Disarray, millions without power in Sandy's wake
By TED ANTHONY | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago
PITTSBURGH
(AP) — The most devastating storm in decades to hit the country's most
densely populated region upended man and nature as it rolled back the
clock on 21st-century lives, cutting off modern communication and
leaving millions without power Tuesday as thousands who fled their
water-menaced homes wondered when — if — life would return to normal.
A weakening Sandy, the hurricane turned fearsome superstorm, killed
at least 50 people, many hit by falling trees, and still wasn't
finished. It inched inland across Pennsylvania, ready to bank toward
western New York to dump more of its water and likely cause more havoc
Tuesday night. Behind it: a dazed, inundated New York City, a
waterlogged Atlantic Coast and a moonscape of disarray and debris — from
unmoored shore-town boardwalks to submerged mass-transit systems to
delicate presidential politics.
"Nature," said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, assessing the
damage to his city, "is an awful lot more powerful than we are."
More than 8.2 million households were without power in 17 states as
far west as Michigan. Nearly 2 million of those were in New York, where
large swaths of lower Manhattan lost electricity and entire streets
ended up underwater — as did seven subway tunnels between Manhattan and
Brooklyn at one point, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.
The New York Stock Exchange was closed for a second day from weather,
the first time that has happened since a blizzard in 1888. The shutdown
of mass transit crippled a city where more than 8.3 million bus, subway
and local rail trips are taken each day, and 800,000 vehicles cross
bridges run by the transit agency.
Photo By LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS 6 hrs ago
A
damaged house is seen after Hurricane Sandy passed through in the
greatly affected community of Atlantique on Fire Island, New York
October 30, 2012. Millions of people were left reeling in the ...
more
Consolidated Edison said electricity in and around New York could take a week to restore.
"Everybody knew it was coming. Unfortunately, it was everything they
said it was," said Sal Novello, a construction executive who rode out
the storm with his wife, Lori, in the Long Island town of Lindenhurst,
and ended up with 7 feet of water in the basement.
The scope of the storm's damage wasn't known yet. Though early
predictions of river flooding in Sandy's inland path were petering
out, colder temperatures made snow the main product of Sandy's slow
march from the sea. Parts of the West Virginia mountains were blanketed
with 2 feet of snow by Tuesday afternoon, and drifts 4 feet deep were
reported at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee-North
Carolina border.
With Election Day a week away, the storm also threatened to affect
the presidential campaign. Federal disaster response, always a dicey
political issue, has become even thornier since government mismanagement
of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And poll access and voter turnout, both
of which hinge upon how people are impacted by the storm, could help
shift the outcome in an extremely close race.
As organized civilization came roaring back Tuesday in the form of
emergency response, recharged cellphones and the reassurance of
daylight, harrowing stories and pastiches emerged from Maryland north to
Rhode Island in the hours after Sandy's howling winds and tidal surges
shoved water over seaside barriers, into low-lying streets and up from
coastal storm drains.
Images from around the storm-affected areas depicted scenes
reminiscent of big-budget disaster movies. In Atlantic City, N.J., a
gaping hole remained where once a stretch of boardwalk sat by the sea.
In Queens, N.Y., rubble from a fire that destroyed as many as 100 houses
in an evacuated beachfront neighborhood jutted into the air at ugly
angles against a gray sky. In heavily flooded Hoboken, N.J., across the
Hudson River from Manhattan, dozens of yellow cabs sat parked in rows,
submerged in murky water to their windshields. At the ground zero
construction site in lower Manhattan, seawater rushed into a gaping hole
under harsh floodlights.
One of the most dramatic tales came from lower Manhattan, where a
failed backup generator forced New York University's Langone Medical
Center to relocate more than 200 patients, including 20 babies from
neonatal intensive care. Dozens of ambulances lined up in the rainy
night and the tiny patients were gingerly moved out, some attached to
battery-powered respirators as gusts of wind blew their blankets.
In Moonachie, N.J., 10 miles north of Manhattan, water rose to 5 feet
within 45 minutes and trapped residents who thought the worst of the
storm had passed. Mobile-home park resident Juan Allen said water
overflowed a 2-foot wall along a nearby creek, filling the area with 2
to 3 feet of water within 15 minutes. "I saw trees not just knocked down
but ripped right out of the ground," he said. "I watched a tree crush a
guy's house like a wet sponge."
In a measure of its massive size, 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, closing
schools and flooding major roads along Lake Erie.
Most along the East Coast, though, grappled with an experience like
Bertha Weismann of Bridgeport, Conn.— frightening, inconvenient and
financially problematic but, overall, endurable. Her garage was flooded
and she lost power, but she was grateful. "I feel like we are blessed,"
she said. "It could have been worse."
The presidential candidates' campaign maneuverings Tuesday revealed
the delicacy of the need to look presidential in a crisis without
appearing to capitalize on a disaster. President Barack Obama canceled a
third straight day of campaigning, scratching events scheduled for
Wednesday in swing-state Ohio, in Sandy's path. Republican Mitt Romney
resumed his campaign with plans for an Ohio rally billed as a "storm
relief event."
And the weather posed challenges a week out for how to get everyone
out to vote. On the hard-hit New Jersey coastline, a county elections
chief said some polling places on barrier islands will be unusable and
have to be moved.
"This is the biggest challenge we've ever had," said George R. Gilmore, chairman of the Ocean County Board of Elections.
By Tuesday afternoon, there were still only hints of the economic impact of the storm.
Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted the storm will end up
causing about $20 billion in damages and $10 billion to $30 billion in
lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15
billion — big numbers probably offset by reconstruction and repairs that
will contribute to longer-term growth.
"The biggest problem is not the first few days but the coming months," said Alan Rubin, an expert in nature disaster recovery.
Airports were shut across the East Coast and far beyond as tens of
thousands of travelers found they couldn't get where they were going.
John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark
International Airport in New Jersey will reopen at 7 a.m. Wednesday with
limited service, but LaGuardia Airport will stay closed, officials
said.
Sandy began in the Atlantic and knocked around the Caribbean —
killing nearly 70 people — and strengthened into a hurricane as it
chugged across the southeastern coast of the United States. By Tuesday
night it had ebbed in strength but was joining up with another, more
wintry storm — an expected confluence of weather systems that earned it
nicknames like "superstorm" and, on Halloween eve, "Frankenstorm."
It became, pretty much everyone agreed Tuesday, the weather event of a
lifetime — and one shared vigorously on social media by people in
Sandy's path who took eye-popping photographs as the storm blew through,
then shared them with the world by the blue light of their smartphones.
On Twitter, Facebook and the photo-sharing service Instagram, people
tried to connect, reassure relatives and make sense of what was
happening — and, in many cases, work to authenticate reports of
destruction and storm surges. They posted and passed around images and
real-time updates at a dizzying rate, wishing each other well and
gaping, virtually, at scenes of calamity moments after they unfolded.
Among the top terms on Facebook through the night and well into Tuesday,
according to the social network: "we are OK," ''made it" and "fine."
By Tuesday evening, the remnants of Sandy were about 50 miles
northeast of Pittsburgh, pushing westward with winds of 45 mph. It was
expected to turn toward New York State and Canada during the 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.
Atlantic City's fabled Boardwalk,
the first in the nation, lost several blocks when Sandy came through,
though the majority of it remained intact even as other Jersey Shore
boardwalks were dismantled. What damage could be seen on the coastline
Tuesday was, in some locations, staggering — "unthinkable," New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie said of what unfolded along the Jersey Shore, where
houses were swept from their foundations and amusement park rides were
washed into the ocean. "Beyond anything I thought I would ever see."
Resident Carol Mason returned to
her bayfront home to carpets that squished as she stepped on them. She
made her final mortgage payment just last week. Facing a mandatory
evacuation order, she had tried to ride out the storm at first but then
saw the waters rising outside her bathroom window and quickly
reconsidered.
"I looked at the bay and saw the fury in it," she said. "I knew it was time to go."
___
Contributing to this report were
Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, N.J.; Alicia Caldwell and Martin
Crutsinger in Washington; Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry
Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York; Meghan Barr in
Mastic Beach, N.Y.; Christopher S. Rugaber in Arlington, Va.; Marc Levy
in Harrisburg, Pa.: John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Conn.; Vicki
Smith in Elkins, W.Va.; David Porter in Newark, N.J.; Joe Mandak in
Pittsburgh; and Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn.
___
Courtesy of SPE; Inc. / Eric Charbonneau
