Storm-battered
East Coasters take first steps toward reclaiming routines.
NEW YORK — People along the battered U.S. East Coast took the first cautious steps to reclaim their daily routines Wednesday, even as about 20,000 people remained trapped at home in a single New Jersey city and the search for victims continued. The superstorm’s death toll rose to at least 64.
The New York Stock Exchange came back to life, and two major New York airports reopened to begin the long process of moving stranded travellers around the world.
U.S. President Barack Obama landed in New Jersey, which was hardest hit by Monday’s hurricane-driven storm, and took a helicopter tour of the devastation with Gov. Chris Christie. “We’re going to be here for the long haul,” Obama told people at one emergency shelter.
“If your homes aren’t too badly damaged, we can hopefully get you back in,” Obama told residents at the evacuation shelter in the town of Brigantine. “The entire country’s been watching. Everyone knows how hard Jersey has been hit.
“We’re not going to tolerate any red tape. We’re not going to tolerate any burveaucracy,” he said. The president temporarily suspended campaigning with the election looming only six days ahead.
At the stock exchange, running on generator power, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a thumbs-up and rang the opening bell to whoops from traders. Trading resumed after the first two-day weather shutdown since a blizzard in 1888.
Building damage forced the evacuation Wednesday of Bellevue Hospital, a major medical centre best known for its psychiatric services and emergency care.
Medical professionals were moving 500 patients to other hospitals. Evacuations of four other hospitals and 17 chronic care facilities had already been ordered.
An evacuation order for 375,000 New Yorkers in lowlying areas remained in effect, and with subways down the mayor ordered cars must have three or more passengers to enter Manhattan.
Commuters were packed into buses in an attempt to pick up the slack of the city’s subway system. Limited service is expected to resume Thursday after the subway suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history.
New York’s Kennedy and Newark Liberty airports reopened with limited service. New York’s La Guardia Air- port, where water covered parts of runways, remained closed, though some airlines said they planned to restart flights there Thursday. It was clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks could take considerably longer. There were still only hints of the economic impact of the storm.
Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted it would cause $20 billion in damage and $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15 billion.
About six million homes and businesses were still without power, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Electricity was out as far west as Wisconsin and as far south as the Carolinas.
As New York crept toward a semi-normal business day, morning rush-hour traffic was heavy as buses returned to the streets and bridges linking Manhattan to the rest of the world were open.
Tourism returned, but the city’s vast and aging infrastructure remained a huge challenge.
Power company Consolidated Edison said it could be the weekend before power is restored to Manhattan and Brooklyn, perhaps longer for other New York boroughs and the New York suburbs.
Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers was unprecedented, but it said it planned to restore some service Friday to and from New York City — its busiest corridor — and would give details Thursday.
In Connecticut, some residents of Fairfield returned home in kayaks and canoes to inspect widespread damage.
“The uncertainty is the worst,” said Jessica Levitt, who was told it could be a week before she can enter her house. “Even if we had damage, you just want to be able to do something. We can’t even get started.”
In New York, residents of the flooded beach neighbourhood of Breezy Point returned home to find fire had taken everything the water had not. A huge blaze destroyed perhaps 100 homes in the closeknit community, where many had stayed behind despite orders to evacuate.