Millions remained without power and entire communities up and down the coast were still flooded or cut off after one of the largest storms in US history battered the northeast, killing dozens of people and flooding lower Manhattan.
In New York the subway resumed limited service after the worst disaster in the system’s 108-year history, but the Big Apple was split in half, with much of the lower Manhattan financial district still flooded and off the grid.
The stock exchanges and John F. Kennedy, Newark Liberty and LaGuardia airports have re-opened, but more than six million homes and businesses, most of them in New York state and New Jersey, remained without power.
US media reports said 72 Americans had been confirmed dead across 15 storm-ravaged states, bringing Sandy’s overall toll to 144, including Canada and the Caribbean, where Haiti and Cuba were hit hard.
Large sections of New York, including the famed skyline of lower Manhattan, remained without electricity, and schools throughout the city were to remain shuttered for the rest of the week.
On Wednesday Obama comforted storm victims and vowed to help rebuild communities as he surveyed the damage in New Jersey, where a massive relief operation had swung into gear with tens of thousands of homes under water.
Setting the heated politics of the campaign aside, Obama was accompanied by the state’s Governor Chris Christie, a prominent Republican and supporter of White House hopeful Mitt Romney, who was also keeping the focus on the storm.
Obama and Christie clambered aboard the president’s Marine One helicopter to fly over New Jersey’s Atlantic coast – over houses tipped off their foundations, streets inundated with sand, and still-flooded neighbourhoods.
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