In downtown Manhattan, rescue
workers floated bright orange rafts on flooded streets, while police
officers with loudspeakers told people to go home.
"Now it's really turning into
something," said Brian Damianakes, taking shelter in a bank vestibule
and watching a trash can blow down the street in Battery Park.
A construction crane atop a
luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and
dangled precariously. Residents in surrounding buildings were ordered to
move to lower floors and the streets below were cleared, but there were
no immediate reports of injuries.
The facade of a four-storey
Manhattan building in the Chelsea neighbourhood crumbled and collapsed
suddenly, leaving the lights, couches, cabinets and desks inside visible
from the street. No one was hurt, although some of the falling debris
hit a car.
The major American stock
exchanges closed for the day, the first unplanned shutdown since the
Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Wall Street expected to remain closed on
Tuesday. The United Nations cancelled all meetings at its New York
headquarters.
Not only was the New York subway
shut down, but the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was
closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn
Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and
several other spans were closed because of high winds.
Authorities had warned that New
York City and Long Island could get the worst of the storm surge: a
three-metre onslaught of seawater that could swamp Lower Manhattan,
flood the subways and damage the underground network of electrical and
communications lines that are vital to the nation's financial capital.
"Leave immediately. Conditions
are deteriorating very rapidly, and the window for you getting out
safely is closing," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told those in
low-lying areas earlier in the day.
Defiant New Yorkers jogged,
pushed strollers and took snapshots of churning New York Harbor during
the day Monday, trying to salvage normal routines.
Without most stores and museums
open, tourists were left to snap photos of the World Trade Center site,
Wall Street and Times Square in largely deserted streets.
Belgian tourist Gerd Van don
Mooter-Dedecker, 56, wandered in to Trinity Church after learning that a
planned shopping spree with her husband Monday wouldn't happen. "We
brought empty suitcases so we could fill them up," she said.
As rain from the leading edges
began to fall over the Northeast on Sunday, hundreds of thousands of
people from Maryland to Connecticut were ordered to leave low-lying
coastal areas, including 375,000 in lower Manhattan and other parts of
New York City, 50,000 in Delaware and 30,000 in Atlantic City, New
Jersey.
Obama declared emergencies in
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, authorizing federal relief work to begin well ahead of
time. He promised the government would "respond big and respond fast"
after the storm hits.
Off North Carolina, a replica of
the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962
Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" went down in the storm, and
14 crew members were rescued by helicopter from rubber lifeboats bobbing
in 5.5-metre seas. Another crew member was found hours later and was
hospitalized in critical condition. The captain was still missing.
0 comments:
Post a Comment