Americas

Home page

Americas

Hurricane Sandy kills 16 in US and Canada

30 October 2012 09:55 (UTC +04:00)

At least 16 U.S. deaths were blamed on the storm, which brought the presidential campaign to a halt a week before Election Day, APA reports quoting Associated Press.

For New York City at least, Sandy was not the dayslong onslaught many had feared, and the wind and rain that sent water sloshing into Manhattan from three sides began dying down within hours.

Still, the power was out for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and an estimated 6.2 million people altogether across the East. The full extent of the storm’s damage across the region was unclear, and unlikely to be known until daybreak.

Heavy rain and further flooding remain major threats for the next couple of days as the storm makes its way into Pennsylvania and up into New York State. The center of the storm was just outside Philadelphia near midnight, and its winds were down to 75 mph, just barely hurricane strength. It smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor â€” Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston â€” with stinging rain and gusts of more than 85 mph.