.

"We have hundreds of people in shelters," said James Molinaro, the borough's president. "Many of them, when the shelters close, have nowhere to go because their homes are destroyed. These are not homeless people. They're homeless now."

Molinaro complained the American Red Cross "is nowhere to be found" тАФ and some residents questioned what they called the lack of a response by government disaster relief agencies.

A relief fund is being created just for storm survivors on Staten Island, Molinaro and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Friday. And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Administrator Richard Serino planned to tour the island.

Four days after Sandy lashed the East Coast with high winds and a huge storm surge, frustration mounted across New York City and well beyond as millions of people remained without power and motorists lined up for hours at gas stations in New Jersey and New York.

In the city's Queens borough, a man was accused of pulling a gun Thursday on a motorist who complained when he cut in line at a gas station; no one was injured. And as the Friday morning commute began, long lines at gas stations in suburban Westchester County snaked along expressway breakdown lanes and exit ramps.

There were hopeful signs, though, that life would soon begin to return to something approaching normal.

Consolidated Edison, the power company serving New York, said electricity should be restored by Saturday to customers in Manhattan and to homes and offices served by underground power lines in Brooklyn. More subway and rail lines were expected to open Friday, including Amtrak' New York to Boston route on the Northeast Corridor.

But the prospect of better times ahead did little to mollify residents who spent another day and night in the dark.

"It's too much. You're in your house. You're freezing," said Geraldine Giordano, 82, a lifelong resident of the West Village. Near her home, city employees had set up a sink where residents could get fresh water, if they needed it. There were few takers. "Nobody wants to drink that water," Giordano said.

"Everybody's tired of it already," added Rosemarie Zurlo, a makeup artist who once worked on Woody Allen movies. She said she planned to temporarily abandon her powerless, unheated apartment in the West Village to stay with her sister in Brooklyn. "I'm leaving because I'm freezing. My apartment is ice cold."

There was increasing concern about the outage's impact on elderly residents. Community groups have been going door-to-door on the upper floors of darkened Manhattan apartment buildings, and city workers and volunteer in hard-hit Newark, N.J., delivered meals to seniors and others stuck in their buildings.

"It's been mostly older folks who aren't able to get out," said Monique George of Manhattan-based Community Voices Heard. "In some cases, they hadn't talked to folks in a few days. They haven't even seen anybody because the neighbors evacuated. They're actually happy that folks are checking, happy to see another person. To not see someone for a few days, in this city, it's kind of weird."

Along the devastated Jersey Shore and New York's beachfront communities, a lack of electricity was the least of anyone's worries.

Residents were allowed back in their neighborhoods Thursday for the first time since Sandy made landfall Monday night. Some were relieved to find only minor damage, but many others were wiped out. "A lot of tears are being shed today," said Dennis Cucci, whose home near the ocean in Point Pleasant Beach sustained heavy damage. "It's absolutely mind-boggling."

After touring a flood-ravaged area of northeastern New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said it was time to act, not mourn.

"We're in the 'triage and attack phase' of the storm, so we can restore power, reopen schools, get public transportation back online and allow people to return to their homes if they've been displaced," he said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood planned to visit Christie's state Friday.

Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday announced the federal government will be providing rail cars to help NJ Transit get train service up and running. The governor said 25 percent of the system's rail cars were in yards that flooded.

LaHood's schedule has not yet been released

In Staten Island, police recounted Glenda Moore's fruitless struggle to save her children.

Kelly said the 39-year-old mother "was totally, completely distraught" after she lost her grip on her sons shortly after 6 p.m. Monday. In a panic, she climbed fences and went door-to-door looking in vain for help in a neighborhood that was presumably largely abandoned in the face of the storm.

She eventually gave up, spending the night trying to shield herself from the storm on the front porch of an empty home.

[francois]

I flew into the Northeast of the USA between NYC and Philadelphia the day after Sandy departed and can tell you that many thousands of people have been without electric, TV or internet service and gasoline ever since. It is not an exaggeration by the news just because one person does not experience the misery. Where there was electric the bars were packed with people looking for some relief; lots of alcohol if not gasoline.

[Impulse]

This whole thing was about the storm surge. The combination of water rising from a full moon, high tide and water level rising from the surge has created most of the damage. All along the shore of New jersey, NY and Ct is where the damage was done. And in the city, lower Manhatten, the subway and tunnels flooded as the water level rose about 13 feet or so.
If not for that, it might have been like most storms here in the northeast. Normally the wind does not blow from the east like this storm did.

I agree with bruce that the media has blown most of these events out of proportion and they have cried wolf for so long that it is very easy to ignore them. They finally got one right. About time! :hello2:

And what a sad story of the women who lost her two boys in the storm. That jackass who would not let her in was a liar imho. He said a man was trying to break into his house and if he opened the door the hurricane might have killed him. That poor women.