New York: 9:21 pm IST: The White House has said that US President Barack Obama will remain in Washington on Wednesday to monitor the response to Hurricane Sandy and will not participate in campaign events that had been scheduled in Ohio.
8:55 pm IST: At least 21 people have died as a result of superstorm Sandy in the United States.
8:41 pm IST: New York City schools will be closed on Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in a press conference. The district serves 1.1 million students in 1,700 schools, in New York City.
He further said that power may be out at different locations in New York for the next two or three days "or maybe even longer than that".
8:30 pm IST: US financial markets are expected to reopen on Wednesday, after being shuttered for two days to deal with the impact of Hurricane Sandy, CNNMoney reports. Major exchange operators NYSE Euronext and Nasdaq OMX said on Tuesday they were preparing to resume operations. The exchanges were spending the bulk of the day conducting tests with member firms to ensure all systems were running smoothly.
8:00 pm IST: Hurricane Sandy has wreaked havoc as it has left about 7.5 million people without power in 15 states and the District of Columbia, according to numbers compiled by CNN from local power providers.
Meanwhile, there have been more than 15,000 flight cancellations since Sunday as a result of the superstorm.
7:05 pm IST: In the latest update from Pennsylvania, as many as 433 roads and bridges are closed in the state while over 1,700 National Guard troops are on the ground. A total of 600 people are in 48 shelter homes because of the superstorm.
Around 38 counties are under emergency declarations and all Philadelphia interstate restrictions have been lifted.
6:00 pm IST: At least 168 people were stranded in about 59 locations in the New York boroughs of Manhattan, Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn on Tuesday because of Superstorm Sandy, a US Coast Guard commander told CNN.
The superstorm also dumped a lot of snow. Here are a few of the measurements so far: Webster County, West Virginia, 17 inches; Fayette County, West Virginia, 15 inches; Bowden, West Virginia, 14 inches; Canvas, West Virgina, 12 inches; Summersville, West Virginia, 10 inches; Mount Davis, Pennsylvania, 9 inches.
4:35 pm IST: Residents have been evacuated from their homes in three towns, including Little Ferry and Moonachie, in New Jersey after levee breaks, flooding streets.
4:00 pm IST: Over 6.5 million people faced power cuts across 13 states in the United States. At least 50 homes burned to ground in New York as Superstorm Sandy led to fires. Floods also led to the shutdown of major airports in the Northeast.
3:30 pm IST: US President Barack Obama has declared a major disaster in New York and Long Island. The declaration makes federal funding available to people in the area. It bore the brunt of the sea surge from Superstorm Sandy that hit the East Coast on Monday.
3:00 PM IST: The death toll in the United States reached 16 as Superstorm Sandy continued to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, one death was also reported from Canada.
1:45 pm IST: At least 15 houses were consumed by a massive fire in New York's borough of Queens. The fire raged on in wet conditions, and would have ordinarily been doused, but that fire trucks couldn't reach the spot on time. Two people have been injured.
1.18 pm IST: An entire block in Rockaway Park, New York said to be on fire. Fifty homes ruined in the fire.
1:00 pm IST: The death toll in the United States reached 13 in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. One death has been reported from Canada too. In all, 6.5 million people in 13 states are without power.
11:44 am IST: According to CNN reports, the New York Transit Authority spokesperson has said that it can take anywhere between 14 hours to four days to pump out the water from the subway tunnels.
10:36 am IST: The death toll in New York and three other states has reached 12. What's worrying is that more than 50 million people are in its path.
10:00 am IST: The water level has started receding in parts of New York, but reports say the worst is not yet over. Meanwhile, all the patients have been evacuated from the NYU Medical Center after its power backup failed.
9:34 am IST: Reports say the NYU Medical Center power has gone off and the backup generators have failed.
9:30 am IST: The storm has caused flooding and massive power outages in 11 states. Winds are ranging up to 75 miles per hour, enough to cause major destruction. In New Jersey, reports say there has been over 11 inches of rainfall and in several states there is possibility of snowstorms. A power plant explosion has led to some of the electricity cuts in Lower Manhattan. This has slowed down evacuation at a New York hospital.
9:00 am IST: Superstorm Sandy has left 11 people dead in New York and three other states. Reports say the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, on the New Jersey coast has been put on alert due to high sea levels caused by storm.
8:40 am IST: There have been more than 12,000 flight cancellations as Superstorm Sandy hit New York. More cancellations are expected in the days to come.
8:20 am IST: A strong gale blowing over New York has forced a crane on a skyscraper to buckle. Eyewitnesses say large chunks of metal hit the ground as the structure keeled over. The crane has been left dangling as the storm intensifies. It is perched precariously at the top of a 90-storeyed building close to the famous Central Park. The police and fire services have cleared streets and some neighbouring buildings as a precaution if the crane collapses.
8:05 am IST: A replica tall ship HMS Bounty caught in Superstorm Sandy's wrath began taking on water, forcing the crew to abandon the boat in rough seas off the North Carolina coast. The Coast Guard has rescued 15 crew members by helicopter, but the captain is still missing.
8:00 am IST: Superstorm Sandy has hit the US east coast leaving at least 10 people dead reportedly in New York and three other states. More than 50 million people are on its path.
7:45 am IST: There were reports of fires caused by downed wires due as Superstorm Sandy hit the state, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
7:35 am IST: Five people were confirmed dead as Superstorm Sandy hit the New York State, the governor's spokesperson said. Over 60 million people have been affected by the storm.
7:20 am IST: CNN reported that most of New York City is now without power and 6,800 flights have been cancelled as Superstorm Sandy hit the city. Reports also said that there was 3 feet water inside the Wall Street, but the reports were refuted later. Over 6,000 National Guard troops have been deployed.
Much of New York was plunged into darkness Monday by a superstorm that overflowed the city's historic waterfront, flooded the financial district and subway tunnels and cut power to nearly a million people. The city had shut its mass transit system, schools, the stock exchange and Broadway and ordered hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to leave home to get out of the way of the superstorm Sandy as it zeroed in on the nation's largest city. Residents spent much of the day trying to salvage normal routines, jogging and snapping pictures of the water while officials warned the worst of the storm had not hit.
By evening, a record 13-foot storm surge was threatening Manhattan's southern tip, utilities darkened parts of downtown Manhattan on purpose to avoid storm damage and water started lapping over the seawall in Battery Park City, flooded rail yards and parts of the financial district. "Now it's really turning into something," said Brian Damianakes, taking shelter in an ATM vestibule and watching a trash can below down the street.
Shortly after the massive storm made landfall in southern New Jersey, Consolidated Edison cut power deliberately to about 6,500 customers in downtown Manhattan to avert further damage. Then, huge swaths of the city went dark, losing power to 250,000 customers in Manhattan, Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said.
Another 1 million customers lost power earlier Monday in New York City, the northern suburbs and coastal Long Island, where floodwaters swamped cars, downed trees and put neighborhoods under water. The storm had only killed one New York City resident by Monday night, a man who died when a tree fell on his home in the Flushing section of Queens.
The rains and howling winds, some believed to reach more than 95 mph, left a crane hanging off a luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan, causing the evacuation of hundreds from a posh hotel and other buildings. Inspectors were climbing 74 flights of stairs to examine the crane hanging from the $1.5 billion.
The facade of a four-story Manhattan building in the Chelsea neighborhood crumbled and collapsed suddenly, leaving the lights, couches, cabinets and desks inside visible from the street. No one was hurt, although some of the falling debris hit a car.
On coastal Long Island, floodwaters swamped cars, downed trees and put neighborhoods under water as beachfronts and fishing villages bore the brunt of the storm. A police car was lost rescuing 14 people from the popular resort Fire Island.
The city shut all three of its airports, its subways, schools, stock exchanges, Broadway theaters and closed several bridges and tunnels throughout the day as the weather worsened. Earlier, some New Yorkers defiantly soldiered on, trying to salvage normal routines and refusing to evacuate, as the mayor ordered 375,000 in low-lying areas to do.
Mark Vial pushed a stroller holding his 2-year-old daughter Maziyar toward his apartment building in Battery Park City, an area that was ordered evacuated. "We're high up enough, so I'm not worried about flooding," said Via, 35. "There's plenty of food. We'll be OK."
On Long Island, floodwaters had begun to deluge some low-lying towns and nearly 150,000 customers had lost power. Cars floated along the streets of Long Beach and flooding consumed several blocks south of the bay, residents said. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, holding a news conference on Long Island where the lights flickered and his mike went in and out, said most of the National Guards deployed to the New York City area would go to Long Island.
"Long Island has become more and more vulnerable and the primary area of our concentration," he said. In the fishing village of Greenport, Sean Seal piled dirt and sandbags onto the alleyway behind his collectibles store where the water was steadily creeping up the street toward his front door. He only opened the shop about two months ago.
"We put everything up. Up on tables, up on shelves, as far as we could," he said. "It's gonna be devastating. We'll lose a lot of stuff." Anoush Vargas drove with her husband, Michael to the famed Jones Beach Monday morning, only to find it covered by water.
"We have no more beach. It's gone," she said, shaking her head as she watched the waves go under the boardwalk. The center the storm, a combination of Sandy, a wintry system from the West and cold air streaming from the Arctic, threatened to knock out the underground network of power, phone and high-speed Internet lines that are the lifeblood of America's financial capital.
Despite the dire forecasts, many chose to embrace what was coming. Tanja Stewart and her 7-year-old son, Finn, came from their home in Manhattan's TriBeCa neighborhood to admire the white caps on the Hudson, Finn wearing a pair of binoculars around his neck. "I really wanted to see some big waves," he said.
Nearby, Keith Reilly climbed up on a rail next to the rising waters of New York Harbor so his friend Eli Rowe could snap a photo of him in an Irish soccer jersey with the Statue of Liberty in the background. "This is not so bad right now," said the 25-year-old Reilly. "We'll see later."
And New Yorkers Andrew Rotz and Alex Grvymala, two young investment bankers on the Battery, wearing shorts and t-shirts, were jogging all over Lower Manhattan. Rotz said they wanted to blow off some energy before the storm hit. "It's seems like this one's for real," Grvymala said of the coming storm.
(With additional information from Associated Press)
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