Potent nor’easter kills at least 9 — scores lose power
By Philip Marcelo and Dave Collins
BOSTON — Coastal communities in the Northeast experienced damaging flooding and the lingering effects of powerful, gusting winds Saturday even as residents tried to shake off a nor’easter that had already inundated roads and basements, snapped trees and knocked out power to scores of homes and businesses from Virginia to Maine.
By Saturday evening, power failures on the East Coast had dipped by about 500,000 from a peak of 2 million.
All along Massachusetts’ heavily populated coast that includes Boston and Cape Cod, Saturday’s midday high tide saw roaring, white-capped waves crashing onto shorelines, the churning surf battering beachfront homes, dousing docks and harbors and taking huge chunks out of the eroding coastline.
“We’ve been here a long time, and we’ve never seen it as bad as this,” Alex Barmashi said as he took in the fearsome spectacle along Cape Cod Bay in Bourne.
Up the coast in Scituate, Becky Smith watched as ocean waters started to fill up a nearby marina’s parking lot from her vantage point at the Barker Tavern, a restaurant overlooking the harbor.
“It looks like a war zone,” she said, describing the scene in the coastal town near Boston where powerful waves dumped sand and rubble on roads and winds uprooted huge trees. “It’s a lot of debris, big rocks and pieces of wood littering the streets.”
Residents in other coastal areas, meanwhile, bailed out basements and surveyed the damage while waiting for power to be restored, a process that utilities warned could take days.
Authorities on Saturday reported four more deaths from the storm, bringing the total to at least nine in the Northeast. A 25-year-old man in Connecticut, a 57-year-old Pennsylvania man and a 37-year-old Massachusetts man were killed when trees fell on their vehicles Friday. A 41-year-old man in Andover, N.J., was killed by downed power lines.
The other five people killed included two children. A man and a 6-year-old boy were killed in different parts of Virginia, while an 11-year-old boy in New York state and a man in Rhode Island, both died. A 77-year-old woman died after being struck by a branch outside her home near Baltimore.
The storm swept in Friday and prompted more than 2,800 flight cancellations, mostly in the Northeast. By Saturday, airports from Washington, D.C. to Boston were still reporting dozens of delays and cancellations.