Superstorm Sandy Weakens after Leaving 32 Dead, Millions without Power
Superstorm Sandy finally weakened on Tuesday but only after leaving a trail of destruction from the Caribbean to Canada with almost 100 dead, New York in chaos and millions without power.
The storm, which claimed 67 lives in the Caribbean and at least 32 in the United States and Canada, has left an uncertain impact on the U.S. presidential race, striking one week before the nation votes in a cliffhanger election.
President Barack Obama declared a "major disaster" in New York as more than eight million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Maine were left without power and trading on Wall Street was suspended for a second day.
The storm made landfall at 8:00 pm Monday (0000 GMT) near Atlantic City in New Jersey, packing hurricane-force winds despite morphing into a post-tropical cyclone after colliding with a descending cold front.
Sandy, one of the biggest storms ever to hit the United States, sent record storm surges into New York, where 10 people died, as Lower Manhattan was drowned in seawater and scores of homes were destroyed by fire in Queens.
Firefighters battled blazes and carried out rescues in flooded houses as subway trains remained suspended for a third day. Similar paralysis was seen in cities further south like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.
As day broke the damage became all too clear in New Jersey, Maryland and other coastal states on the Eastern Seaboard, where hundreds of rescue operations were under way and whole communities were cut off by flooding.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said there had been "unthinkable" damage along the Jersey Shore -- the barrier islands and beach towns that run the length of New Jersey's Atlantic coast.
The storm weakened as it moved further inland. As of 1700 GMT it had maximum sustained winds of 45 miles per hour (70 kilometers per hour) and was churning through Pennsylvania.
Forecasters warned that flooding would continue along the densely-populated coast and 7,400 National Guardsmen were mobilized in 11 states to provide emergency relief.
Obama declared a "major disaster" had hit both 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 had 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, giant waves crashed over boardwalks, turning coastal cities into ghost towns as the high winds grounded flights and shut down rail links, public transport and government offices.
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 more than eight million homes and businesses into darkness, while storm warnings cut rail links and marooned tens of thousands of travelers at airports across the region.
Three nuclear plants -- two in New York state and one in New Jersey -- were shut down in the aftermath of the storm, but operators stressed that neither posed any risk to the public.
There was some positive news in that Wall Street planned to reopen on Wednesday, but New Yorkers faced days if not weeks of disruption as engineers struggled to get power back and businesses cleaned up flood damage.
"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.
Firefighters doused a massive blaze in the Queens borough that destroyed more than 80 homes, and in northern New Jersey police in boats pulled residents from second-story windows after a levee broke.
Disaster estimating firm Eqecat forecast that Sandy would affect more than 60 million Americans, a fifth of the population, and cause billions of dollars in damage.
Both Obama and Romney canceled campaign appearances as both were keen to display resolute leadership in the face of the storm, given the memory of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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.
In addition to 15 storm-related deaths in New York State, 10 of them in the city, four were recorded in Pennsylvania, three in Maryland and New Jersey, two each in Connecticut and Virginia, and one in West Virginia.
A descendant of Fletcher Christian, the mutineer who famously took control of HMS Bounty from Captain William Bligh in 1789, died on a replica of the tall ship, which went down in high seas off North Carolina. The captain of the ship was still missing. Canadian officials also reported one storm-related death.
Source: Agence France Presse
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