People in the northeastern U.S. battered by superstorm Sandy are taking the first cautious steps to reclaim routines upended by the monster storm, even as rescuers comb neighborhoods strewn with debris and scarred by floods and fire.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood on the storied trading floor on Wednesday morning and rang the opening bell —marking the resumption of trading after its two-day shutdown.
And while two airports also reopened, it became clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks that link them together could take considerably longer.
In New York, rush-hour traffic appeared thicker than as people started to return to work in a highly populated city without functioning subways. Cars were bumper to bumper on several major highways, as New York City buses returned to the streets with partial service.
"We will get through the days ahead by doing what we always do in tough times — by standing together, shoulder to shoulder, ready to help a neighbour, comfort a stranger and get the city we love back on its feet," Bloomberg said on Tuesday.
The superstorm left at least 55 people in the northeastern U.S. dead, and many homes flooded and without power, before moving across Pennsylvania on a predicted path toward New York state and Canada.
The scale of the recovery challenge was clear across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where National Guard troops arrived in the heavily flooded city of Hoboken to help evacuate thousands still stuck in their homes. And new problems arose when firefighters were unable to reach blazes rekindled by natural gas leaks in the heavily hit shore town of Mantoloking.
On the Brooklyn Bridge, closed earlier because of high winds, joggers and bikers made their way across the span before sunrise. One cyclist carried a flashlight. Car traffic on the bridge was busy, and slowed as it neared Manhattan.
On Wednesday morning in New York City, both schools and parks remained closed, but air traffic began to return to some of the region's airports in limited capacity, the CBC's David Common reported.
"[New York] is trying to get back to normal in many ways at this point," he said. "But that's going to take a long time. The subway tunnels are still flooded. We could have very partial, very limited service coming back later today. But until it's fully back, we really can't get the bloodstream of this city going again."
At the height of the disaster, more than 8.2 million lost electricity — some as far away as Michigan. Nearly a quarter of those without power were in New York, where lower Manhattan's usually bright lights remained dark for a second night.
Damage is 'heartbreaking'
Amid the despair, talk of recovery was already beginning.
"It's heartbreaking after being here 37 years," Barry Prezioso of Point Pleasant, N.J., said as he returned to his house in the beachfront community to survey the damage. "You see your home demolished like this, it's tough. But nobody got hurt and the upstairs is still livable, so we can still live upstairs and clean this out. I'm sure there's people that had worse. I feel kind of lucky."
Much of the initial recovery efforts focused on New York City, the region's economic heart. Bloomberg said it could take four or five days before the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, is running again.
All 10 of the tunnels that carry commuters under the East River were flooded. But high water prevented inspectors from immediately assessing damage to key equipment, raising the possibility that the nation's largest city could endure an extended shutdown of the system that 5 million people count on to get to work and school each day.
The chairman of the state agency that runs the subway, Joseph Lhota, said service might have to resume piecemeal, and experts said the cost of the repairs could be staggering.
Power company Consolidated Edison said it would be four days before the last of the 337,000 customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who lost power have electricity again and it could take a week to restore outages in the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County. Floodwater led to explosions that disabled a power substation Monday night, contributing to the outages.
Surveying the widespread damage, it was clear much of the recovery and rebuilding will take far longer.
When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stopped in Belmar, N.J., during a tour of the devastation, one woman wept openly and 42-year-old Walter Patrickis told him, "Governor, I lost everything."
Christie, who called the shore damage "unthinkable," said a full recovery would take months, at least, and it would likely be a week or more before power is restored to everyone who lost it.
"Now we've got a big task ahead of us that we have to do together. This is the kind of thing New Jerseyans are built for," he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama was scheduled to visit Atlantic City and other parts of New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, to see some of the worst damage.
By sundown Tuesday, however, announcements from officials and scenes on the streets signaled that New York and nearby towns were edging toward a semblance of routine.
Traders and staff report to work at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Mayor Michael Bloomberg rang the opening bell at the storied trading floor on Wednesday, marking the reopening of the exchage after superstorm Sandy forced it to close for two days. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) First came the reopening of highways in Connecticut and bridges across the Hudson and East rivers, although the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan, and the Holland Tunnel, between New York and New Jersey, remained closed.
A limited number of the white and blue buses that crisscross New York's grid returned Tuesday evening to Broadway and other thoroughfares on a reduced schedule — but free of charge. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he hoped there would be full service by Wednesday. Still, school was cancelled for a third straight day Wednesday in the city, where many students rely on buses and subways to reach classrooms.
In one bit of good news, officials announced that John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark International Airport in New Jersey would reopen at 7 a.m. Wednesday with limited service. New York's LaGuardia Airport remains closed.
Trains resume, but many tunnels waterlogged
Amtrak also laid out plans to resume some runs in the Northeast on Wednesday, with modified service between Newark, N.J., and points south. That includes restoring Virginia service to Lynchburg, Richmond and Newport News, Keystone trains in Pennsylvania, and Downeaster service between Boston and Portland, Maine.
But flooding continues to prevent service to and from New York's Penn Station. Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers is unprecedented. There will be no Northeast Regional service between New York and Boston and no Acela Express service for the entire length of the Northeast Corridor. No date has been set for when it might resume.
But even with the return of some transportation and plans to reopen schools and businesses, the damage and pain inflicted by Sandy continued to unfold, confirming the challenge posed by rebuilding.
In New Jersey, amusement rides that once crowned a pier in Seaside Heights were dumped into the ocean, some homes were smashed, and others were partially buried in sand.
Farther north in Hoboken, across the Hudson from Manhattan, New Jersey National Guard troops arrived Tuesday night with high-wheeled vehicles to reach thousands of flood victims stuck in their homes. They arrived to find a town with live wires dangling in the floodwaters that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said were rapidly mixing with sewage. At nightfall, the city turned almost completely dark.
About 2.1 million homes and businesses remained without power across the state late Tuesday. When Tropical Storm Irene struck last year, it took more than a week to restore power everywhere. The state's largest utility, PSE&G, said it was trying to dry out substations it had to shut down.
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