Hurricane Sandy Floods NYC Subway System

Hurricane / superstorm Sandy is here. This morning, the New York City subway system was flooded to a great extent, prompting the MTA to issue a warning to all residents to stay home and safe from harm.

It will take anything from 14 hours to 4 whole days just to pump the water out of the tunnels, ABC News reports.

See the video below for additional details.

Afterwards, the lines will have to be inspected for damage before everything is back to normal. Authorities note that this is the biggest crisis the mass transit system has ever dealt with in its entire 108 years of existence.

“The New York City subway system… has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night,” MTA Chairman Joe Lhota says in a statement cited by the same media outlet.

“Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region,” Lhota adds.

Besides the subway, rail yards and bus depots have also been flooded. Moreover, a segment of the Hudson line on the Metro-North Railroad has lost power, the same media outlet reports.

“We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery,” Lhota says.

In the meantime, though, people are urged to stay home to keep away from harm.

Without a doubt, the shutting down of the system, even if partial, will take a major hit on mass transit, considering that, last year, 5.2 million people used the subway on a weekly basis.

Indeed, it’s the biggest crisis of the kind authorities have ever had to face.

Illustrative in this sense is the photo attached to this article, which is a CCTV screencap showing flood waters rushing into the Hoboken PATH train station through an elevator shaft in New Jersey.