MTA Police watch as the last people are cleared out of Grand Central Station in New York October 28, 2012. Commuter rail and subway services have been shut down in preparation for Hurricane Sandy.
© AFP Timothy A. Clary
“If you are reluctant, think about your loved ones, think about the emergency responders who will be unable to reach you when you make the panicked phone call to be rescued, think about the rescue/recovery teams who will rescue you if you are injured or recover your remains if you do not survive.”
Fearful residents from Washington to New York to Boston queued for emergency provisions like bottled water and batteries in long lines that stretched out the doors of supermarkets.
After laying waste to parts of the Caribbean, where it claimed 66 lives, most of them in Cuba and Haiti, Hurricane Sandy was predicted to come crashing ashore in New Jersey and Delaware late Monday or early Tuesday.
Packing hurricane force winds upwards of 75 miles per hour (120 kilometers per hour), the storm was about 470 miles (760 kilometers) south southeast of New York early Monday and beginning to turn west, the National Hurricane Center said.
Winds stretched more than 520 miles (835 kilometers) from its eye, meaning everywhere from South Carolina to southern Canada was due to be affected.
“The system is so large that I would say millions of people are at least in areas that have some chance of experiencing either flash flooding or river flooding,” National Hurricane Center director Rick Knabb warned.
Forecasters cautioned that the massive storm was far larger and more dangerous than last year’s devastating Hurricane Irene that claimed 47 lives and caused an estimated $15 billion in damage.
Current projections show Sandy barreling north on a collision course with two other weather systems that would send it hooking into the Delaware or New Jersey coast as one of the worst storms on record.
Weather experts say the collision could create a super-charged storm bringing floods, high winds and even heavy snow across a swath of eastern states and as far inland as Ohio.
Governors have declared states of emergency in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and the US capital Washington.
Obama signed emergency declarations to free up federal disaster funds for New York state, Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington, New Jersey and Connecticut.
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