The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 80 mph sustained winds killed at l

A row of houses family travel stands in floodwaters at Grassy Sound in North Wildwood, N.J., as Hurricane Sandy pounds the East Coast Monday family travel Oct. 29, 2012. The powerful storm made the westward lurch and took dead aim at New Jersey and Delaware on Monday, washing away part of the Atlantic City boardwalk, putting the presidential campaign on hold and threatening to cripple Wall Street and the New York subway system with an epic surge of seawater. Credit: AP
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 family travel 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 17 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.
A levee broke in northern New Jersey and flooded the town of Moonachie, forcing authorities to evacuate as many as 1,000 people early Tuesday, Bergen County official Jeanne Baratta told The Record newspaper. Some people in a trailer park had to climb the roofs of their trailers to await rescue, she said.
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, family travel which had more than 670,000 customers without power in and around New York City.
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ OCTOBER 29: A flooded street is seen at nightfall during family travel rains from Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. family travel Sandy made landfall over Southern New Jersey today. Credit: Getty Images
An unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater family travel 3 feet above the previous record gushed into Gotham, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers family travel Wall Street, and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety. family travel Skyscrapers swayed and creaked in winds that partially family travel toppled a crane 74 stories above Midtown.
Remnants of the former family travel Category 1 hurricane were forecast to head across Pennsylvania before taking another sharp turn into western New York by Wednesday family travel morning. Although weakening family travel as it goes, the massive storm which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, family travel said Daniel family travel Brown, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
AT SEA OCTOBER 29: In this handout image supplied by the US Coast Guard, The HMS Bounty, a 180-foot sailboat, is submerged in the Atlantic Ocean during family travel Hurricane Sandy approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, North Carolina, on October 29, 2012. Of the 16-person crew, the Coast Guard rescued 14, recovered a woman who was later pronounced dead and are searching for the captain. The HMS Bounty was built for the 1962 film Mutiny On The Bounty and was also used in Pirates Of The Caribbean. family travel Hurricane Sandy, family travel which threatens 50 million people in the eastern third of the U.S., is expected to bring days of rain, high winds and possibly heavy snow. Credit: Getty Images
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, family travel 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, family travel 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, family travel 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.
NEW YORK, NY OCTOBER 29: Water rushes into the Carey Tunnel (previously the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel), caused by Hurricane Sandy, October 29, 2012, in the Financial District of New York, United States. Hurricane Sandy, which threatens 50 million people in the eastern third of the U.S., is expected to bring days of rain, high winds and possibly heavy snow. New York Governor family travel Andrew Cuomo announced the closure of all New York City will bus, subway and commuter rail service as of Sunday evening. Credit: Getty Images
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 family travel down staircases and to dozens of waiting ambulances.
Not only was the subway family travel 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, family travel the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed due to high winds.
NEW YORK, NY OCTOBER 29: Flood water is pumped out of a building during the landfall of Hurricane Sandy, on October 29, 2012, in the Financial District of New York, United States. Hurricane Sandy, which threatens 50 million people family travel in the eastern third of the U.S., is expected to bring days of rain, high winds and possibly heavy snow. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the closure of all New York City will bus, subway and commuter rail service as of Sunday evening. Credit: Getty Images
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.
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.
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.
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 family travel 14 crew members from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot seas.
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 family travel declared an unusual family travel event at the Oyster Creek nuclear family travel 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 family travel Creek provides 9 percent of the state s electricity.
In Baltimore, family travel fire officials said four unoccupied rowhouses collapsed in the storm, sending debris into the street but causing no injuries. Meanwhile, a blizzard family travel 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.
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 family travel 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.
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, family travel R.I. They live on Harbor Island, which is connected to the mainland by a causeway.
Hays reported from New York and Breed reported from Raleigh, N.C.; AP Science Writer Seth B