The US northeast began an arduous slog back to normal yesterday 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.
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 today, four days after shutting down ahead of the storm, and some commuter rail service was coming back on line yesterday.
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 II,” 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 six million customers are without electricity in the region. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the storm may be the most expensive in US history.
More than half of all the gas stations in New Jersey and Long Island were shut yesterday 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 is visiting storm-ravaged areas of the New Jersey shore, where Sandy crashed ashore on Monday as the largest storm to hit the US in generations.
The growing US 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 US 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 yesterday, the National Weather Service said. Winter storm warnings were in effect from southwestern 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.
Battered by a record storm surge of nearly 4.2 metres, 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 statewide. In the southern half of Manhattan, a quarter of a million residents remained without power.