 |
| Gushing water: Sea water floods the Ground Zero construction site on Monday in New York |
 |
| Non-movers: New York City taxis are pictured on a flooded street in Queens after Sandy struck the US East Coast |
 |
| Extraordinary: This CCTV photo shows flood waters from Hurricane Sandy rushing in to the Hoboken PATH train station through an elevator shaft in New Jersey |
It hit the mainland at 6.30pm local time last night having laid waste to large parts of the coast during the day. The US city 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 as Sandy zeroed in.
A 13ft wall of water caused by the storm surge and high tides resulted in severe flooding to subways and road tunnels. Torrents of water poured into building works at Ground Zero, cars were swept down streets and power was cut across lower Manhattan in a bid to minimise damage to infrastructure.
Superstorm Sandy knocked out power to at least 6.2million people across the US East, and large sections of Manhattan were plunged into darkness by the storm, with 250,000 customers without power as water pressed into the island from three sides, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads.
New
York City's 911 dispatchers were receiving 20,000 calls per hour. An
extraordinary 24 hours saw what was originally classed as a hurricane
close in and converge with a cold-weather system that turned it into a
superstorm - a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high
wind, but also snow.
Sandy
smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor, from
Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia, New York and Boston, with
stinging rain and gusts of 85mph. Sixteen deaths were reported in New
Jersey, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania
and Connecticut.
No comments:
Post a Comment