The full force of the biggest storm in U.S. history today fell on the East Coast leaving 16 people dead and almost 6.2million without power.
As Sandy swept west, millions of people were counting the cost - including the population of Atlantic City, which is mainly under water after the ferocious winds hit its shores.
It is still unclear what has happened to 500 people who were stranded on the town's barrier island. They were unable to escape before Sandy - dubbed the Frankenstorm - rolled in.
The storm made landfall at the coast of New Jersey at 8pm EST last night, and the estimated cost of repairs now stands at up to $20billion, making this potentially one of the most expensive natural disasters the country has ever seen.
The 1,000-mile-wide storm lashed towns and cities up and down the East Coast, with cars floating down flood-hit streets in New York City and the 911 system inundated with 10,000 calls every half an hour.
Atlantic City's fabled boardwalk was ripped up by the 80mph winds, down slightly from the 90mph speeds at which they were traveling before hitting landfall, when Sandy was still classified as a hurricane.
Willie Glass, Atlantic City's public safety director, said: 'The city's basically flooded. Most of the city is under water.'
Water world: The famous casinos of Atlantic City, New Jersey, were submeraged after superstorm Sandy hit land nearby
Grave danger: Sandy crashed ashore late on Monday evening near the gambling resort, triggering the evacuation of more than one million people across a dozen states
Waves crash against a previously damaged pier before landfall of Hurricane Sandy this afternoon as storm-driven waves crashed ashore and flooded seafront communities
Lashed with rain: A van skids in the flooded streets of Atlantic city, where casinos are shuttered, tourists have and 500 are trapped in their homes
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticised Atlantic City's Mayor Lorenzo Langford for advising residents to stay put as Sandy barreled in, leaving it too late for evacuations.
'There is no way for us to go get them,' said Christie.
Rescuers cannot reach shelters and homes in the city until at least daybreak, the first-term Republican governor added. One shelter, a public school, is 'literally a block away from the bay', he said.
Deaths were reported in New Jersey, New York, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, with some of the victims killed by falling trees. Police in Toronto said a woman was killed by a falling sign as high winds closed in on Canada's largest city.
Sandy is just one component of a massive storm coming together over the eastern third of the U.S. It converged with a cold-weather system that turned it into a superstorm, a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high wind but snow in West Virginia and other mountainous areas inland.
It killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Atlantic, hooking left toward the New Jersey coast at midday.
Sandy hit Atlantic City at 8pm before smacking the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor - Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
The center of the superstorm is now marching westward from the Atlantic coastline. It was just outside Philadelphia near midnight, and its winds were down to 75 mph as it made its way into Pennsylvania and up into New York State.
While the hurricane's 90mph winds registered as only a Category 1 on a scale of five, it packed 'astoundingly low' barometric pressure, giving it terrific energy to push water inland, said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.
U.S. Route 30, the White Horse Pike, one of three major approaches to Atlantic City, New Jersey, is covered with water from Absecon Bay during the approach of Hurricane Sandy
Waves crash next to the Atlantic City Boardwalk, already advancing past the beach, as wind speeds strengthen to 90mph
As the storm drew near to the coast of the U.S., airlines canceled more than 12,000 flights, disrupting the plans of travelers all over the world.
Even local journeys became impossible, with the New York subway shut down since Sunday night, along with the Holland Tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey and a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Brooklyn Bridge, George Washington Bridge, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed because of the ferocious winds.
An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater tore through New York City, flooding its tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street. The United Nations canceled all meetings at its New York headquarters.
A wide swath of the city was hit with blackouts caused by flooding and transformer explosions.
'This will be one for the record books,' said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at ConEdison. 'This will be the largest storm-related outage in our history.'
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: 'We knew that this was going to be a very dangerous storm, and the storm has met our expectations. This is a once-in-a-long-time storm.'
A construction crane on top of a luxury New York high-rise collapsed in the wind and dangled precariously 74 floors above the street, where forecasters said the wind may have been close to 95 mph.
The New York Stock Exchange will be closed in the U.S. for a second day today - the first time it has shut for two consecutive days due to weather since 1888, when a blizzard struck the city.
President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have canceled their election campaign appearances with just over a week to go before voting The president pledged the government's help and made a direct plea from the White House to those in the storm's path.
'When they tell you to evacuate, you need to evacuate,' he said. 'Don't delay, don't pause, don't question the instructions that are being given, because this is a powerful storm.'
Patients - including 20 infants from neonatal intensive care - were evacuated from hospitals after the power went out and backup generators failed. Critically ill babies and patients on battery-operated respirators were taken to other hospitals.
Obama declared emergencies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, authorizing federal relief work to begin well ahead of time. He promised the government would 'respond big and respond fast' after the storm hits.
A man stands on a dry patch of sidewalk on a flooded street as Hurricane Sandy moves up the coast
An empty Boardwalk before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy today as much of the eastern United States was in lock down mode
Chef and maintenance worker AnRich Stringer pulls a pallet loaded with sandbags across the boardwalk to a restaurant entrance for protection from Hurricane Sandy
Jeff Masters, meteorology director for private forecasting service Weather Underground, said: 'We are looking at the highest storm surges ever recorded. The energy of the storm surge is off the charts, basically.'
Hours before landfall, there was graphic evidence of the storm's power.
Off North Carolina, a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie 'Mutiny on the Bounty' went down in the storm, and 14 crew members were rescued by helicopter from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas. Another crew member was found hours afterward but was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The captain was missing.
At Cape May, water sloshed over the seawall, and it punched through dunes in other seaside communities.
'When I think about how much water is already in the streets, and how much more is going to come with high tide tonight, this is going to be devastating,' said Bob McDevitt, president of the main Atlantic City casino workers union. 'I think this is going to be a really bad situation tonight.'
In Maryland, at least 100 feet of a fishing pier at the beach resort of Ocean City was destroyed.
At least half a million people along the East Coast had been ordered to evacuate, including 375,000 from low-lying parts of New York City.
Sheila Gladden left her home in Philadelphia's flood-prone Eastwick neighborhood, which took on 5{ feet of water during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and headed for a hotel.
'I'm not going through this again,' she said.
Those who stayed behind had few ways to get out.
Battered by the boardwalk: An empty street in flooded Atlantic City, which has taken a direct hit from the superstorm, forcing residents to flee inland
Atlantic City and its world-famous casinos were evacuated on Sunday, while the north end of the city's historic boardwalk broke up and washed away.
Town safety director Mr Glass said: 'It looks like it's going to be worse than the storm of '62, which was monumental. Saving lives and making sure everyone is safe is our priority.'
State Emergency Management spokeswoman Mary Goepfert said about 115,000 residents were ordered to evacuate the state's barrier islands, and local officials ordered many more in their towns. It was not known how many heeded the warning. She said more than 2,200 people were in shelters statewide.
About 35,000 homes and businesses across the state were without power by midday Monday as officials braced for a storm surge that was expected to cause record-breaking flooding.
The streets of Atlantic City were mainly deserted.
Ron Skinner, a Harrah's employee who was heading from the boardwalk to the beach, said he was unfazed.
'It is what it is,' he said. 'I don't worry much.'
Tom Foley, Atlantic City's director of emergency management, said officials were sweeping the city's low-lying areas, looking for people who were still in their homes.
Astonishing scenes: Heavy waves smash over the seawall in Winthrop, Massachusetts this morning as what was then only classified as a hurricane moves closer to the region
Submerged: A car is covered by water near the Consolidated Edison power plant in New York, after Sandy knocked out power to at least 3.1million people, and large sections of the city were plunged into darkness
Destroyed: A severely damaged home in Manalapan, Florida after the 90mph winds of Sandy passed by
Terrifying episode: Heavy waves smash over the seawall in Winthrop, with the 911 system inundated with 10,000 calls every half hour
Sea life: A row of houses stands in floodwaters at Grassy Sound in North Wildwood, New Jersey, after the powerful storm lurched westwards and took dead aim at New Jersey and Delaware
Devastation: Bulldozers swing into action to clean up Fort Lauderdale after Sandy swept along the coast
Breached: Floodwaters from Sandy rush into the Port Authority bus terminal in New Jersey through an elevator shaft
Journey: Graphic showing the current position of the superstorm after it swept up the East Coast
While the plywood was tacked onto casino windows, and sandbags sat at the bottoms of doors, the boardwalk looked like it could come to life at any minute.
Neon signs still flashed; lamps were lit and a string of Christmas lights extending from a casino to lamps remained lit. Bally's even kept its outdoor sound system on.
A check-cashing store was boarded up. A pizza place sat empty, rain hitting the white facade of the only building on the block. Rain dripped down the elephants in front of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, and a piece of sign hung from a billboard, swaying in the wind.
A traffic light near the Atlantic City Expressway dangled precariously, turning 360 degrees before giving out. Water still spraying up from a fountain was blown sideways. On one street, water rose about four inches in a half hour.
Intense: A journalist battles to get to work in ravaged Atlantic City
Brave and dedicated: Emergency services try to help the town's frightened residents, 500 of whom are trapped in their homes
A police car drives through a flooded street near the Atlantic City Convention Center on Monday
A television reporter stands in water one the beach near the Boardwalk as 'Frankenstorm' threatens to wreak havoc on the area with storm surges, driving rain and devastating winds
A flooded street between two casinos along the Boardwalk before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy as 'Frankenstorm' threatened to wreak havoc on the area with storm surges, driving rain and devastating winds
Pounding waves have already broken up sections of the Atlantic City boardwalk, according to photos posted to social media and discussion on police and fire scanners
Christie, who urged people last year to 'get the hell off the beach' as Hurricane Irene approached, urged residents of the state's narrow barrier islands to move to higher ground. By midday on Monday, he said, some people who had not gone inland may be stuck for the duration of the storm.
'This is not a time to be a show-off, this is not a time to be stupid. This is the time to save yourself and your family,' he said.
Those who had chosen to stay were putting themselves in harm's way, he said.
Christie said every school in New Jersey was closed for Monday and more than half the districts had already decided to call off classed for Tuesday. Most businesses across the state seemed to be closed, even some fast-food places as far from the shore as Cherry Hill.
At New Jersey's southern tip in Cape May, Victorian Hotel owner John Cooke got all his guests checked out by Sunday. But as president of the Chamber of Commerce, he decided to stay himself so he could update other business owners on the situation. 'It's important for me to be here to be here to communicate,' he said.
Bed-and-breakfast owner Don Schweikert, from Cape May, near where Sandy roared ashore, said: 'It was nerve-racking for a while, before the storm hit. Everything was rattling.'
Atlantic City's 12 casinos closed for only the fourth time in the 34-year history of legalized gambling here. State parks also shut down.
Flooding begins to inundate a parking garage ahead of Hurricane Sandy as Governor Chris Christie's emergency declaration shut down the city's casinos and 30,000 residents were ordered to evacuate
Atlantic City's 12 casinos closed for only the fourth time in the 34-year history of legalized gambling here. State parks also shut down
A car sits in a flooded street near the ocean ahead of Hurricane Sandy today - and the worst is yet to come
A security guard stands outside the entrance of Caesar's Casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk, with doors covered with sheets of plywood for protection
Ominous sight: An empty street is seen in deserted Atlantic City as Sandy raced towards the helpless holiday town
Exelon Corp declared an alert at the Oyster Creek nuclear power reactor in Lacey Township, New Jersey due to the rising water, a spokesman at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
The NRC spokesman said if the flood waters continued to rise, it could affect the reactor's service water pumps, which are used for shut-down cooling and to cool the spent-fuel pool.
One of the units at Indian Point, another nuclear plant about 45 miles north of New York City, was shut down around 10.45pm because of external electrical grid issues, according to Entergy Corp., which operates the plant.
Residents of northern New Jersey river communities braced for another round of the flooding that has become commonplace for them.
Pompton Lakes has been hit by flooding several times in the last decade, most notably last year after Irene swept through the area and left dozens of businesses and homes severely damaged.
Some in the town were already putting belongings out near the curb, in advance of the storm.
'People are worst-case-scenario-ing it,' said Kevin Gogots, who has lived in the town since the early '80s. 'They're figuring, divide and conquer: They'll take the stuff they want to save and put the rest out. Of course, if the street floods again we'll just have things floating around.'
full source: dailymail.co.uk
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