Disarray, millions without power in Sandy’s wake

Brian Hajeski, 41, of Brick, N.J., reacts after look­ing at debris of a home that washed up on to the Man­tolok­ing Bridge Tues­day. Sandy, the storm that made land­fall Mon­day, caused mul­ti­ple fatal­i­ties, halted mass tran­sit and cut power to more than 6 mil­lion homes and busi­nesses. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Julio Cortez)

TED ANTHONY

AP National Writer

PITTSBURGH — The most dev­as­tat­ing storm in decades to hit the country’s most densely pop­u­lated region upended man and nature as it rolled back the clock on 21st-century lives, cut­ting off mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion and leav­ing mil­lions with­out power Tues­day as thou­sands who fled their water-menaced homes won­dered when — if — life would return to normal.

A weak­en­ing Sandy, the hur­ri­cane turned fear­some super­storm, killed at least 48 peo­ple, many hit by falling trees, and still wasn’t fin­ished. It inched inland across Penn­syl­va­nia, ready to bank toward west­ern New York to dump more of its water and likely cause more havoc Tues­day night. Behind it: a dazed, inun­dated New York City, a water­logged Atlantic Coast and a moon­scape of dis­ar­ray and debris — from unmoored shore-town board­walks to sub­merged mass-transit sys­tems to del­i­cate pres­i­den­tial politics.

“Nature,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, assess­ing the dam­age to his city, “is an awful lot more pow­er­ful than we are.”

More than 8.2 mil­lion house­holds were with­out power in 17 states as far west as Michi­gan. Nearly 2 mil­lion of those were in New York, where large swaths of lower Man­hat­tan lost elec­tric­ity and entire streets ended up under water — as did seven sub­way tun­nels between Man­hat­tan and Brook­lyn at one point, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­porta­tion Author­ity said. The New York Stock Exchange was closed for a sec­ond day from weather, the first time that has hap­pened since a bliz­zard in 1888. The city’s sub­way sys­tem, the lifeblood of more than 5 mil­lion res­i­dents, was dam­aged like never before and closed indef­i­nitely, and Con­sol­i­dated Edi­son said elec­tric­ity in and around New York could take a week to restore.

“Every­body knew it was com­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, it was every­thing they said it was,” said Sal Nov­ello, a con­struc­tion exec­u­tive who rode out the storm with his wife, Lori, in the Long Island town of Lin­den­hurst, and ended up with 7 feet of water in the basement.

The scope of the storm’s dam­age wasn’t known yet. Though early pre­dic­tions of river flood­ing in Sandy’s inland path were peter­ing out, colder tem­per­a­tures made snow the main prod­uct of Sandy’s slow march from the sea. Parts of the West Vir­ginia moun­tains were blan­keted with 2 feet of snow by Tues­day after­noon, and drifts 4 feet deep were reported at Great Smoky Moun­tains National Park on the Tennessee-North Car­olina border.

With Elec­tion Day a week away, the storm also threat­ened to affect the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Fed­eral dis­as­ter response, always a dicey polit­i­cal issue, has become even thornier since gov­ern­ment mis­man­age­ment of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina in 2005. And poll access and voter turnout, both of which hinge upon how peo­ple are impacted by the storm, could help shift the out­come in an extremely close race.

As orga­nized civ­i­liza­tion came roar­ing back Tues­day in the form of emer­gency response, recharged cell­phones and the reas­sur­ance of day­light, har­row­ing sto­ries and pas­tiches emerged from Mary­land north to Rhode Island in the hours after Sandy’s howl­ing winds and tidal surges shoved water over sea­side bar­ri­ers, into low-lying streets and up from coastal storm drains.

Images from around the storm-affected areas depicted scenes rem­i­nis­cent of big-budget dis­as­ter movies. In Atlantic City, N.J., a gap­ing hole remained where once a stretch of board­walk sat by the sea. In Queens, N.Y., rub­ble from a fire that destroyed as many as 100 houses in an evac­u­ated beach­front neigh­bor­hood jut­ted into the air at ugly angles against a gray sky. In heav­ily flooded Hobo­ken, N.J., across the Hud­son River from Man­hat­tan, dozens of yel­low cabs sat parked in rows, sub­merged in murky water to their wind­shields. At the ground zero con­struc­tion site in lower Man­hat­tan, sea water rushed into a gap­ing hole under harsh floodlights.

One of the most dra­matic tales came from lower Man­hat­tan, where a failed backup gen­er­a­tor forced New York University’s Tisch Hos­pi­tal to relo­cate more than 200 patients, includ­ing 20 babies from neona­tal inten­sive care. Dozens of ambu­lances lined up in the rainy night and the tiny patients were gin­gerly moved out, some attached to battery-powered res­pi­ra­tors as gusts of wind blew their blankets.

In Moonachie, N.J., 10 miles north of Man­hat­tan, water rose to 5 feet within 45 min­utes and trapped res­i­dents who thought the worst of the storm had passed. Mobile-home park res­i­dent Juan Allen said water over­flowed a 2-foot wall along a nearby creek, fill­ing the area with 2 to 3 feet of water within 15 min­utes. “I saw trees not just knocked down but ripped right out of the ground,” he said. “I watched a tree crush a guy’s house like a wet sponge.”

In a mea­sure of its mas­sive size, waves on south­ern Lake Michi­gan rose to a record-tying 20.3 feet. High winds spin­ning off Sandy’s edges clob­bered the Cleve­land area early Tues­day, uproot­ing trees, clos­ing schools and flood­ing major roads along Lake Erie.

Most along the East Coast, though, grap­pled with an expe­ri­ence like Bertha Weis­mann of Bridge­port, Conn.— fright­en­ing, incon­ve­nient and finan­cially prob­lem­atic but, over­all, endurable. Her garage was flooded and she lost power, but she was grate­ful. “I feel like we are blessed,” she said. “It could have been worse.”

The pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates’ cam­paign maneu­ver­ings Tues­day revealed the del­i­cacy of the need to look pres­i­den­tial in a cri­sis with­out appear­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on a dis­as­ter. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama can­celed a third straight day of cam­paign­ing, scratch­ing events sched­uled for Wednes­day in swing-state Ohio, in Sandy’s path. Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney resumed his cam­paign with plans for an Ohio rally billed as a “storm relief event.”

And the weather posed chal­lenges a week out for how to get every­one out to vote. On the hard-hit New Jer­sey coast­line, a county elec­tions chief said some polling places on bar­rier islands will be unus­able and have to be moved.

“This is the biggest chal­lenge we’ve ever had,” said George R. Gilmore, chair­man of the Ocean County Board of Elections.

By Tues­day after­noon, there were still only hints of the eco­nomic impact of the storm. Air­ports remained closed across the East Coast and far beyond as tens of thou­sands of trav­el­ers found they couldn’t get where they were going.

Fore­cast­ing firm IHS Global Insight pre­dicted the storm will end up caus­ing about $20 bil­lion in dam­ages and $10 bil­lion to $30 bil­lion in lost busi­ness. Another firm, AIR World­wide, esti­mated losses up to $15 bil­lion — big num­bers prob­a­bly off­set by recon­struc­tion and repairs that will con­tribute to longer-term growth.

“The biggest prob­lem is not the first few days but the com­ing months,” said Alan Rubin, an expert in nature dis­as­ter recovery.

Sandy began in the Atlantic and knocked around the Caribbean — killing nearly 70 peo­ple — and strength­ened into a hur­ri­cane as it chugged across the south­east­ern coast of the United States. By Tues­day night it had ebbed in strength but was join­ing up with another, more win­try storm — an expected con­flu­ence of weather sys­tems that earned it nick­names like “super­storm” and, on Hal­loween eve, “Frankenstorm.”

It became, pretty much every­one agreed Tues­day, the weather event of a life­time — and one shared vig­or­ously on social media by peo­ple in Sandy’s path who took eye-popping pho­tographs as the storm blew through, then shared them with the world by the blue light of their smartphones.

On Twit­ter , Face­book and the photo-sharing ser­vice Insta­gram, peo­ple tried to con­nect, reas­sure rel­a­tives and make sense of what was hap­pen­ing — and, in many cases, work to authen­ti­cate reports of destruc­tion and storm surges. They posted and passed around images and real-time updates at a dizzy­ing rate, wish­ing each other well and gap­ing, vir­tu­ally, at scenes of calamity moments after they unfolded. Among the top terms on Face­book through the night and well into Tues­day, accord­ing to the social net­work: “we are OK,” ”made it” and “fine.”

Around mid­day Tues­day, Sandy was about 120 miles east of Pitts­burgh, push­ing west­ward with winds of 45 mph, and was expected to turn toward New York State on Tues­day night. Although weak­en­ing as it goes, the storm will con­tinue to bring heavy rain and flood­ing, said Daniel Brown of the National Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter in Miami.

Atlantic City’s fabled Board­walk, the first in the nation, lost sev­eral blocks when Sandy came through, though the major­ity of it remained intact even as other Jer­sey Shore board­walks were dis­man­tled. What dam­age could be seen on the coast­line Tues­day was, in some loca­tions, stag­ger­ing — “unthink­able,” New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie said of what unfolded along the Jer­sey Shore, where houses were swept from their foun­da­tions and amuse­ment park rides were washed into the ocean. “Beyond any­thing I thought I would ever see.”

Res­i­dent Carol Mason returned to her bayfront home to car­pets that squished as she stepped on them. She made her final mort­gage pay­ment just last week. Fac­ing a manda­tory evac­u­a­tion order, she had tried to ride out the storm at first but then saw the waters ris­ing out­side her bath­room win­dow and quickly reconsidered.

“I looked at the bay and saw the fury in it,” she said. “I knew it was time to go.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.