|
| Large waves generated by Hurricane Sandy crash into Jeanette's Pier in Nags Head, N.C., Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012 as the storm moves up the east coast. Hurricane Sandy, upgraded again Saturday just hours after forecasters said it had weakened to a tropical storm, was barreling north from the Caribbean and was expected to make landfall early Tuesday near the Delaware coast, then hit two winter weather systems as it moves inland, creating a hybrid monster storm. |
SHIP BOTTOM, N.J.
(AP) -- Forget distinctions like tropical storm or hurricane. Don't
get fixated on a particular track. Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth
storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of
the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow, say
officials who warned millions in coastal areas to get out of the way.
"We're
looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people," said Louis
Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration.
As Hurricane
Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean - where it left nearly five
dozen dead - to meet two other powerful winter storms, experts said it
didn't matter how strong the storm was when it hit land: The rare hybrid
storm that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast
to the Great Lakes.
"This is not a coastal
threat alone," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. "This is a very large area."
New
Jersey was set to close its casinos this weekend, New York's governor
was considering shutting down the subways to avoid flooding and half a
dozen states warned residents to prepare for several days of lost power.
Sandy
weakened briefly to a tropical storm early Saturday but was soon back
up to Category 1 strength, packing 75 mph winds about 335 miles
southeast of Charleston, S.C., as of 5 p.m. Experts said the storm was
most likely to hit the southern New Jersey coastline by late Monday or
early Tuesday.
Governors from North Carolina,
where heavy rain was expected Sunday, to Connecticut declared states of
emergency. Delaware ordered mandatory evacuations for coastal
communities by 8 p.m. Saturday.
New Jersey's
Chris Christie, who was widely criticized for not interrupting a family
vacation in Florida while a snowstorm pummeled the state in 2010, broke
off campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in North
Carolina Friday to return home.
"I can be as
cynical as anyone," the pugnacious chief executive said in a bit of
understatement Saturday. "But when the storm comes, if it's as bad as
they're predicting, you're going to wish you weren't as cynical as you
otherwise might have been."
The storm forced
the presidential campaign to juggle schedules. Romney scrapped plans to
campaign Sunday in the swing state of Virginia and switched his schedule
for the day to Ohio. First Lady Michelle Obama cancelled an appearance
in New Hampshire for Tuesday, and President Barack Obama moved a planned
Monday departure for Florida to Sunday night to beat the storm.
In
Ship Bottom, just north of Atlantic City, Alice and Giovanni
Stockton-Rossini spent Saturday packing clothing in the back yard of
their home, a few hundred yards from the ocean on Long Beach Island.
Their neighborhood was under a voluntary evacuation order, but they
didn't need to be forced.
"It's really
frightening," Alice Stockton-Rossi said. "But you know how many times
they tell you, `This is it, it's really coming and it's really the big
one' and then it turns out not to be? I'm afraid people will tune it out
because of all the false alarms before, and the one time you need to
take it seriously, you won't. This one might be the one."
A
few blocks away, Russ Linke was taking no chances. He and his wife
secured the patio furniture, packed the bicycles into the pickup truck,
and headed off the island.
"I've been here
since 1997, and I never even put my barbecue grill away during a storm.
But I am taking this one seriously," he said.
What
makes the storm so dangerous and unusual is that it is coming at the
tail end of hurricane season and the beginning of winter storm season,
"so it's kind of taking something from both," said Jeff Masters,
director of the private service Weather Underground.
Masters
said the storm could be bigger than the worst East Coast storm on
record - the 1938 New England hurricane known as the Long Island
Express, which killed nearly 800 people. "Part hurricane, part
nor'easter - all trouble," he said. Experts said to expect high winds
over 800 miles and up to 2 feet of snow as well inland as West Virginia.
And
the storm was so big, and the convergence of the three storms so rare,
that "we just can't pinpoint who is going to get the worst of it," said
Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Officials are particularly worried about the possibility of subway flooding in New York City, said Uccellini.
New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
to prepare to shut the city's subways, buses and suburban trains by
Sunday, but delayed making a final decision. The city shut the subways
down before last year's Hurricane Irene, and a Columbia University study
predicted that an Irene surge just 1 foot higher would have paralyzed
lower Manhattan.
Up and down the Eastern Seaboard and far inland, officials urged residents and businesses to prepare in big ways and little.
The
Virginia National Guard was authorized to call up to 500 troops to
active duty for debris removal and road-clearing, while homeowners
stacked sandbags at their front doors in coastal towns.
Utility
officials warned rains could saturate the ground, causing trees to
topple into power lines, and told residents to prepare for several days
at home without power. "We're facing a very real possibility of
widespread, prolonged power outages," said, Ruth Miller, spokeswoman for
the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.
Warren Ellis, who was on an annual fishing pilgrimage on North Carolina's Outer Banks, didn't act fast enough to get home.
Ellis'
73-year-old father, Steven, managed to get off uninhabited Portsmouth
Island near Cape Hatteras by ferry Friday. But the son and his 10-foot
camper got stranded when high winds and surf forced state officials to
suspend service Saturday.
"We might not get
off here until Tuesday or Wednesday, which doesn't hurt my feelings that
much," said Ellis, 44, of Ammissville, Va. "Because the fishing's
going to be really good after this storm."
Last year, Hurricane Irene poked a new inlet through the island, cutting the only road off Hatteras Island for about 4,000.
In
Maine, lobsterman Greg Griffen wasn't taking any chances; he moved 100
of his traps to deep water, where they are more vulnerable to shifting
and damage in a storm.
"Some of my competitors
have been pulling their traps and taking them right home," said
Griffen. The dire forecast "sort of encouraged them to pull the plug on
the season."
In Muncy Valley north of
Philadelphia, Rich Fry learned his lesson from last year, when Tropical
Storm Lee inundated his Katie's Country Store.
In
between helping customers picking up necessities Saturday, Fry was
moving materials above the flood line. Fry said he was still trying to
recover from the losses of last year's storm, which he and his wife,
Deb, estimated at the time at $35,000 in merchandise.
"It will take a lot of years to cover that," he said.
Christie's
emergency declaration will force the shutdown of Atlantic City's 12
casinos for only the fourth time in the 34-year history of legalized
gambling here. The approach of Hurricane Irene shut down the casinos for
three days last August.
Atlantic City
officials said they would begin evacuating the gambling hub's 30,000
residents at noon Sunday, busing them to mainland shelters and schools.
Tom
Foley, Atlantic City's emergency management director, recalled the
March 1962 storm when the ocean and the bay met in the center of the
city.
"This is predicted to get that bad," he said.
Mike Labarbera, who came from Brooklyn to gamble at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, thought the caution was overblown.
"I think it's stupid," he said. "I don't think it's going to be a hurricane. I think they're overreacting."
Ray Leonard disagreed, and has a famous storm survival story to back him up.
Leonard
rode out 1991's infamous "perfect storm", made famous by the Sebastian
Junger bestseller of the same name, with two cremates in his 32-foot
sailboat, Satori, before being plucked from the Atlantic off Martha's
Vineyard, Mass., by a Coast Guard helicopter.
The
85-year-old former sailor said Saturday that if he had loved ones
living in the projected landfall area, he would tell them to leave.
"Don't
be rash," Leonard said in a telephone interview Saturday from his home
in Fort Myers, Fla. "Because if this does hit, you're going to lose all
those little things you've spent the last 20 years feeling good about."
