Thursday, November 01, 2012

Devastated U.S. Northeast crawls back after monster storm

By Edward Krudy and Daniel Bases and Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Northeast began an arduous slog back to normal on Wednesday after historic storm Sandy crippled transportation, knocked out power for millions and killed at least 64 people with a massive storm surge that caused epic flooding.

Helicopters fly over the skyline of lower Manhattan as it sits in darkness after a preventive power outage caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York October 30, 2012. REUTERS/Keith Bedford

Financial markets reopened with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange after the first weather-related two-day closure since 1888, and packed buses took commuters to work with the city's subway system halted after seawater flooded its tunnels.

The New York area's John F. Kennedy and Newark airports reopened with limited service after thousands of flights were cancelled, leaving travellers stuck for days. LaGuardia Airport, a third major airport serving the nation's busiest airspace, was flooded and remained closed.

Limited New York subway service was due to return on Thursday, four days after shutting down ahead of the storm, and some commuter rail service was due to come back on line later on Wednesday.

The progress was in contrast to images of devastation along the New Jersey Shore, where flooding swallowed whole neighbourhoods, and in New York City's Breezy Point, where 111 homes were destroyed by fire.

"It looks like the pictures of London or even Dresden after World War Two," New York Senator Charles Schumer said in describing Breezy Point.

"Last night I had to drive into lower Manhattan. It's eerie to see all the lights out. No street lights, no traffic lights and no glows in any of the apartment buildings," Schumer said, calling for national unity similar to what followed the attacks of September 11, 2001.

It will take days or weeks to recover from the massive power and mass transit outages. More than 6 million customers are without electricity in the region. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the storm may be the most expensive in U.S. history.

More than half of all the gas stations in New Jersey and Long Island were shut on Wednesday due to power outages and depleted fuel supplies, frustrating attempts to restore normal life, industry officials said.

The storm caused more havoc as it moved north toward Canada. Flood warnings were in effect in the Great Lakes region and heavy snow has been falling in the Appalachian mountains.

With six days to go before the November 6 elections, President Barack Obama will visit storm-ravaged areas of the New Jersey shore, where Sandy crashed ashore on Monday as the largest storm to hit the United States in generations.

Obama will be accompanied by Republican Governor Chris Christie, a vocal backer of presidential challenger Mitt Romney. Nevertheless, Christie has praised Democrat Obama and the federal response to the storm.

The growing U.S. death toll from the storm reached at least 64, with 30 people killed in New York state, including 22 in New York City, nine in Maryland, and six each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Five other states reported fatalities.

Sandy killed 69 people in the Caribbean last week as a hurricane before it slammed into the U.S. East Coast with winds of about 80 miles per hour (130 km per hour) and pushed inland.

Remnants of the storm churned slowly over Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. Winter storm warnings were in effect from south-western Pennsylvania to eastern Tennessee.

"Now we are looking at flooding on Lake Erie, possibly Lake Michigan," Napolitano said. "We're looking at secondary flooding downstream as rivers fill with the remnants of Sandy and the water has to go somewhere.

"We are now in recovery mode - response and recovery - we are moving large amounts of resources into the affected areas. It will be one of the most, probably if not the most extensive and expensive ... (storms) in our nation's history," she said.

One disaster-modelling company said Sandy may have caused up to $15 billion in insured losses.

Battered by a record storm surge of nearly 14 feet (4.2 meters), large sections of New York City remained submerged under several feet of water. In the city's borough of Staten Island, police used helicopters to pluck stranded residents from rooftops.

Across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, members of the National Guard helped residents pump floodwater from their homes, the city said.

"I thought it was the end. I kept telling my sons to pray and that's all we did," said Marcelina Rosario, 47, who was trapped in the second floor of her Hoboken apartment. "Everything happened so fast. The water started coming up, the refrigerator was floating."

Chest-high floodwaters rushed into the streets in a flash on Monday night just after the power went out, and by Wednesday morning the water was still knee high in many areas of Hoboken.

National Guard vehicles patrolled the streets but emergency vehicles were scarce, witnesses said.

Some 6.2 million homes and businesses in several states remained without power on Wednesday morning, down from a high of nearly 8.5 million, which surpassed the record 8.4 million customers who went dark from last year's Hurricane Irene.

In New Jersey, Christie said it could take seven to 10 days before power was restored state-wide.

In the southern half of Manhattan, a quarter of a million residents remained without power after a transformer explosion at a Consolidated Edison substation Monday night and the flooding of another. In all, about 786,000 customers in New York City and suburban Westchester County lacked power.

Sunday's New York Marathon will go on as scheduled, but Wednesday night's Halloween parade through Greenwich Village has been postponed. On Broadway, most of the shows that had been cancelled since Sunday were due to resume on Wednesday, the Theater League announced.

Sandy hit the East Coast with a week to go before the November 6 presidential election, dampening an unprecedented drive to encourage early voting and raising questions whether some polling stations will be ready to open on Election Day.

Obama faces political danger if the government fails to respond well, as was the case with his predecessor George W. Bush's botched handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Obama and Romney put campaigning on hold for a second day on Tuesday, but Romney held a rally in the battleground state of Florida on Wednesday and Obama will resume campaigning on Thursday with a stop in Nevada.

Obama continued to receive updates overnight from his team on recovery efforts and he visited the federal government's storm-response centre in Washington before he was due to fly off and meet Christie.

(Additional reporting by Michael Erman, Anna Louie Sussman, Atossa Abrahamian, Chris Michaud and Scott DiSavino in New York; and Susan Heavey and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Eric Beech)

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News

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Devastated U.S. Northeast crawls back after monster storm

By Edward Krudy and Daniel Bases and Ellen Wulfhorst