Wintry storm brings new woe to hard-hit US Northeast

Mangalore Today News/ NDTV

New York, Nov 8: A wintry storm dropped snow and rain on the U.S. Northeast on Wednesday, bringing dangerous winds and knocking out power in a region where hundreds of thousands were still in the dark after Superstorm Sandy.

The nor’easter storm brought fresh misery to thousands in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut whose homes were destroyed by Sandy when it smashed ashore on October 29, bringing historic flooding and high winds. The storm killed 121 people in the United States and Canada.

Some 22,000 homes and businesses from the Carolinas to New York lost power on Wednesday, joining the more than 640,000 customers who still lacked electricity from one of the biggest and costliest storms ever to hit the United States.

 

New York and New Jersey evacuated the most vulnerable coastal areas ahead of the nor’easter, which was forecast to bring a high tide about 2 feet (60 cm) above normal by early Thursday.

The storm also wreaked havoc with the evening commute out of New York City, leading the Long Island Rail Road to temporarily suspend all operations to the city’s eastern suburbs and prompting authorities to close New York’s Penn Station.

No major flooding was reported during the storm’s first hours, though New York warned residents whose homes had flooded during Sandy to consider moving to friends’ homes on higher ground or to city shelters.

Christine Jones, 73, said she had continued to live without heat or power in her beachside apartment building in coastal Far Rockaway in New York - even though it means climbing the stairs to her 10th floor apartment with a flashlight in hand.

"They tell us to evacuate," she said, but she and her neighbors do not want to leave. "They’re scared they’re going to be robbed ... The teen-age boys ... they try to break in."

In any case, Jones’ 1999 Buick was dead after water from the Atlantic Ocean washed over it during Sandy, leaving her with no means to evacuate the narrow peninsula she calls home.

The New York Police Department reported another death tied to Sandy. William McKeon, a 78-year-old resident of Rockaway, died late Tuesday of injuries related to the storm, raising the city’s death toll to 41.