States along the East Coast were pummeled as Superstorm Sandycame crashing ashore.
The storm officially made landfall along the coast of southern New Jersey, but it is affecting a much wider area.
By early Tuesday, nearly 6.5 million customers were without power across 13 states and the District of Columbia, according to the latest CNN estimate.
At least 15 people have died.
President Obama has declared states of emergency for at least five states and the nation’s capital.
Here’s a look at how coastal states are dealing with the storm:
CONNECTICUT
— One person was killed and two suffered injuries that weren’t life-threatening after a large tree fell on them in Mansfield, according to a statement from Connecticut State Police.
— 629,378 customers lost power, according to Connecticut Light and Power.
— The state emergency management office sent out an ominous tweet to trapped residents: “If u find urself surrounded by H2O, call 4 help if u can & then get 2 highest level of home. Hang a white sheet out a street side window.”
DELAWARE
— Power went down for 78,677 customers in Delaware, Delmarva Power reported. The company says it cannot assess the time it will take to restore power, because of the intensity of the storm.
— Driving restrictions will be in place until at least 8:30 a.m. ET Tuesday. Nonessential state employees are told not to go to work.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
— More than 490,000 lost power in Washington and its suburbs, according to CNN affiliate WJLA.
— The city’s mass transit system, known as the Metro, will stay idle Tuesday.
— All Washington public schools will be closed Tuesday.
MAINE
— 87,790 homes and businesses are without electricity, according to Central Maine Power. Around 1,000 workers will begin repairing lines early Tuesday.
Thousands of flights grounded worldwide
MARYLAND
— Two people have died in Maryland because of Superstorm Sandy, according to an emergency management official. A falling tree hit a house, killing a man inside. A car accident blamed on the storm accounted for the other death.
— Raw sewage is leaking rapidly from a plant in Howard County, emergency management spokeswoman Karen Spicer said. About 2 millions of gallons of sewage per hour are pouring out of the Little Patuxent Water Reclamation Plant as a result of a power outage.
— Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. reported that nearly 215,000 customers had lost power, but that more than 58,000 of them already had power restored.
— A state of emergency remains in effect, according to Maryland’s Emergency Management Agency.
— Authorities lowered the speed limit to 45 mph on all interstates and U.S. routes “effective immediately and until further notice,” according to state police.
What to expect when Hurricane Sandy hits
MASSACHUSETTS
— State employees will be going to work Tuesday, according to the government’s website. But the state moved the start of the office day up to 10 a.m.
— The Bay State’s emergency agency warned residents of continuing dangerous winds into Tuesday, which could cause power outages, and reminded them that coastal flooding was expected overnight.
— Hoping to avoid the kind of criticism utilities received after last year’s Hurricane Irene and other storms, Gov. Deval Patrick said utilities plan to pair tree removal and power restoration crews, rather than having them work separately, so that work can be done more efficiently.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
— New Hampshire’s power suppliers reported there were 187,203 customers without electricity.
— Gov. John Lynch urged drivers to stay off the state’s roads.
The governor asked the National Guard to place 100 troops on active duty, with 100 more on standby.
NEW JERSEY
— Sandy has killed at least three in the Garden State, which also had the biggest loss of electricity.
— Two people in Morris County died Monday evening when a tree fell on their car, authorities said. A male of unknown age was also killed in Hawthorne when a tree fell on a house, according to Hawthorne Fire Chief Joseph Speranza.
— A dam or levee broke early Tuesday in the town of Moonachie, in Bergen County, said County Police Chief of Staff Jeanne Baratta. Rescues are under way in Moonachie, Little Ferry and Carlstadt, where 4 to five 5 of water has flooded streets. Thousands of people may be in need of rescue, she said. People are standing on their roofs.
— Sandy has left 2,132,543 customers without electricity.
— Several feet of water flooded parts of Atlantic City on Monday, and authorities worked to evacuate hundreds of people from West Atlantic City, where waters were “dangerously high,” said Linda Gilmore, a spokeswoman for Atlantic County.
— Wind blasted out the windows in a building where a U.S. senator lives Monday night. “I think it’s the worst we have seen here in my lifetime,” Sen. Bob Menendez of North Bergen, New Jersey, said of the damage in his state.
— Half the city of Hoboken is flooded, Mayor Dawn Zimmer said. The city of 50,000 has had to evacuate two of its fire stations.
— New Jersey Transit will remain suspended indefinitely. Flooding from Sandy also forced the closure of Newark Liberty International and Teterboro airports.
NEW YORK
— Sandy has killed five statewide, and a record-setting power outage in New York City darkened a large Manhattan hospital, triggering a patient evacuation.
— 670,000 customers are without power — 300,000 of them because of electrical lines knocked down by falling trees — and these numbers could rise, according to a power company spokesman.
“This will be the largest storm-related outage in our history,” said John Miksad, senior vice president at power company Con Edison, which serves 3.2 million customers in all five boroughs of New York City as well as Westchester County.
— Nearly a third of those affected lost power when a substation on the Lower East Side apparently blew up in a large flash. No one was hurt in the incident, Miksad said.
— According to a tweet posted by Gov. Mario Cuomo, 1,943,572 have lost electricity.
— New York University Langone Medical Center went dark late Monday. More than 200 patients were being evacuated after backup power failed, said Lisa Greiner, a spokeswoman for NYU Langone.
Among them were newborns from a neonatal care unit. Four of them were on respirators that shut down, and nurses used manual pumps to keep them breathing.
The hospital had more than 10 feet of water in its basement.
— More than 50 homes were “completely destroyed by fire” in the Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens, the New York Fire Department posted in a tweet. Nearly 200 firefighters had responded to the blaze.
— Water spilled into subway tunnels connecting Manhattan with Brooklyn and with Queens, said Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Aaron Donavan. The water will have to be pumped out, as it will not recede on its own.
The subway system remains closed entirely, as does MTA’s bus system.
Two roadway tunnels linking Manhattan to the two boroughs took on water, too, and seven MTA bridges are closed because of high winds.
— President Obama declared a disaster in New York state, freeing up federal funds for the counties of Bronx, Kings (Brooklyn), Nassau, New York, Richmond (Staten Island), Suffolk and Queens.
— Flooding also forced the closure of two major airports — John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia. The runway intersection at the latter was covered by water.
— A crane atop a luxury Manhattan skyscraper under construction partly collapsed Monday, leaving its arm precariously perched and hanging over West 57th Street.
As Sandy descends, tips from Katrina survivors
NORTH CAROLINA
— The captain of HMS Bounty, a tall ship used for classic adventure films, remains missing after Hurricane Sandy forced the crew to abandon ship about 90 miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Two helicopter crews saved 14 people stranded in the Atlantic Ocean on Monday. A deckhand missing from the ship was found dead, the Coast Guard said.
— 6,694 customers were without power.
— North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue has declared a state of emergency for 24 counties in the western part of her state because of snow.
PENNSYLVANIA
— Sandy claimed its first victims in Pennsylvania on Monday night.
An 8-year-old boy died Monday after being struck by a tree limb in Susquehanna County. He was pronounced dead at a residence in Franklin Township, according to state police.
62-year-old Gerald Witman of Oley was killed when he was struck by a falling tree, according to Pennsylvania State Police spokesman David Beohm.
RHODE ISLAND
— The smallest state in the union, with just over 1 million residents, reported 112,357 customers without electricity. The state gets its power supply from the National Grid. Outages were concentrated in the southern part of the state, affiliate WPRI reported.
— Few used public evacuation shelters. There is widespread road debris “but no casualties and relatively little alarm,” according to WPRI.
SOUTH CAROLINA
Heavy rains from the fringes of Sandy pelted much of South Carolina’s coast, from Charleston to Myrtle Beach.
VIRGINIA
— President Obama declared a state of emergency in Virginia late Monday, ordering federal assistance on top of state and local efforts. Gov. Bob McDonnell earlier in the day had asked for a federal emergency declaration, which would free up funding.
— Sandbags were piled up inside restaurants in the Old Town section of Alexandria along the banks of the Potomac River.
— All public schools in Fairfax County, which has a large school district in northern Virginia, will be closed Tuesday.
WEST VIRGINIA
— A woman was killed when her car collided with a cement truck after the storm dumped 5 inches of snow on the town of Davis, authorities said.
— West Virginia has declared a state of emergency as Sandy dumped heavy snow and rain in parts of the Appalachian Mountains.
Story via CNN.com
