WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Superstorm Sandy slammed into the densely-populated U.S. East Coast on Monday night, with its heavy rains and powerful winds of about 80 mph leaving a trail of floods and destruction as it advanced further inland at a slow pace.
Sandy, the 18th named storm of this year's Atlantic hurricane season and one of the biggest storms ever to hit the United States, made landfall along the New Jersey coastline around 8:00 p.m. ET on Monday.
The fierce storm has since been blamed for at least ten deaths across several U.S. states. Incidentally, Sandy had wreaked havoc leaving at least 66 people dead in the Caribbean during the past week.
According to the National Hurricane Center, Sandy hit the shore as a 'post-tropical cyclone.' The agency said Sandy had lost the characteristics of a tropical storm as it made landfall despite being characterized earlier as a hurricane. It, however, added that Sandy was still generating hurricane-force winds despite being not as powerful as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.
Much of Atlantic City, close to where Sandy made landfall, has been hit by floods, forcing the evacuation of some 30,000 residents. Heavy snow fall has been forecast in places of higher elevations in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky as the center of the storm advances westward.
The area hit by the storm also included heavy population centers like New York City, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Several places in New York and New Jersey experienced record rainfall due to the storm.
Flooding caused by the storm forced the suspension of public transport in the U.S. capital, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. An estimated 50 million people have been affected by the storm, which left some 250,000 residents in Manhattan without power.
Air traffic has been suspended in the region, and the Amtrak passenger rail service halted nearly all its service on the East Coast. Several bridges and tunnels in the region were also closed as a precaution.
A record 13 ft (4-meter) storm surge was measured in New York City. Some 375,000 residents were evacuated from low-lying areas in lower Manhattan and other places after the Hudson and East rivers burst their banks. Also, there were reports of floods in some subway tunnels in the city.
New York Stock Exchange, commonly referred to as the NYSE, and the NASDAQ stock market suspended trading for a second day on Tuesday. It marks the first hurricane closure for the market since Hurricane Gloria struck the East Coast in September 1985.
The New York headquarters of the United Nations as well as federal government offices in Washington DC would remain closed until Wednesday. President Barack Obama had earlier appealed to the millions in the hurricane path to follow directions given to them by authorities.
'We are certain that this is going to be a slow-moving process through a wide swath of the country, and millions of people are going to be affected,' he said while talking to reporters at the White House on Monday afternoon.
On Sunday, the President had declared emergencies in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Rhode Island and New Jersey, thereby making those states eligible for federal aid to supplement their response efforts to meet the emergency conditions.
The storm had forced Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney to cancel several of their campaign events. Notably, experts have warned that Sandy could linger over some 12 U.S. states for a further 24 to 36 hours because of its slow-moving nature.
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