Obama: "We will not quit until this is done"

"We are here for you and we will not forget," he said after meeting with storm victims and emergency responders. "We will follow up to make sure you get all the help you need until you rebuild."   However, Obama noted the task was huge and would not bea ccomplished overnight.
"What I can promise is the federal government will be working as closely as possible with state and local officials," he said. "But we will not quit until this is done."
Chief priorities were getting electricity restored and restoring transportation networks so people could return to work, he said.
Meanwhile the full horror of superstorm Sandy became apparent by late Wednesday as a second New York City hospital was evacuated and the US death toll approached 70.

 

The failure of generators at two hospitals - New York University Hospital Tuesday and Bellevue Hospital Wednesday - pointed to an infrastructure ill-equipped to handle disasters.

 

In the case of Bellevue, a public facility that serves the darkened lower half of Manhattan and that CNN said normally handles125,000 emergency admissions a year, the problem was the fuel pumps that fed the generators.
The pumps were under water after Sandy's 4-metre surge in Lower Manhattan this week. For a day, National Guard troops carried fuel in buckets up to the four generators on the 14th floor, but by Wednesday, the effort was abandoned.

 

By late Wednesday, all but 260 patients had been moved to other hospitals, said Alan Aviles, president of New York's Health and Hospitals Corp, which operates the city's public health facilities. Bellevue normally houses 720 patients, including several hundred psychiatric patients and prisoners.

 

Aviles told CNN that the "unprecedented storm" was worse than even the last-minute projections had called for and noted that the hospital was 7 metres above the water in the nearby East River.

 

He said the fuel pumps had been encased in "submarine doors with rubber gaskets" and had never been put to the test of so much water. Despite the bucket brigade's efforts to carry up fuel, the backup system was not able "to sustain a huge hospital ... on temporary power," he said.

Patients were evacuated with the help of the National Guard, carried from the 18-storey building on special sleds.

At least 24 of the deaths blamed on the storm occurred in New York City with the death toll expected to rise. Rescue workers were still scouring wreckage and submerged basements for bodies, The New York Times reported.

La Guardia Airport was to reopen Thursday for limited service, a day after the partial reopening of John F Kennedy and Newark airport. New York's school system was declared closed for the remainder of the week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

 

Parts of the subway system might return to service Thursday, but much of the system was still waterlogged. Limited bus service was available Wednesday as passengers mobbed bus doors for entry. Bloomberg declared cars entering Manhattan had to be carrying atleast three people to reduce traffic.

 

Despite the devastation, Bloomberg said the New York marathon would take place as planned Sunday.

 

Hundreds of thousands of residents of Lower Manhattan were without electricity and often without water. In walks north in search of electrical outlets to at least recharge cellular phones, they were often rebuffed in their attempts to power up at public power outlets or in cafes.

 

One man was shot by an armed subway guard when he tried to use a screwdriver to pry open the shutter on a station in Brooklyn, according to officials quoted by the Daily News. There were reports of nighttime looting on Coney Island.

 

In a visit to the New Jersey shore to survey damage in Atlantic City and elsewhere, President Barack Obama vowed to stand by thestorm victims and promised federal support for the clean-up and recovery.

 

"We are here for you, and we will not forget," he said after meeting storm victims and emergency responders. "We will follow up to make sure you get all the help you need until you rebuild."
The US embassy in Pakistan rejected an offer of storm assistance from the leader of a radical Islamist group, Lashkar-i-Taiba, saying it couldn't take the offer "seriously."