Hurricane Sandy is moving toward New York, forcing evacuations and shutting down the stock exchange amid coastal flood warnings. President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney have revised their electoral campaigns.
Washington, DC, and other major US Eastern Seaboard cities were also shut down, with the massive storm expected to make landfall around midnight local time.
In the path of the storm, which has a breadth of 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles), are some 50 million people from the mid-Atlantic to Canada. Some 12,000 flights have been canceled until Wednesday, according to a tracking service.
Landfall is due late Monday
Forecasters have warned that Sandy could interact dramatically with cold weather from Canada. Coinciding with the full moon's high tides, seawater surges taller than 3 meters (10 feet) are expected. New York City's transit network has been shut down.
Tall ship abandoned
At sea, Sandy, which late on Monday was packing winds of 150 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour), forced the abandonment of a tall ship, the Bounty. Coastguard helicopters plucked 14 crew members to safety, but two others went missing.
Missing in 5-meter waves, the Bounty replica
The vessel, a replica of the British ship known for its mutiny off Tahiti in 1789, was taking water in 5-meter waves without propulsion off North Carolina.
Sandy had already been blamed for 65 deaths, mainly in Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba, before drifting north.
Storm shifts campaign
Obama, who faces Romney in the November 6 US presidential election, canceled campaign appearances in Florida and returned to the White House, saying "right now our number one priority is to make sure that we are saving lives."
The Republican Romney canceled most of his campaign events, saying through a spokesman that leaders should "come together to focus on those Americans who are in harm's way."
In 2005, Republican President George W. Bush came under fire for his administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed, devastating New Orleans.
Nuclear plants on watch
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it would send additional inspectors to power plants in five states in the hurricane's potential path.
All plants should be able to withstand hurricane-force winds and flooding, according to the commission.
The US National Weather Service warned residents of coastal areas to leave.
"If you are reluctant to evacuate, and you know someone who rode out the '62 storm on the Barrier Islands, ask them if they could do it again," its bulletin said, referring to the Ash Wednesday convergence of weather systems 50 years ago that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.
Residents have queued at supermarkets for bottled water and batteries before hunkering down.
ipj/mkg (AFP, Reuters, dpa, AP) dw de
No comments:
Post a Comment