The scale of the devastation left by Superstorm Sandy is mounting today as the death toll continues to rise - currently 39 people across the US and Canada have been reported dead, but the final figure is expected to be significantly higher.
President Obama declared a 'major disaster' in New York and Long Island as flooded streets were littered with cars, homes were razed to the ground and tankers washed up on shore
Hundreds of thousands of people are without power in New York and the transit system, schools, the stock exchange and Broadway are all out of action after a 13ft wall of water caused by the storm surge and high tides brought severe flooding to subways and road tunnels.
Sandy, one of the biggest storms to ever descend on the country, hit the mainland at 6.30pm local time yesterday having laid waste to large parts of the coast during the day.
The storm that made landfall in New Jersey yesterday evening with 80 mph sustained winds, 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.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the death toll in the America's most populous city is up to ten - two children, aged 11 and 13, were killed instantly in the city by a falling tree. Many of the total number of victims were said to have been killed by falling trees.
Nearly 200 firefighters spent the night battling to get a blaze under control in the Queens, but over 80 homes were flattened in the fire.
Eye of the storm: New York was among the hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy. A fire broke out in Breezy Point, Queens, destroying between 80 and 100 houses
Battle: More than 190 firefighters have contained the six-alarm blaze fire in the Breezy Point section, but they are still putting out some pockets of fire
Aftermath: A rainbow and looming clouds appear over the sky in New York's Manhattan today after the hurricane stormed the city
Destruction: Cars floating after being pushed out a flooded basement in the city during last night's battering
Beached: A 168-foot water tanker, the John B. Caddell, sits on the shore Tuesday morning where it ran aground on Front Street in the Stapleton neighborhood of New York's Staten Island
Iconic: A parking lot full of yellow cabs is flooded as a result of the 13ft wall of water which descended on the city
Transport down: A view of an entirely flooded tunnel under Battery Park. 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
Damaged: A building that had its facade ripped off by Hurricane Sandy - beds and radiators can be seen in the block
He also says it could be three days or more before power is restored to hundreds of thousands of people now in the dark.
He is giving no estimate on when public transit would be running, though he expects some buses be running later today.
He said there have nor been any storm-related fatalities in NYC hospitals.
The storm was once Hurricane Sandy but combined with two wintry systems to become a huge hybrid storm whose center smashed ashore late Monday in New Jersey. New York City was perfectly positioned to absorb the worst of its storm surge - a record 13 feet.
A man and a woman were crushed by a falling tree. An off-duty officer on Staten Island who ushered his relatives to the attic of his home apparently became trapped in the basement.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said 156 rescue missions were made by state and city police.
'It's fair to say that the state police and NYPD and the National Guard saved hundreds of lives yesterday,' he said.
Emergency: President Barack Obama has declared a 'major disaster' in New York and Long Island. Pictured, he receives an update on the ongoing response to Hurricane Sandy, in the Situation Room of the White House, via teleconference
Wrecked: A construction site sinks into a large hole on South Street Seaport - the clean-up operation is expected to cost over £12 billion
City of water: A flooded street in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn after the city awakens to the affects of Hurricane Sandy. It hit the mainland at 6.30pm local time last night having laid waste to large parts of the coast throughout the day
Road blocked: Pieces of lumber displaced from a yard by rising flood waters are seen beneath Manhattan Bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy
Deluge: Water floods over the barriers in New York. The city's transit system, schools, the stock exchange and Broadway were also shut after a 13ft wall of water caused by the storm surge and high tides brought severe flooding to subways and road tunnels
Transformation: A subway station now resembles a river in one of the US's largest cities
Power storm: The full force of the storm is evident by the way a metal shutter has been ripped from the wall
Submerged: The lobby of Verizon's Corporate headquarters in Manhattan. The headquarter houses executive offices as well as some of the company's key telecom equipment that supports services to New York's financial district
Operation clean-up: Debris litters a flooded street in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn after the city awakens to the affects of Hurricane Sandy
Mission: A man clears leaves from a sewer drain in lower Manhattan to help the flooding ease
The city's transit system suffered unprecedented damage, from the underground subway tunnels to commuter rails to bus garages, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Tuesday.
'We have no idea how long it's going to take,' spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said.
Rubble: People in Atlantic City view the area where a 2000-foot section of the 'uptown' boardwalk was destroyed by flooding
Sand and debris cover a part of town near the ocean in New Jersey after serious flooding ravaged the coastline
All 10 subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn were flooded during the storm, as the saltwater surge inundated signals, switches and third rails and covered tracks with sludge, she said.
The entire system wasn't flooded and the authority was already pumping water. Workers ultimately will have to walk all the hundreds of miles of track to inspect it, she said, and it wasn't clear how long that would take. Trains had been moved to safety before the storm.
Chaos: A boat moved by gushing waters rests on the tracks at Metro-North's Ossining Station on the Hudson Line
Pedestrians skirt around flooded areas on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as they try to get back to normal
Pictures taken of the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy on the Lower East side in New York
Sweep up: Workers clean up sheets of blown-out glass in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy - many store faces took a beating from the strong winds
Left: A map showing track of Hurricane Sandy through New England, with inset showing projected rainfall totals through Wednesday night and right. mid-Atlantic states showing storm surge from the superstorm storm
Destroyed: Residents look over the remains of burned homes in the Rockaways section of New York
Desolate: Residents walk past debris by the Con Edison 14 street and Avenue C power plant on the Lower East Side on Manhattan. An electrical explosion caused a shut down of power due to high winds and flood waters
'Clearly the challenges our city faces in the coming days are enormous,' he said.
Water lapped over the seawall in Battery Park City, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads.
Rescue workers floated bright orange rafts down flooded downtown streets, while police officers rolled slowly down the street with loudspeakers telling people to go home.
'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 - 3 feet above the previous record - gushed into Gotham, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street, and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety.
Time to heal: City of Elmira N.Y., electrician, Nate Battle fixes a traffic light that was downed from high winds
Search: Aviators of the 1-150th Assault Helicopter Battalion, New Jersey National Guard, look for displaced residents along the coastline of Seaside Heights today
Livelihood damaged: A man cleans up the remains of his food store damaged by Hurricane Sandy, in New York's South Street Seaport
Helping hand: Jolito Ortiz, left, helps sweep water out of his friend's apartment while cleaning up after flooding
Surveying: Rod Zindani surveys the damage to his Best Of New York Food Deli
Flooded areas: Highlighted areas show flooding in New York. An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater - 3 feet above the previous record - gushed into Gotham
Drifting: Hurricane Sandy, pictured today moves inland across the mid-Atlantic region after causing carnage in New York
Plan of action: Workers survey the damage from a fallen tree in lower Manhattan this morning
Debris: A dead deer, right, is pictured with driftwood and debris left by a combination of storm surge as a man holds a battered road sign
Ripped from the ground: People pass a fallen tree in the Battery Park neighborhood of Manhattan
Hope springs: An unidentified couple collect ginkgo fruit knocked from trees by the ferocious winds, as a stunning rainbow appears like an arcing message of hope over the flooded devastation of New York left in the wake of the devastating storm
Strewn across street: Debris outside flats belonging to actress Anne Hathaway and reality star Olivia Palermo's building
Precarious: A crane attached to One57, a luxury apartment tower under construction in midtown Manhattan, hangs down after partially collapsing amid gusts from Sandy
Devastation: A fallen tree and power line ripped from the ground outside homes on Harvard Street in Garden City, New York
Curiosity turned to concern overnight as New York City residents watched whole neighborhoods disappear into darkness as power was cut. The World Trade Center site was a glowing ghost near the tip of Lower Manhattan.
Residents reported seeing no lights but the strobes of emergency vehicles and the glimpses of flashlights in nearby apartments. Lobbies were flooded, cars floated and people started to worry about food.
A huge fire destroyed 80 to 100 houses in a flooded beachfront neighborhood, forcing firefighters to undertake daring rescues and injuring three people.
More than 190 firefighters contained the blaze but were still putting out some pockets of fire more than nine hours after it erupted.
Shock: Residents look over the remains of burned homes in the Rockaways section
Officials said the fire was reported around 11 p.m. Monday in an area flooded by the superstorm that began sweeping through the city earlier.
Firefighters told WABC-TV that the water was chest high on the street, and they had to use a boat to make rescues.
They said in one apartment home, about 25 people were trapped in an upstairs unit, and the two-story home next door was ablaze and setting fire to the apartment's roof.
Firefighters climbed an awning to get to the trapped people and took them downstairs to a boat in the street.
Rescued: Hospital workers evacuate a patient Deborah Dadlani from NYU Langone Medical Center during Hurricane Sandy
ighting the way: Using torches Deborah Dadlani is moved in the dark from NYU Langone Medical Center
Treatment: A patient is wheeled to an ambulance in the rain during an evacuation of New York University Tisch Medical today
No train service: Veronica De Souza posted this extraordinary picture ('via ninjapito') on Twitter of the 86th Street station with water above the platform
Extraordinary: This CCTV photo shows flood waters from Hurricane Sandy rushing in to the Hoboken PATH train station through an elevator shaft in New Jersey
Aid at hand: An emergency operations centre in Fairfax County, Virginia, co-ordinates the mammoth response to the severe flooding caused by Sandy
Many homes appeared completely flattened by the wind-whipped flames. One firefighter suffered a minor injury and was taken to a hospital.
Two civilians suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene.
In September, the same neighborhood was struck by a tornado that hurled debris in the air, knocked out power and startled residents who once thought of twisters as a Midwestern phenomenon.
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.
Time to act: President Obama has declared a 'major disaster' in New York and Long Island as swathes of the city woke up under water after a night of being battered by Superstorm Sandy
A tale of two cities: Lower Manhattan in darkness after Sandy struck damaging power and previously New York city's famous lit-up skyline
Looking down: These shocking views taken from high-rise buildings in Manhattan show the extent of flooding in New York City after it was hit by Superstorm Sandy
No go area: An uprooted tree blocks 7th street near Avenue D in the East Village as a result of high winds from Sandy on Monday in Manhattan, New York
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.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 - which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada - 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 - and even snow in West Virginia and other mountainous areas inland.
Skyline: Brooklyn Bridge Park pictured here after it flooded following the arrival of Sandy, which has made landfall on the East Coast of the US
Bang: This image from video provided by Dani Hart shows what appears to be a transformer exploding in lower Manhattan as seen from a building rooftop in Brooklyn
Bright light: This photo shows what appear to be transformers exploding after much of lower Manhattan lost power during Superstorm Sandy in New York
Flooding: Water rushes into the Carey Tunnel (previously the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel), caused by Sandy on Monday night in the financial district of New York
Flood water rushes into a below-ground carpark in New York's Financial District
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. .
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 - among them 20 babies from neonatal intensive care that were on battery-powered respirators - had to be carried down staircases and to dozens of waiting ambulances.
Without power, the hospital had no elevator service, meaning patients had to be carefully carried down staircases and outside into the weather. Gusts of wind blew their blankets as nurses held IVs and other equipment.
Raging: More than 50 homes have been destroyed at Breezy Point in the Queens area of New York, as a result of Hurricane Sandy
Isolated: Jane's Carousel, the vintage merry-go-round in Brooklyn Bridge Park, in the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) section of Brooklyn, is 'basically an island now', Instagram user Andjelicaaa said
Bellevue and Coney Island hospitals have no power. There have been no storm-related fatalities in the hospitals and there are 6,100 people in city shelters.
About 670,000 homes and businesses were without power late Monday in the city and suburban Westchester County.
In Schwartz's Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, residents who ignored a mandatory evacuation order awoke to debris-strewn streets and a continued blackout. About 2 inches of mucky dirt and leaves covered streets crisscrossed by downed power lines after water sloshed 12 blocks inland.
The doors of the Fairway grocery store were blown out. Several cars left in the parking lot were shifted by flood waters overnight and were left crammed door to door.
Schwartz and her husband rode out the storm on the third floor of the residences above the Fairway and said white-capped flood waters reached at least 3 feet around the building.
"It was scary how fast the water came up," she said.
Help: New York City resident Gary He posted this picture with the caption 'Dude in snorkeling mask trying to rescue his friend in Greenpoint (Brooklyn)'
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 - LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Kennedy - remained shut down Tuesday.
Overall, more than 13,500 flights had been canceled for Monday and Tuesday, almost all related to the storm, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware.
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 - whose slogan is 'Uptown, Not Uptight' - 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.'
Wall Street remained closed today and U.S. stock exchanges said they were testing contingency plans to ensure trading resumes as soon as possible this week after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast.
U.S. markets will be closed for a second day - the first time since 1888 that the NYSE remained closed for two consecutive days due to weather.
The New York Stock Exchange said contingency plans are being tested only as a safety measure.
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.
No movement: Vehicles are submerged on 14th Street near the Consolidated Edison power plant on Monday in Manhattan, New York
Submerged: Instagram user 'Jesse and Greg' posted this incredible picture of East Village flooding in Manhattan, New York
Cars were flooded in the Financial District of New York as Hurricane Sandy threatens 50million people on the East Coast A 15th crew member who was found unresponsive several hours after the others was later pronounced dead. The Bounty's captain was still missing. 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 - which was offline for regular maintenance - 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.
Split country: The US forecast today shows a large difference between the East and West coast
Hazards: This weather map for today shows how much of the US East Coast has been hit by storm warnings as it is battered by Superstorm Sandy
Staying safe: This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map of the US East Coast shows the various warning levels put in place across the country
'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 - whose own family had to move to the executive mansion after his home in Mendham, far from the storm's center, lost power - 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.
Reggie Thomas emerged this morning from his job as a maintenance supervisor at a prison near the overflowing Hudson River, a toothbrush in his front pocket, to find his 2011 Honda with its windows down and a foot (304 millimeters) of water inside.
'It's totaled,' Thomas said, with a shrug. 'You would have needed a boat last night.'
Today stock trading is closed in the U.S. again for a second day running - the last time the New York Stock Exchange was closed for weather was in 1985 because of Hurricane Gloria, and it will be the first time since 1888 that the exchange will have been closed for two consecutive days because of weather.
Residents in New York City spent much of yesterday trying to salvage normal routines, jogging and snapping pictures of the water while officials warned the worst of the storm had not hit. Water lapped over the seawall in Battery Park City, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads.
اللهم لا شماتة ولكن ليعلم الناس ان نقمة الله ليس لها حدود !!! اللهم انا نعوذ بك من غضيك ونرجو عفوك ورحمتك يا ذا العظمة والجبروت أرنا دلائل قدرتك فى لطفك بنا ورفقك و رحمتك لضعفنا يا غفور يا رحيم
ReplyDeleteهاقد بدأ غضب الله تعالى على بلاد الكفار ربي عليك بهم ربي انت المدمر
ReplyDeleteWhoa, those sure are some stunning photos from that devastating storm! Hopefully it doesn't come back for a long time...
ReplyDelete-Jon @ construction site cleanup