NEW YORK — President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the
New York City area Tuesday as Superstorm Sandy pounded the East Coast,
killing at least 38 people, sweeping homes into the ocean, flooding
large swaths of coastal areas, crippling public transit, and leaving
more than 10 million without power. As the East Coast woke up, residents faced
the prospect of up to a week without heat, light or refrigeration,
while authorities tried to measure the full wrath of the
once-in-a-generation hurricane.
The storm weakened as it moved
further inland but forecasters still warned of gale-force winds and
flooding along the densely-populated coast, where a massive fire broke
out in New York City and a levee broke in New Jersey. At least 38 people
were killed in the United States and Canada as the storm roared ashore
late Monday, pounding several major cities with heavy rain and
hurricane-force winds that toppled trees and ripped down power lines.
President
Obama declared a ‘major disaster’ had hit the states of New York and
New Jersey, an order that cleared the way for federal grants and loans
to help storm victims acquire temporary housing and repair damage.
Seawater coursed between the iconic skyscrapers of New York’s financial
district in lower Manhattan, flooding subways and road tunnels and
shorting out the power grid, leaving a half-million households and
businesses in the dark.
Further south, the sea surged over vast
swathes of the eastern seaboard, turning coastal cities into ghost towns
as the high winds grounded flights and shut down rail links, public
transport and government offices. The catastrophe completely
overshadowed the US election race, forcing a halt to campaigning a week
before Americans were due to go to the polls to choose between President
Obama and challenger Mitt Romney.
Hurricane Sandy had killed 67
people as it tore through the Caribbean, and reports of more deaths
began to arrive after it made landfall at 8:00 pm (0000 GMT) in New
Jersey and began to wreak havoc in the United States. A massive fire
destroyed at least 50 homes in Breezy Point, a seaside community in
Queens, New York. Firefighters had difficulty reaching the blaze due to
the severe weather. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Authorities had ordered hundreds of thousands of residents in areas from
New England to North Carolina to evacuate their homes and seek shelter,
but many chose to stay on, to the frustration of police and local
officials.
Falling trees tore down power cables, plunging what
weather experts said were millions of homes into darkness, while storm
warnings cut rail links and marooned tens of thousands of travellers at
airports across the region. The hurricane sent a record storm surge of
13.7 feet into lower Manhattan, flooding seven major subway tunnels used
by hundreds of thousands of daily commuters and swamping cars in the
financial district. “The New York City subway system is 108 years old,
but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced
last night,” city transport director Joseph Lhota said early Tuesday.
Firefighters
meanwhile struggled to contain a massive blaze in the Queens borough
that destroyed more than 50 homes, and in northern New Jersey police in
boats pulled residents from second-storey windows after a levee broke. Hours
earlier, a power sub-station exploded in a burst of light captured by
amateur photographers as a massive blackout left much of Manhattan, and
some 500,000 homes across New York City, in darkness. The
floodwaters had begun to recede early Tuesday, but the Con Edison power
company said it could take a week to completely restore power.
Disaster
estimating firm Eqecat forecast that Sandy would affect more than 60
million Americans, a fifth of the population, and cause up to $20
billion in damage. Refineries closed and major arteries such as New
York’s Holland Tunnel were shut to traffic. The operator of two major
New Jersey nuclear plants said they might have to be closed, threatening
half of the state’s power supply.
The New York Stock Exchange,
the Nasdaq and the futures markets in Chicago were closed for Monday and
Tuesday, along with federal government offices and the entire Amtrak
rail network on the eastern seaboard. Obama urged Americans to heed
local evacuation orders as he stepped off the campaign trail and spent
the day in the White House helping to coordinate the response to the
disaster. “The election will take care of itself next week,” Obama said.
“Right now, our number one priority is to make sure that we are saving
lives... and that we respond as quickly as possible to get the economy
back on track.”
Both the Democratic incumbent and his Republican
rival Romney were keen to display resolute leadership in the face of the
storm, given the memory of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Romney also
cancelled some campaign appearances.
Former president George W
Bush was widely seen as having bungled the handling of Katrina, which
devastated New Orleans. The failure of authorities in the ensuing
emergency response tainted the rest of his presidency. The United
Nations, which closed its headquarters in New York on Monday, has again
cancelled all meetings and conferences scheduled for Tuesday because of
the huge damage and disruptions.
In an attempt to lessen damage
from saltwater to the subway system and the electrical network beneath
the city’s financial district, New York City’s main utility cut power to
about 6,500 customers in lower Manhattan. But a far wider swath of the
city was hit with blackouts caused by flooding and transformer
explosions. The surge hit New York City hours after a construction
crane atop a luxury high-rise collapsed in the wind and dangled
precariously 74 floors above the street. Forecasters said the wind at
the top of the building may have been close to 95 mph. Airlines cancelled more than 12,000 flights, disrupting the plans of travellers all over the world.
Storm
damage was projected at $10 billion to $20 billion, meaning it could
prove to be one of the costliest natural disasters in US history. Ten
deaths were reported in New Jersey, New York, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Some of the victims were killed by falling
trees. At least one death was blamed on the storm in Canada. “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. “The energy of the storm surge is off the
charts, basically.”
In Maryland, at least 100 feet of a fishing
pier at the beach resort of Ocean City was destroyed, and Gov. Martin
O’Malley said there would be devastating flooding from the swollen
Chesapeake Bay. “There will be people who die and are killed in this storm,” he said. Meanwhile,
two US nuclear power plants were shut down early Tuesday in the
aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, but the plant operators stressed there
were no risks to the public. New Jersey’s main power company PSEG
Nuclear shut down its Salem 1 unit on the Delaware River, saying most of
its water circulation pumps had been rendered unusable ‘due to weather
impacts’.
PSEG said it manually shut down the 1,175 MW unit, but
said there were “no issues” in the shutdown and the facility was
“currently stable.” The Salem 2 unit was already offline for
maintenance when the storm hit, and PSEG said another nearby nuclear
unit, Hope Creek, remains operating at full power. In New York,
power generator Entergy shut down a unit of its Indian Point nuclear
facility “due to external electrical grid issues.” Another unit remained at full power, and Entergy said on Twitter that there was “no risk” to the public or company employees. Late
Monday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was monitoring all
plants in the US northeast as Sandy pushed up water levels in rivers and
bays, which are crucial for cooling operations at the facilities.
The
Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, which was in a regularly scheduled
outage when the storm hit, set off an alert when floodwaters exceeded a
threshold set for its water intake facilities. Wet snow and high
winds spinning off the edge of Superstorm Sandy spread blizzard
conditions over parts of West Virginia and neighbouring Appalachian
states Tuesday, shutting one interstate as trucks and cars bogged down
and knocking out power to many. The National Weather Service said a
foot and more of snow was reported in lower elevations of West
Virginia, where most towns and roads are. High elevations in the
mountains were getting more than two feet and a blizzard warning for
parts of the state was in effect until Wednesday afternoon.
More
than 205,000 customers in West Virginia were without power early
Tuesday. In Elkins, a city of about 7,000 people, power went out across
town before dawn and the only lights were from passing snow plows as
heavy, wet flakes piled up to about 8 inches. Staff Reporter from
Islamabad adds: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has directed Pakistan’s
Ambassador to US Sherry Rehman and Counsel General in New York to reach
out to Pakistani expatriates to tell them to stay vigilant and follow
the safety precautions laid out by the US authorities after the
devastation caused by the storm.
Accordingly, Pakistan Embassy and
other missions a number of steps have been taken to stay in touch with
expatriate Pakistanis in the affected States. The Embassy and the
Consulate General have approached key Pakistani community members
through phone and email and urged them to remain vigilant and take all
necessary safety precautions as laid out by their respective district
governments and to approach the nearest emergency centre whenever
needed. According to the decision of the US Government to declare a
State of emergency in Washington and to close all offices, the Embassy
has also been closed. However, all the concerned staff is on standby to respond to any contingency if required.
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