Superstorm Sandy made landfall yesterday with the eye of the storming hitting Atlantic City around 8 p.m. The storm was downgraded from a Hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone with winds as high as 80mph. Storm surges in New York City peaked at about 13 feet, higher than many expected. As of 12:30 p.m., Sandy’s death toll was 35, according to the Associated Press.
As of 11 a.m. Tuesday, around 7.6 million people were without power across 15 states, including Ohio and South Carolina. The far-reaching damage was due to the size of the storm. As of Sunday night, the Weather Service said that the circulation of the storm was 932 miles wide. Winds even hit Chicago Tuesday morning, causing massive waves on Lake Michigan.
Tayler Robinson, a 20-year-old NYU student, said that her neighborhood won’t get their power turned back on for a few days. Because the power is out and the transit system is shut down, Robinson and her neighbors “have to walk uptown to charge our phones and buy food.”
Late Monday night, the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan was evacuated after its backup power generator failed. According to reports from NBC New York, more than 200 patients were transferred to other facilities but without power for the elevators, patients had to be carried down the stairs and outside to the ambulances.
Water flooded many areas of the New York City area, including ground zero and all 10 subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Workers are already beginning to pump the water out of the tunnels. However, it is not yet clear how much damage the salt water caused to electronic signals and switches.
In a Tuesday press conference, Mayor Bloomberg said that there is “no firm timeline” as to when bus and rail service will be back to normal. It is expected, however, that a few buses will be running later this evening.
A huge fire broke out in Queens and nearly 200 firefighters attempted to contain the blaze that eventually claimed more than 80 homes in the Breezy Point neighborhood. According to the Associated Press, a boat was used during the fire in order to make rescues.
Sandy also spread blizzard-like conditions over parts of West Virginia and other Appalachian states. The National Weather service said that over a foot of snow has been reported in some parts of West Virginia. High elevations in the mountains could receive over two foot of snow. There is a blizzard warning effective for more than a dozen counties until Wednesday afternoon.
