14 DAY TRIAL // This morning, America’s most crowded city, the Big Apple, New York woke up to witness the disaster left behind by Hurricane / superstorm Sandy. According to a new Bloomberg report, fires, floods, explosions and death make this $20 billion (€15.4 billion) catastrophe the biggest in years.
Part of the NYC subway system, rail yards and bus depots are flooded, as we also informed you earlier today.
At the same time, a big part of Manhattan is completely in the dark after a series of explosions at the Con Edison Power Plant.
Reports online suggest that people will have to make do without power for at least a week. Authorities don’t know yet how long it will take to pump the water out of subway tunnels.
Bloomberg notes that fires also broke, engulfing several houses in Queen’s Breezy Point. Two people are reported dead as well, while firefighters are struggling to contain the blaze.
“The breadth and depth of devastation is ‘almost unimaginable,’ Joseph Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said in a televised interview today,” Bloomberg reports.
“As of 9:15 p.m. yesterday there were two fatalities in Queens. A man died when a tree fell on his house, and a woman was electrocuted when she stepped in a puddle that obscured a live wire, said Detective Kellyann Ort, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department,” the report further notes.
“Earlier, winds caused the partial collapse of a crane attached to a luxury tower on West 57th Street in Manhattan, and sheared off the side of a building in Chelsea, leaving apartments exposed to the elements, beds and pictures still arranged just so,” adds the same media outlet.
Sandy is sowing destruction in its path. Initial estimates say the damage done by the superstorm will exceed $20 billion (€15.4 billion), but, far more important than money is the loss of human life.
Fox News Latino has photos of the aftermath of the superstorm.