Sprawling Sandy thrashes north-eastern US, kills two
Washington - A huge storm pounded the north-eastern United States and pushed record-high tides into some coastal areas, leaving two dead as 60 million people hunkered down for the night late Monday amid powerful winds and heavy rains.
One man was killed in New York when a tree fell on his house. Offthe North Carolina coast, the replica three-mast sailing boat Bountysank, leaving one crew dead and one missing, after the Coast Guard rescued the remaining 14 passengers and crew.
The storm made landfall around 8 pm (0000 Tuesday GMT) near Atlantic City, New Jersey, after the National Hurricane Centerdown graded Hurricane Sandy to a post-tropical cyclone, with top winds dipping from more than 150 kilometres per hour to about 135 kph.
Sandy cut power to around 3 million households from North Carolinato Massachusetts Monday, news broadcaster CNN said.
Wind gusts in New York City were reported above 120 kph. A collapsed construction crane dangled beside an unfinished skyscraper,and the facade fell from an older tenement building.
The storm surge at Manhattan's Battery Park was 30 centimetres above the previous record at high tide late Monday. There were reports of subways and tunnels flooding in the city.
Sandy killed 67 people last week in the Caribbean before it swung north toward the US East Coast.
Voluntary evacuations were ordered ahead of the storm for low-lying areas near the coast, affecting 375,000 people in low-lying areas of the city's Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island boroughs.
More than 12,000 flights were cancelled, subways and buses halted in major cities and the federal government shut down in Washington.
Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy said the volume of water in NewYork Sound - the waterway between Long Island and the Connecticutshore - would probably set a record. He told CNN that Sandy "could bethe worst storm we've seen in 70 years." Across the north-east, shoppers cleared store shelves ofbatteries, generators, ice, bottled water and other essentials, and coastal residents boarded up windows.
A large chunk of New Jersey's famed Atlantic City boardwalk broke free and was floating through the streets.
"Conditions are deteriorating very rapidly," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday afternoon.
New York authorities shut down the tunnels that link the city toNew Jersey. No subways, trains or buses were operating, and GrandCentral and Penn stations, two major transportation hubs used dailyby millions of people, were closed.
With forecasts of 10 to 30 centimetres of rain, the storm wasbringing heavy snow in the region's mountain ranges. West Virginia was suffering blizzard conditions and bracing for around 100 centimetres of snow.
As forecast, the hurricane combined with a cold front, which,along with high tides and a full moon, would form what was being called a Frankenstorm ahead of Halloween on Wednesday.
The massive system was about 1,500 kilometres wide and moving north-west, the National Hurricane Centre said.
Trading was halted Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, andTuesday's trading session was cancelled, the market's first two-day weather postponement since 1888. UN headquarters in Manhattan were closed, too.
Eight days ahead of the US elections, President Barack Obama toldEast Coast residents to "take this seriously" and cancelled campaign appearances to monitor the hurricane. Challenger Mitt Romney called off a rally in Virginia and sent his campaign bus to help deliver relief supplies.
