New York continues post-Sandy cleanup

Millions of people across the U.S. Northeast stricken by massive storm Sandy are trying to resume normal lives on Wednesday as companies, markets and airports reopened, despite grim projections of power and mass transit outages lasting several more days.

With six days to go before the Nov. 6 elections, President Barack Obama will visit storm-ravaged areas of the New Jersey shore, where Sandy made landfall on Monday.

Sandy, which has killed 40 people in the United States, pushed inland and dumped snow in the Appalachian Mountains. Its remains slowed over Pennsylvania, and it was expected to move north toward western New York and Canada, the National Weather Service said.

Blizzard warnings and coastal flood warnings for the shores of the Great Lakes were in effect.

Battered by a record storm surge of nearly 4.2 metres of water, swaths of New York City remained submerged under several feet of water. In the city’s borough of Staten Island, police used helicopters to pluck stranded residents from rooftops.

There was total darkness in Breezy Point, Queens where a massive fire gutted at least 80 houses.  

More than 8.2 million homes and businesses remained without electricity across several states as trees toppled by fierce winds tore down power lines.

Subway tracks and commuter tunnels under New York City, which carry several million people a day, were under several feet of water.

New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the third of the airports that serve the nation’s busiest airspace, was flooded and remained closed.

Surveillance video released by the Metropolitan Transit Authority showed water gushing through the Long Island railroad tunnel on Monday.          

In the lower half of Manhattan, a quarter million residents remained without power after a transformer explosion at a Con Edison substation Monday night.

New York City likely will struggle without subways for days, authorities said. Buses were operating on a limited basis and many residents were walking long distances or scrambling to grab scarce taxi cabs on the streets.

The storm killed 22 people in New York City, among 27 total in New York state, while six died in New Jersey.

Seven other states reported fatalities. One disaster modeling company said Sandy may have caused up to $15 billion in insured losses.

Sandy hit the East Coast with a week to go to the Nov. 6 presidential election, dampening an unprecedented drive to encourage early voting and raising questions whether some polling stations will be ready to open on Election Day.

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