Hurricane Sandy leaves death, damp and darkness in wake!

NEW YORK (AP) — As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the East Coast awoke Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation’s largest city unusually vacant and dark.

New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart in Lower Manhattan shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the city and Long Island.

The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states, cut power to more than 7.4 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio, caused scares at two nuclear power plants and stopped the presidential campaign cold.

The massive storm reached well into the Midwest: Chicago officials warned residents to stay away from the Lake Michigan shore as the city prepares for winds of up to 60 mph and waves exceeding 24 feet well into Wednesday.

“This will be one for the record books,” said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Consolidated Edison, which had more than 670,000 customers without power in and around New York City.

An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater — 3 feet above the previous record — gushed into Gotham, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street, and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety. Skyscrapers swayed and creaked in winds that partially toppled a crane 74 stories above Midtown.

Right before dawn, a handful of taxis were out on the streets, though there was an abundance of emergency and police vehicles.

Remnants of the former Category 1 hurricane were forecast to head across Pennsylvania before taking another sharp turn into western New York by Wednesday morning. Although weakening as it goes, the massive storm — which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada — will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, said Daniel Brown, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

As Hurricane Sandy closed in on the Northeast, it converged with a cold-weather system that turned it into a monstrous hybrid of rain and high wind — and even snow in West Virginia and other mountainous areas inland.

Just before it made landfall at 8 p.m. near Atlantic City, N.J., forecasters stripped Sandy of hurricane status — but the distinction was purely technical, based on its shape and internal temperature. It still packed hurricane-force wind, and forecasters were careful to say it was still dangerous to the tens of millions in its path.

While the hurricane’s 90 mph winds registered as only a Category 1 on a scale of five, it packed “astoundingly low” barometric pressure, giving it terrific energy to push water inland, said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of meteorology at MIT.

Officials blamed at least 16 deaths on the converging storms — five in New York, three each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, two in Connecticut, and one each in Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia. Three of the victims were children, one just 8 years old.

Sandy, which killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Eastern Seaboard, began to hook left at midday Monday toward the New Jersey coast. Even before it made landfall, crashing waves had claimed an old, 50-foot piece of Atlantic City’s world-famous Boardwalk.

“We are looking at the highest storm surges ever recorded” in the Northeast, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for Weather Underground, a private forecasting service.

Sitting on the dangerous northeast wall of the storm, the New York metropolitan area got the worst of it.

An explosion at a ConEdison substation knocked out power to about 310,000 customers in Manhattan, said Miksad.

“We see a pop. The whole sky lights up,” said Dani Hart, 30, who was watching the storm from the roof of her building in the Navy Yards.

“It sounded like the Fourth of July,” Stephen Weisbrot said from his 10th-floor apartment.

New York University’s Tisch Hospital was forced to evacuate 200 patients after its backup generator failed. NYU Medical Dean Robert Grossman said patients — among them 20 babies from neonatal intensive care that were on battery-powered respirators — had to be carried down staircases and to dozens of waiting ambulances.

Not only was the 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 due to high winds.

A construction crane atop a $1.5 billion luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and dangled precariously. Thousands of people were ordered to leave several nearby buildings as a precaution, including 900 guests at the ultramodern Le Parker Meridien hotel.

Alice Goldberg, 15, a tourist from Paris, was watching television in the hotel — whose slogan is “Uptown, Not Uptight” — when a voice came over the loudspeaker and told everyone to leave.

“They said to take only what we needed, and leave the rest, because we’ll come back in two or three days,” she said as she and hundreds of others gathered in the luggage-strewn marble lobby. “I hope so.”

Trading at the New York Stock Exchange was canceled again Tuesday — the first time the exchange suspended operations for two consecutive days due to weather since an 1888 blizzard struck the city.

Fire destroyed at least 50 homes Monday night in a flooded neighborhood in the Breezy Point section of the borough of Queens, where the Rockaway peninsula juts into the Atlantic Ocean. Firefighters told WABC-TV that they had to use a boat to rescue residents because the water was chest high on the street. About 25 people were trapped in one home, with two injuries reported.

Airlines canceled around 12,500 flights because of the storm, a number that was expected to grow.

Off North Carolina, not far from an area known as “the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” sank when her diesel engine and bilge pumps failed. Coast Guard helicopters plucked 14 crew members from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas.

A 15th crew member who was found unresponsive several hours after the others was later pronounced dead. The Bounty’s captain was still missing.

One of the units at Indian Point, a nuclear power plant about 45 miles north of New York City, was shut down around 10:45 p.m. Monday because of external electrical grid issues, said Entergy Corp., which operates the plant. The company said there was no risk to employees or the public.

And officials declared an “unusual event” at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey Township, N.J., the nation’s oldest, when waters surged to 6 feet above sea level during the evening. Within two hours, the situation at the reactor — which was offline for regular maintenance — was upgraded to an alert, the second-lowest in a four-tiered warning system. Oyster Creek provides 9 percent of the state’s electricity.

In Baltimore, fire officials said four unoccupied rowhouses collapsed in the storm, sending debris into the street but causing no injuries. Meanwhile, a blizzard in far western Maryland caused a pileup of tractor-trailers that blocked the westbound lanes of Interstate 68 on slippery Big Savage Mountain near the town of Finzel.

“It’s like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs up here,” said Bill Wiltson, a Maryland State Police dispatcher.

Hundreds of miles from the storm’s center, gusts topping 60 mph prompted officials to close the port of Portland, Maine, and scaring away several cruise ships. A state of emergency in New Hampshire prompted Vice President Joe Biden to cancel a rally in Keene and Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, to call off her bus tour through the Granite State.

About 360,000 people in 30 Connecticut towns were urged to leave their homes under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders. Christi McEldowney was among those who fled to a Fairfield shelter. She and other families brought tents for their children to play in.

“There’s something about this storm,” she said. “I feel it deep inside.”

Despite dire warnings and evacuation orders that began Saturday, many stayed put.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — whose own family had to move to the executive mansion after his home in Mendham, far from the storm’s center, lost power — criticized the mayor of Atlantic City for opening shelters there instead of forcing people out.

Eugenia Buono, 77, and her neighbor, Elaine DiCandio, 76, were among several dozen people who took shelter at South Kingstown High School in Narragansett, R.I. They live on Harbor Island, which is connected to the mainland by a causeway.

“I’m not an idiot,” said Buono, who survived hurricanes Carol in 1954 and Bob in 1991. “People are very foolish if they don’t leave.”

New York prepares for Hurricane Sandy’s approach !

Weather forecasters warned on Sunday that Hurricane Sandy will affect a large area of the U.S. east coast, but said it was too early to pinpoint where the storm, which has the potential to be the biggest ever to hit the mainland, would make landfall.

Government officials in several states in Sandy’s path faced tough decisions on emergency plans, including mandatory evacuations in vulnerable coastal areas, and residents scrambled to buy supplies before the storm arrives on Monday night.

On its current projected track, Sandy is most likely to make U.S. landfall between Delaware and the New York/New Jersey area, forecasters said. However, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said it could not yet predict the precise point.

“It is still too soon to focus on the exact track … both because of forecast uncertainty and because the impacts are going to cover such a large area away from the center,” the NHC said in an advisory.

While Sandy’s winds were not overwhelming for a hurricane, its width was what made it exceptional. Hurricane force winds extended 105 miles (165 km) from its center while its lesser tropical storm-force winds reached across 700 miles (1,125 km).

Sandy could have a brutal impact on major cities in the target zone. In New York, city officials discussed whether to shut the subway system on Sunday in advance of the storm, which could bring the country’s financial nerve center to a standstill.

The storm could cause the worst flooding Connecticut has seen in more than 70 years, said the state’s governor, Dannel P. Malloy.

Sandy was located about 260 miles (420 km) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with top sustained winds of 75 miles (120 km) per hour early Sunday, the NHC said.

The storm was moving over the Atlantic parallel to the U.S. coast at 13 mph (20 km/h), but was forecast to make a tight westerly turn toward the U.S. coast on Sunday night.

Tropical storm conditions were spreading across the coast of North Carolina on Sunday morning and gale force winds are forecast to begin affecting the New York area and southern New England by Monday morning, the NHC added.

Record breaker

Sandy could be the largest storm to hit the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website.

“The size of this alone, affecting a heavily populated area, is going to be history making,” said Jeff Masters, a hurricane specialist who writes a blog posted on the Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com).

Sandy could hit Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, one of the most densely populated regions of the country and home to tens of millions of people.

Forecasters said Sandy was a rare, hybrid “super storm” created by an Arctic jet stream wrapping itself around a tropical storm, possibly causing up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain in some areas, as well as heavy snowfall inland.

Sandy killed at least 66 people as it made its way through the Caribbean islands, including 51 in Haiti, mostly from flash flooding and mudslides, according to authorities.

The approaching storm forced a change of plans for both presidential candidates ahead of the Nov. 6 election. The White House said President Obama canceled a campaign appearance in Virginia on Monday and another stop in Colorado on Tuesday, and will instead monitor the storm from Washington.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney rescheduled campaign events planned for Virginia on Sunday and was flying to Ohio instead.

All along the U.S. coast worried residents packed stores, buying generators, candles, food and other supplies in anticipation of power outages. Some local governments announced schools would be closed on Monday and Tuesday.

“They’re freaking out,” said Joe Dautel, a clerk at a hardware store in Glenside, Pennsylvania. “I’m selling people four, five, six packs of batteries – when I had them.”

Americans mark 11th anniversary of 9/11 attacks.

As the world prepares to mark the anniversary of the the 9/11 attacks, the New York skyline has been lit up with twin lights, filling the hole left by the World Trade Center.

The bright beams shooting up into the sky are turned on every September 11, and today’s 11th anniversary is no different.

Memorial services are set to take place at Ground Zero and hundreds of other venues around the globe.

Memory: The Manhattan skyline has been lit up with tributes to the victims of the September 11 attacks

Tribute: Every year beams of light are shot into the sky to commemmorate the anniversary of the terror attacks

Viewpoint: Japanese flautist Toshi Bota is photographed on the shore of Brooklyn looking over to downtown Manhattan

Light: A ground view of the Tribute in Light on the evening of September 10, ahead of the 11th anniversary

One tribute to the victims comes at Highland Memorial Park in Ocala, Florida, where 2,741 American flags – one for each of the attacks’ victims – have been planted in a moving act of remembrance.

On Monday, Leon Panetta attended a ceremony at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The Secretary of Defense called the site ‘the final resting place of American patriots’, and said he was there ‘to extend our nation’s deepest gratitude to the heroes of Flight 93’.

Grief: A single flower inserted into one of the names on the 9/11 National Memorial located at Ground Zero

Contemplation: 10-year-old Stella Towers, from Sydney in Australia, on a visit to the memorial on September 10

Display: Another floral tribute to the victims of the attacks set up at the memorial in downtown Manhattan

Visit: Leon Panetta was in Shankville, Pennsylvania on Monday paying tribute to those who died on Flight 93

Ceremony: The Secretary of Defense laid a wreath at the memorial near to where the flight crashed 11 years ago

Heroes: Candles have been set up at the Shanksville site to honour the 40 passengers who overpowered their terrorist hijackers

For the first time, the memorial ceremony at the 9/11 National Memorial in Manhattan will not feature any politicians this year, in an attempt to focus it on the private grief of survivors and victims’ relatives.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are expected to limit their campaigning, and to cancel negative advertising for the day.

The President has been briefed by top national security aides on what steps the government was taking to reduce the possibility of reprisal attacks on the 9/11 anniversary.

Flags: A lawn at Georgia Tech was covered in Stars and Stripes to commemorate the 9/11 victims

Field: A visitor at Victor Valley College in Victorville, California sits among the tribute there

Put out more flags: Military cadet Ted Sanchez, 16, lays out the flag display at Highland Memorial Park in Ocala, Florida

The White House said on Monday that Mr Obama and his advisers discussed specific measures the administration was taking to prevent related attacks.

They also discussed steps that were being taken to protect Americans abroad and U.S. forces serving in combat zones.

The President has instructed government agencies to do everything possible to protect the American people both at home and abroad.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 killed nearly 3,000 people and led to long-running U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Moving: 7th-grader Salvatore Giudice, from Florida, drew this memorial picture for the first responders who died in the September 11 attacks

Rebuilding: Four World Trade Center and One World Trade Center are close to completion, filling in the Manhattan skyline once more

Horror: Nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

 

 

 

‘Flying People’ Over New York city Stuns Passers !

Ads for 1978’s “Superman: The Movie” proclaimed “You’ll believe a man can fly.”  This past weekend, a very different kind of promotion for a new superhero film actually did convince some New Yorkers that human beings had taken to the skies.

What looked to be three people were spotted flying around the skies of lower Manhattan last Friday, causing a lot of double-takes and dropped jaws from onlookers.  But while it appeared to be a sight straight out of a comic book, it was actually a clever bit of viral marketing for this week’s upcoming film “Chronicle.”  Those aren’t people in the air, but some very intricately designed radio-controlled airplanes.  Watch the video of their flight, and keep reading to learn how it was done.

The movie tells the story of three high school students who discover they have superpowers, including the ability to fly.  To promote it, the studio called on Thinkmodo, a company that specializes in creating viral sensations.  They first made a splash with a video that seemed to show a man using an invention to hack into the video screens in Times Square.  It was later revealed to be a tie-in for the Bradley Cooper movie “Limitless,” which went on to be a surprise hit.  For “Chronicle,” though, the team had a different direction in mind.

James Percelay said that he and his partner Michael Krivicka were approached by 20th Century Fox, the studio behind “Chronicle,” and they hatched a plan to do a live event they would also film for a viral video.  Percelay said they received approval for the project just three weeks ago.  They employed model airplane builders in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and New York to build the three featured planes and two back-ups.

Percelay said, “The planes are highly sophisticated dacron/carbon fiber, battery-powered, radio-controlled units,” each with over 200 parts.  Percelay described the individual pieces as being “light and delicate as potato chips.”  Their “flying people” are six feet tall, but they weigh only four pounds.  The aircraft were all built in a week, half the time it would normally take to construct them.

Percelay wouldn’t reveal exactly who was piloting the planes in the video, only to say “[They] are expert AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics) members with amazing skills.”  They practiced flying for two days in Long Island before taking them out for a spin in New York.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the three people-planes made six trips over the Hudson River, each lasting only five minutes due to the short lives of their batteries.  One flyer did take a tumble into the river and had to be fished out by the NYC Harbor Patrol.

Unlike the “Limitless” video, where the promotional aspect was hidden until the viral element has spread across the Internet, the “Chronicle” stunt actually shows how it was done.  Percelay said the Thinkmodo team felt “the behind-the-scenes aspect of this video was even cooler than trying to create a hoax.”  In an age when we assume everything we see has been digitally manipulated in one way or another, it is especially impressive to watch real aircraft being piloted to such an amazing effect.

Percelay said that the spectators in New York — notoriously a hard-to-impress bunch — were uniformly astounded by the flying people.  He said, “We loved that nobody felt threatened by them since their movements were so life-like and graceful… A number of people said it looked like an ‘aerial ballet.'”

Watch The Trailer :