Hurricane Sandy 2012: Superstorm batters US coast, Manhattan goes dark, 7.5m without power, 17 dead
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.
This moing millions of people on the East Coast are facing flooded homes, fallen trees and widespread power outages caused by the giant storm, which swamped New York City's subway system and submerged streets in Manhattan's financial district.
It 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 killed at least 17 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.
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.
Among the dead in New York were two children killed instantly by a falling tree in Westchester County, a woman electrocuted to death by falling wires in Manhattan and a 29-year-old man killed in a car crash in Queens. A 30-year-old man was also killed when a tree fell on his house in Flushing, Queens.
Blackout: The skyline of lower Manhattan sits in darkness after a preventive power outage in New York on Monday night
On its own: The New York skyline remains dark on Monday, except for the Empire State Building, as seen from Williamsburg in the Brooklyn borough of New York
A tale of two cities: Lower Manhattan in darkness after Sandy struck damaging power and previously New York city's famous lit-up skyline
Dangerous waves: This photo taken on Monday night shows a flooded street in Manhattan as Superstorm Sandy made its approach in New York
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
Non-movers: New York City taxis are pictured on a flooded street in Queens after Sandy struck the US East Coast
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, Participating via teleconference
The massive storm reached well into the Midwest: Chicago officials waed 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 - 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.
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 tu into weste New York by Wednesday moing.
Although weakening as it goes, the massive storm - which caused wind waings from Florida to Canada - will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, said Daniel Brown, waing coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Raging: More than 50 homes have been destroyed at Breezy Point in the Queens area of New York, as a result of Hurricane Sandy
Water level: Streets are flooded under the Manhattan Bridge in the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) section of Brooklyn, New York, on Monday night
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
As Hurricane Sandy closed in on the Northeast, it converged with a cold-weather system that tued it into a monstrous hybrid of rain and high wind - 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 - but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and inteal 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 - 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 Easte 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.
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
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)'
City landscape: The Queens Bridge and flooded shore is pictured on Roosevelt Island in New York City on Monday night
Precarious: A crane attached to One57, a luxury apartment tower under construction in midtown Manhattan, hangs down after partially collapsing amid gusts from 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
No train service: Veronica De Souza posted this extraordinary picture ('via ninjapito') on Twitter of the 86th Street station with water above the platform
Aid at hand: An emergency operations centre in Fairfax County, Virginia, co-ordinates the mammoth response to the severe flooding caused by Sandy
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.
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.
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 ultramode Le Parker Meridien hotel.
No lights: A power outage is seen on Monday in Manhattan, New York, with Hurricane Sandy threatening 50million people in the Mid-Atlantic area of the US
No movement: Vehicles are submerged on 14th Street near the Consolidated Edison power plant on Monday in Manhattan, New York
Downed: A fallen tree lays along a darkened Sixth Avenue in Chelsea during a blackout caused by rising river waters as Hurricane Sandy made its approach in New York
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.'
Trading at the New York Stock Exchange was canceled again Tuesday - 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.
Going nowhere: Chris Berg posted this picture of the flooded Midtown Tunnel in New York City after Sandy hit the US East Coast on Monday night
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 exteal 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 - which was offline for regular maintenance - was upgraded to an alert, the second-lowest in a four-tiered waing 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 weste 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
Causing chaos: A satellite image shows post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy making landfall at 8 p.m. ET on 29 October about 5 miles southwest of Atlantic City, NJ, as seen in this NOAA GOES-13 satellite colorized infrared image from the same time
Mammoth storm: This satellite picture released by NASA shows Hurricane Sandy approaching the densely populated US East Coast at 1:35pm EDT on Monday
Underwater: A vehicle is submerged on 14th Street near the Consolidated Edison power plant on Monday night in New York
Fire rescue: An FDNY inflatable is prepared for launch along 14th street east of Avenue B where water has trapped people in the wake of Hurricane Sandy
Hazards: This weather map for today shows how much of the US East Coast has been hit by storm waings as it is battered by Superstorm Sandy
Staying safe: This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map of the US East Coast shows the various waing levels put in place across the country
Jouey: Graphic showing the current position of the superstorm after it swept up the US East Coast
Moving across: NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft captured this infrared image of Hurricane Sandy, another weather front to the west and cold air coming down from Canada at 2:17 p.m. EDT yesterday
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 waings 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.
Submerged: Instagram user 'Jesse and Greg' posted this incredible picture of East Village flooding in Manhattan, New York
Above waist high: A man wearing a snorkel is seen wading through the water in New York City on Monday night
Ship: This photo by Dylan Patrick shows flooding along the Westside Highway near the USS Intrepid, background centre, as Sandy moves through the area
Underwater: The surge from New York's East River has flooded East 20th Street, tuing the road into a river
'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.'
Today stock trading will be 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 waed 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.
Sailboats rock in choppy water at a dock along the Hudson River Greenway as one thousand more troops have been drafted in
Leaving: Guests in the lobby of Le Parker Meridien hotel just south of Central Park prepare to move to other hotels after a nearby construction crane collapsed
Cars were flooded in the Financial District of New York as Hurricane Sandy threatens 50million people on the East Coast
As flood waters surge, expected to rise to 10ft, nearly all bridges and tunnels into and out of New York are closed to the public
A person holds onto to a flooded car as the flood water rises in New York
Flood waters have overwhelmed the entrance of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel as nearly all bridges and tunnels into and out of New York are closed to the public
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