New York braced as tens of thousands flee storm

Shelters opened and tens of thousands of people were ordered to leave coastal areas yesterday as big cities and small towns across the north-eastern United States buttoned up against the onslaught of a superstorm threatening some 50 million people.

“The time for preparing and talking is about over,” Federal Emergency Management Administrator Craig Fugate warned as monster Hurricane Sandy headed up the Eastern Seaboard on a collision course with two other weather systems. “People need to be acting now.”

New York City buses and trains stopped running last night, and its 1.1 million-student school system was closed today. Mayor Michael Bloomberg also ordered the evacuation of part of lower Manhattan and other low-lying neighbourhoods.

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“If you don’t evacuate, you are not only endangering your life, you are also endangering the lives of the first responders who are going in to rescue you,” he said. “This is a serious and dangerous storm.”

Tens of thousands of people along the coast in Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and other threatened areas were also under orders to clear out because of the danger of as much as a foot of rain, punishing winds of 80 mph and a potentially deadly tidal surge of four to eight feet.

Sandy was headed north from the Caribbean, where it left nearly five dozen people dead, and was expected to hook left toward the mid-Atlantic coast and come ashore late today or early tomorrow, most likely in New Jersey, colliding with a wintry storm moving in from the west and cold air streaming down from the Arctic.

Forecasters warned that the resulting megastorm could wreak havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. Parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina could get snow – two feet or more in places.

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“I’ve been here since 1997, and I never even put my barbecue grill away during a storm,” Russ Linke said shortly before he and his wife left Ship Bottom, New Jersey, yesterday. “But I am taking this one seriously. They say it might hit here. That’s about as serious as it can get.”

He and his wife secured the patio furniture, packed the bicycles into the pickup truck, and headed off the island.

Witlet Maceno, an emergency room nurse working at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, was headed home to Staten Island yesterday after his overnight shift. He said he was going home to check on his parents, visiting from Atlanta, before he returned to work in the evening.

“I’m making sure they’re OK, that they have water and food, and that the windows are shut tight,” he said. “And I’m going to remove stuff outside that could go flying into the windows” of his street-level apartment.

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The danger was hardly limited to coastal areas, with forecasters worried about inland flooding. They also warned that the rain could saturate the ground, causing trees to topple onto power lines and cause blackouts that could last for several days.

States of emergency were declared from North Carolina, where gusty winds whipped steady rain yesterday, to Connecticut. Delaware ordered 50,000 people in coastal communities to clear out by 8 pm last night.

Officials in New York City were particularly worried about the possibility of subway flooding. The city closed the subways before Hurricane Irene last year, and a Columbia University study predicted that an Irene surge just one foot higher would have paralysed lower Manhattan.

Amtrak began cancelling train service to parts of the East Coast, including between Washington and New York. Airlines were preparing for flight cancellations today.

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The Virginia National Guard was authorised to call up to 500 troops for debris removal and road-clearing, while homeowners stacked sandbags at their front doors in coastal towns.

President Barack Obama was working with state and locals governments to make sure they got the resources needed to prepare, administration officials said.