As Hurricane Sandy lost its ferocious punch and veered towards Canada leaving a trail of destruction up and down the US East Coast, President Barack Obama cautioned "The storm is not over yet." It left at least 40 dead and some 7.5 million people without power along the East Coast with New York's subway system paralysed by flooded tunnels and much of America's financial hub of Manhattan, in the dark.
As Hurricane Sandy lost its ferocious punch and veered
"We're going to continue to push as hard as we can" to provide resources, said the president who has left the campaigning for the Tuesday's election to surrogates to deal with the situation from the White House.
"No bureaucracy, no red tape," was the message to his administration, he said during an afternoon visit Tuesday to the headquarters of the Red Cross in Washington after signing Major Disaster Declarations for worst hit New York and New Jersey.
The lifeline for millions of New Yorkers spanning 468 stations and over 600 miles of track, pulsing through four of New York City's five boroughs, was expected to remain silent for days and power could be out for a week, authorities warned.
More than 18,000 airline flights have been cancelled and according to one estimate Sandy would cost America $10 billion to $20 billion in economic damages.
"The New York City subway system is 108 years old," Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "It has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night."
Recovery efforts across 15 states and Washington city were starting to take hold Tuesday night, but thousands of people waited in shelters, not knowing whether their homes had survived, CNN said.
Atlantic City, a resort town famed for its beaches, boardwalk and blackjack, became an extension of the ocean as seaweed and flotsam swirled in the knee-deep water covering downtown streets.
While the East Coast was still grappling with the scope of the disaster, federal officials warned that Sandy was an ongoing concern with the potential to inflict more pain on inland states.
"The coastal impacts are certainly less today than they were last night, but the effects are not zero," National Hurricane Centre Director Rick Knabb told reporters in a conference call. "There are still some fairly strong winds out of the south."
The storm was centred about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh and packing 45-mph winds Tuesday evening, bringing flood warnings to Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania and blizzard warnings to high elevations in the Appalachian Mountains.
Officials in the states of Connecticut, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia all reported deaths from the massive storm system, while Toronto police said a Canadian woman was killed by flying debris.
Sandy had already killed at least 67 people -- including a US national in Puerto Rico -- as it swept through the Caribbean over the past few days, meaning the overall toll from the storm is now 110.
The total deaths in New York state spiked to 23, after New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said at least 18 people had been killed in the Big Apple alone.
"Tragically we expect that number to go up," Bloomberg warned.
Three people died in New Jersey, including two parents who were killed when a falling tree crushed their car, sparing their children aged 11 and 14 who were inside with them, Governor Chris Christie said.
Christie added that rescue operations were still under way, with three separate teams deployed in Atlantic City, the coastal casino town near where the storm made landfall at 0000 GMT Tuesday.
The aftermath of flooding following Hurricaine Sandy in the Financial District of New York. AFP Photo
Another four people were killed in Pennsylvania, including one killed from a falling tree and another when a house collapsed, emergency management officials told AFP.
Connecticut Emergency Management spokesman Scott Devico reported four storm-related deaths in his state. Governor Dan Malloy earlier said that one of the dead was a firefighter.
Two storm-related deaths were reported in North Carolina, including a woman on board a replica of the HMS Bounty who was plucked from the sea Monday and later died at hospital. The captain was still missing Tuesday after the tall ship went down off the coast of North Carolina. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/Popup/2012/10/31-10-12-biz-04.jpg
North Carolina's State Highway Patrol also reported that a driver slammed into a tree Monday evening and died on the spot.
A vehicle driver and his passenger were killed in the Virginia state capital of Richmond in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, city police said.
Three storm-related deaths were reported in Maryland, Ed McDonough with the state Emergency Management Agency told AFP. Two were killed in vehicle-related accidents, while a third died when he was crushed by a tree that fell into his home.
And in West Virginia, a 48-year-old woman was killed when her car collided with a cement truck while driving through heavy snow caused by the storm, a local official said.
The National Hurricane Center said Sandy had weakened early Tuesday as it moved inland, but could still generate gale-force winds and flooding along the Eastern Seaboard.
US authorities had warned the threat to life and property was "unprecedented" and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents from New England to North Carolina to evacuate their homes and seek shelter.
Falling trees dragged down power cables, plunging millions of homes into darkness, while storm warnings cut rail links and marooned tens of thousands of travelers at airports across the region.
Disaster estimating firm Eqecat forecast that the massive storm would affect more than 60 million Americans, a fifth of the population, and cause up to $20 billion (15 billion euros) in damage.
Truce frays as Obama, Romney navigate Sandy aftermath
President Barack Obama planned to tour superstorm Sandy's debris field and Mitt Romney plotted a return to campaigning Tuesday, as high-stakes politics stirred back to life a week from election day.
During an unprecedented 24-hour truce so close to a US presidential vote, the campaigns assessed the storm aftermath and how to squeeze the best use from fast dwindling days left in a race either man could still win.
The storm -- which killed at least 43 people in the United States and Canada, swamped homes on the eastern seaboard and sent floodwaters gushing through lower Manhattan -- muffled campaign trail rhetoric and jumbled political battle lines.
Obama was in presidential mode Tuesday, firing off orders to government emergency chiefs, telling victims that America found their plight "heartbreaking" and affecting not to notice the looming November 6 poll.
But his trip to New Jersey on Wednesday and meeting with Governor Chris Christie -- a Republican Romney backer who has poured praise on the president's handling of the disaster -- will take place in a highly political context.
Romney meanwhile concluded that in such a tight race, he could not afford another day watching Obama dominate the headlines, announcing plans for a three-event tour of tightening battleground Florida -- which he must win.
Still, Obama will still control the media narrative on Wednesday as he picks through wreckage and consoles storm victims alongside a key Republican, as Romney plays the grubbier game of campaign politics in sunny Florida.
The no-nonsense Christie is a frequent Obama critic and was playing the same talismanic role and raising his own profile while managing disaster as New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani played in the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Cars floating in a flooded subterranian basement following Hurricaine Sandy in the Financial District of New York. AFP Photo
In one aside on Tuesday which likely pleased the Obama camp, Christie snapped at a Fox News interviewer when asked if Romney would get a disaster photo-op.
"If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me," said Christie, often mentioned as a future White House hopeful.
Though the principals were off stage and the political heat was turned down, the campaigns did trade punches, with each side accusing the other of desperation as they sought to lock in key states on the electoral map.
Obama took full advantage of the tools of the presidency as he projected a sense of authority and organization, marshalling the federal government emergency effort and empathizing with millions in the storm's path.
"Do not figure out why we can't do something. I want you to figure out how we do something," Obama said he told federal workers, after a visit to the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington.
"I want you to cut through red tape, I want you to cut through bureaucracy, there is no excuse for inaction at this point."
Obama's response to the storm, which roared ashore as a hurricane on Monday, could help his approval ratings, but both sides believe there are few undecided voters left, so it was unclear whether it would actually shift votes.
While the US media establishment is based on the East Coast and is fixated on the storm, swing states like Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and even Virginia where the election will be won and lost, escaped Sandy's worst wrath.
But Romney will still face a test of tone Wednesday in Florida, and must decide whether to soften negative attacks on Obama to avoid being seen as a political opportunist.
Workers
clear a downed tree blocking East 96th street in Central Park the
morning after Hurricane Sandy in New York City.
"We're going to continue to push as hard as we can" to provide resources, said the president who has left the campaigning for the Tuesday's election to surrogates to deal with the situation from the White House.
"No bureaucracy, no red tape," was the message to his administration, he said during an afternoon visit Tuesday to the headquarters of the Red Cross in Washington after signing Major Disaster Declarations for worst hit New York and New Jersey.
The aftermath of flooding following Hurricaine Sandy in the Financial District of New York.
More than 18,000 airline flights have been cancelled and according to one estimate Sandy would cost America $10 billion to $20 billion in economic damages.
"The New York City subway system is 108 years old," Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "It has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night."
Recovery efforts across 15 states and Washington city were starting to take hold Tuesday night, but thousands of people waited in shelters, not knowing whether their homes had survived, CNN said.
Atlantic City, a resort town famed for its beaches, boardwalk and blackjack, became an extension of the ocean as seaweed and flotsam swirled in the knee-deep water covering downtown streets.
While the East Coast was still grappling with the scope of the disaster, federal officials warned that Sandy was an ongoing concern with the potential to inflict more pain on inland states.
"The coastal impacts are certainly less today than they were last night, but the effects are not zero," National Hurricane Centre Director Rick Knabb told reporters in a conference call. "There are still some fairly strong winds out of the south."
The storm was centred about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh and packing 45-mph winds Tuesday evening, bringing flood warnings to Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania and blizzard warnings to high elevations in the Appalachian Mountains.
Officials in the states of Connecticut, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia all reported deaths from the massive storm system, while Toronto police said a Canadian woman was killed by flying debris.
Sandy had already killed at least 67 people -- including a US national in Puerto Rico -- as it swept through the Caribbean over the past few days, meaning the overall toll from the storm is now 110.
The total deaths in New York state spiked to 23, after New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said at least 18 people had been killed in the Big Apple alone.
"Tragically we expect that number to go up," Bloomberg warned.
Three people died in New Jersey, including two parents who were killed when a falling tree crushed their car, sparing their children aged 11 and 14 who were inside with them, Governor Chris Christie said.
Christie added that rescue operations were still under way, with three separate teams deployed in Atlantic City, the coastal casino town near where the storm made landfall at 0000 GMT Tuesday.
The aftermath of flooding following Hurricaine Sandy in the Financial District of New York. AFP Photo
Another four people were killed in Pennsylvania, including one killed from a falling tree and another when a house collapsed, emergency management officials told AFP.
Connecticut Emergency Management spokesman Scott Devico reported four storm-related deaths in his state. Governor Dan Malloy earlier said that one of the dead was a firefighter.
Two storm-related deaths were reported in North Carolina, including a woman on board a replica of the HMS Bounty who was plucked from the sea Monday and later died at hospital. The captain was still missing Tuesday after the tall ship went down off the coast of North Carolina. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/Popup/2012/10/31-10-12-biz-04.jpg
North Carolina's State Highway Patrol also reported that a driver slammed into a tree Monday evening and died on the spot.
A vehicle driver and his passenger were killed in the Virginia state capital of Richmond in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, city police said.
Three storm-related deaths were reported in Maryland, Ed McDonough with the state Emergency Management Agency told AFP. Two were killed in vehicle-related accidents, while a third died when he was crushed by a tree that fell into his home.
And in West Virginia, a 48-year-old woman was killed when her car collided with a cement truck while driving through heavy snow caused by the storm, a local official said.
The National Hurricane Center said Sandy had weakened early Tuesday as it moved inland, but could still generate gale-force winds and flooding along the Eastern Seaboard.
US authorities had warned the threat to life and property was "unprecedented" and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents from New England to North Carolina to evacuate their homes and seek shelter.
Falling trees dragged down power cables, plunging millions of homes into darkness, while storm warnings cut rail links and marooned tens of thousands of travelers at airports across the region.
Disaster estimating firm Eqecat forecast that the massive storm would affect more than 60 million Americans, a fifth of the population, and cause up to $20 billion (15 billion euros) in damage.
Truce frays as Obama, Romney navigate Sandy aftermath
President Barack Obama planned to tour superstorm Sandy's debris field and Mitt Romney plotted a return to campaigning Tuesday, as high-stakes politics stirred back to life a week from election day.
During an unprecedented 24-hour truce so close to a US presidential vote, the campaigns assessed the storm aftermath and how to squeeze the best use from fast dwindling days left in a race either man could still win.
The storm -- which killed at least 43 people in the United States and Canada, swamped homes on the eastern seaboard and sent floodwaters gushing through lower Manhattan -- muffled campaign trail rhetoric and jumbled political battle lines.
Obama was in presidential mode Tuesday, firing off orders to government emergency chiefs, telling victims that America found their plight "heartbreaking" and affecting not to notice the looming November 6 poll.
But his trip to New Jersey on Wednesday and meeting with Governor Chris Christie -- a Republican Romney backer who has poured praise on the president's handling of the disaster -- will take place in a highly political context.
Romney meanwhile concluded that in such a tight race, he could not afford another day watching Obama dominate the headlines, announcing plans for a three-event tour of tightening battleground Florida -- which he must win.
Still, Obama will still control the media narrative on Wednesday as he picks through wreckage and consoles storm victims alongside a key Republican, as Romney plays the grubbier game of campaign politics in sunny Florida.
The no-nonsense Christie is a frequent Obama critic and was playing the same talismanic role and raising his own profile while managing disaster as New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani played in the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Cars floating in a flooded subterranian basement following Hurricaine Sandy in the Financial District of New York. AFP Photo
In one aside on Tuesday which likely pleased the Obama camp, Christie snapped at a Fox News interviewer when asked if Romney would get a disaster photo-op.
"If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don't know me," said Christie, often mentioned as a future White House hopeful.
Though the principals were off stage and the political heat was turned down, the campaigns did trade punches, with each side accusing the other of desperation as they sought to lock in key states on the electoral map.
Obama took full advantage of the tools of the presidency as he projected a sense of authority and organization, marshalling the federal government emergency effort and empathizing with millions in the storm's path.
"Do not figure out why we can't do something. I want you to figure out how we do something," Obama said he told federal workers, after a visit to the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington.
"I want you to cut through red tape, I want you to cut through bureaucracy, there is no excuse for inaction at this point."
Obama's response to the storm, which roared ashore as a hurricane on Monday, could help his approval ratings, but both sides believe there are few undecided voters left, so it was unclear whether it would actually shift votes.
While the US media establishment is based on the East Coast and is fixated on the storm, swing states like Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and even Virginia where the election will be won and lost, escaped Sandy's worst wrath.
But Romney will still face a test of tone Wednesday in Florida, and must decide whether to soften negative attacks on Obama to avoid being seen as a political opportunist.
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