NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Reuters) – The giant storm Sandy wreaked
havoc on the New York City subway system, flooding tunnels,
garages and rail yards and threatening to paralyze the nation’s
largest mass-transit system for days.
“The New York City subway system is 108 years old, but it
has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced
last night,” Joseph Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan
Transit Authority, said in a statement early on Tuesday.
All seven subway tunnels running under the East River from
Manhattan to Queens and Brooklyn took in water, and any
resulting saltwater damage to the system’s electrical components
will have to be cleaned – in some cases off-site – before the
system can be restored, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan
Transit Authority said on Tuesday.
At dawn on Tuesday, emergency crews were assessing the
damage to tunnels and elevated tracks. Restoring the system is
likely to be a gradual process, MTA spokeswoman Deirdre Parker
said.
“It’s really hard to say which areas will come back first,”
said Parker, adding it will likely be a combination of limited
subway and bus service. “It will come back gradually.”
About 5.3 million people on average use the city’s subway
system on weekdays.
The MTA’s Metro North Railroad lost power on its suburban
Hudson and New Haven lines, while there was flooding in an East
River tunnel used by the Long Island Rail Road, the agency said.
The city closed down subway, bus and commuter train systems
on Sunday night – a full day before Sandy, one of the biggest
storms to ever hit the United States, made landfall on Monday
night in neighboring New Jersey.
Though not a hurricane, Sandy was especially imposing
because of its wide-ranging winds. The storm brought a record
storm surge of almost 14 feet (4.2 meters) to downtown
Manhattan, well above the previous record of 10 feet (3 meters)
during Hurricane Donna in 1960, the National Weather Service
said.
(Reporting By Edith Honan; Editing by Eric Beech)
