Hurricane Sandy: ‘Don’t Be Stupid, Get Out And Go To Higher, Safer Ground,’ Officials Said
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Stockbyte/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Tens of thousands of people in coastal areas have been ordered to evacuate their homes before Hurricane Sandy pounds the eastern third of the United States with life-threatening storm surges, forceful winds and rainfall that could cripple transportation and leave millions without power.
“Don’t be stupid. Get out and go to higher, safer ground,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said today. “Let’s get to work on this. We know how to do this. We’ve been through this before.”
States of emergency were declared from North Carolina to Connecticut. Coastal communities in Delaware were ordered to evacuate by 8 p.m. tonight.
The storm is expected to bring potentially life-threatening storm surges on the coast ranging from several feet to potentially as high as 11-feet in the Long Island Sound area of New York, said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center.
“The size of the storm is going to carve a pretty large swath of bad weather,” Knabb said. “This is not just a coastal event.”
Sandy will meet up with a cold front coming from the northwest and a high pressure system from Greenland, fueling it with enough energy to make it more powerful than the “Perfect Storm,” some meteorologists say.
The first rainfall from the megastorm is expected Sunday and forecasters warn it could bring inland flooding around Maryland and Pennsylvania and up to two feet of snow in West Virginia.
Sandy remained at a Category 1 strength today, with 75 mph winds being measured. The storm was moving northeast at 10 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
FEMA administrator Craig Fugate urged people in Sandy’s path to take the storm seriously and to heed any evacuation orders.
“The time for preparing and talking is about over. People need to be acting now,” Fugate said.
New York City transit officials are preparing for a shutdown of the subway system, the largest rapid transit system in the world, at 7 p.m. tonight. Sandy can potentially create a storm surge capable of overtopping the Manhattan flood walls, filling the subway tunnels with water.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the evacuation of areas of lower Manhattan and the Rockaways.
“If you don’t evacuate, you are not only endangering your life, you are also endangering the lives of the first responders who are going in to rescue you,” Bloomberg said at a news conference. “… This is a serious and dangerous storm.”
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