Welcome to cbs this morning. As daylight arrives on the west coast, much of the east coast is getting to see the full devastation of super storm sandy. The massive storm is blamed for at least 18 deaths at least 7. 5 million utility customers have lost power in 16 states and washington, d. C. It is estimated that sandy has cause edd 10 to 20 billion in damage, making it one of the most expensive storms in America American history. Financial markets are closed again because of the storm. Here in new york city, the subway system could be closed for days because of historic flooding. Our correspondents are on the ground across the east covering the impact of superstorm sandy. We begin our coverage in hardhit new york city. President obama has just declared a state of emergency in new york and new jersey. Jim axelrod is at battery park in manhattan, which was inundated with water. Jim, good morning. Reporter good morning, charlie. High tide has come here. At least in this part of battery park, the water is not threatening to come over the wall, which is at least one piece of good news in a city that is facing more than its share of trouble. Superstorm sandy made landfall late monday. A wet and windy nightmare. We knew that this was going to be a very dangerous storm and the storm has met our expectations. Reporter actually, sandy exceeded them. Around 9 00 pm the storm produced a record surge at battery park in manhattan, 14. 88 feet breaching the sea wall and flooding the area. Manhattans waterfront seemed to disappear as the surge rushed over the wall. Its the unknown. Its the storm of the century. Reporter roads and cars were quickly covered, ground zero was en engulfed and across the harbor in brooklyn, so much flooding at coney island that Emergency Responders couldnt reach the area. The corrosive sea water headed underground to new york citys subways and tunnels. Power was deliberately cut to 6,500 customers in manhattan. But thats not why the sky line went dark. This is. Explosion at a con edison plant. More than 250,000 people across the city lost power. New york universitys hospital was one of them. Doctors and patients were forced to leave late last night when backup generators there also failed. They are trying to move the stations as fast as possible. Hopefully, well be able to evacuate them in a number of hours. Reporter also evacuated, several buildings surrounding this luxury high rise in midtown manhattan. A crane collapsed and has been dangling over the city ever since since. Holy [ bleep ]. Reporter theyre still trying to inspect the damage and anticipate any additional problems. We are seeing a large number of fires caused by downed wires and electrical problems related to outages. Reporter one of the biggest problems started late last night in queens. According to the fire department, more than 50 homes have been destroyed. Con ed is the utility that provides power for the new york metropolitan area. Last night at its height it said 670,000 customers were out of power. Con ed Spokesman Says this is the single largest stormrelated outage in its history. Charlie, norah . Incredible. Jim axelrod, thank you. Sandy has caused incredible damage along the entire new jersey coast. Jeff glor is in Atlantic City. Good morning. Reporter norah, good morning to you. Sandy made lappedfall south of Atlantic City 15 hours ago. In the last hour or so the skies have finally started to clear. As sandy whipped ashore with its multistate strike power was cut to more than 7 million and floodwaters gushed into towns along the midatlantic. We had waves as high as the light poles along the boardwalk. Reporter dropping just below hurricane status before landfall. Long before that it tore apart sections of the same boardwalk and flooded more than 80 of the city. Late last night, Emergency Responders rescued dozens of evacuees. Governor Chris Christie blamed Atlantic Citys mayor, who says didnt do enough to let people know they needed to leave. I hope and pray that there wont be any loss of life because of it. Reporter from sleepy beachside communities to the Nations Capital and new england, sandy was unrelenting, bringing down everything from mammoth trees to utility poles. A coast guard rescue took place after the hms bounty sank. In allenhurst new jersey cbs news cameras captured waves crashing against a beachfront restaurant before the building collapsed. Even houses on stilts no match. Its pretty bad. Its not over yet. So i dont know how much worse its going to be. Reporter and there wasnt just rain. There was snow. Whiteout conditions in some spots. Sandy may be slowing down but the twin threat in the east from inundating rains and historic flooding is far from over. And there is more evidence of that in moonachie, new jersey this morning just outside new york city. Rescues and evacuations have been under way today after that city was flooded. Charlie, norah . Thank you. Farther south, Hurricane Force winds pounded ocean city maryland, for most of the day and night. Chip reid covered the storm in ocean city and is there now. Chip chip, good morning. Reporter good morning, charlie. You can see behind me what was a ferocious surf the past couple of days has calmed down quite a bit as the storm has move ed tod to the north and inland. That doesnt mean that the storm is completely over. Officials here in ocean city, maryland, have said all along that their biggest worry is flooding. The streets of ocean city maryland, last night looked like small, swollen rivers strewn with debris and surging toward the center of this narrow Barrier Island that is now nearly deserted. City Officials Say the vast majority of people here heeded their warnings and left town. They say thats the key reason no one has been killed or seriously injured here by Hurricane Sandy. Earlier in the day, it was easy to see why officials were so worried and why they issued a mandatory Evacuation Order for the citys lowlying neighborhoods. Some homes on the bay appeared to be on the verge of collapsing into the water and on the beach side of the island the surf was ferocious. Flooding was also severe farther up the coast in rehoboth, delaware. Marine docks were under water and downtown was deserted. Along the chesapeake bay, communities like crisfield were evacuated due to extreme flooding. Residents there said it was the worst they had ever seen. At this Moment Police and city officials are checking on the damage and assessing the condition of people who decided to ride out this storm. Charlie and norah . Chip reid thanks. As sandy reached inland, it ran into a cold front over the Appalachian Mountains, turning the hurricane into a blizzard. In the middle of that storm in elkins, West Virginia. Reporter here in the mountains of West Virginia, the snow is continuing to fall. The snow is not over here. Possibly 10 on the ground just in town. Estimated one to three feet at Higher Elevations up in the mound mountains. Its a very wet, heavy snow. What that means is as it weighs down the power lines and the tree s trees, you get power outages. It is estimated there are upwards of 150,000 people in West Virginia who are going without power. But the problems go beyond the lack of power. The lack of power means that you cant pump gas. Gas stations here, for instance in elkins is shut down right now. You cant fuel up your truck or car. Theres no food because businesses are closed. They have no power. And its very difficult to get out of town anyway. The Road Conditions are such that last night police had to rescue people off of a highway north of here. Those people there were so many people stuck on that highway that they actually had to scramble to improvise some temporary shelters just as a police place for those people to go. The storm is not over. Its not expected to end here the snow till the end of the day. Power restoration will take some time even after that point. Back to you. Meteorologist jeff giardelli of cbs 4 joins us. He is tracking the storm. Moving over pennsylvania moving very slowly to the west. As we take a look at the radar, can you see its an expansive storm. Good news is that the worst is now over. Heavy snow will continue to pile up into the mountains of West Virginia. 90mileanhour wind gusts yesterday. Today well see nothing like that at all. Wind gusts to maybe 50 and 60 miles an hour. Certainly the threat for coastal flooding is diminishing. Places like long island we could still see two to three feet of storm surge flooding at times of high tide. This is the worst storm weve seen in centuries in this part of the country. We broke the lowest pressure records and obviously those storm surge records weve been talking about. Whats going to be happening now over the next 24 hours is heavy snow will continue to pile up in the mountains of West Virginia. Were also going to see a couple of inches of wet snow in places like ohio that never see snow. This time of year in the mountains of pennsylvania well also see some snowfall. Very gradually, this will be winding down over the next couple of days. Very slowly and eventually moving out. Its going to take some time for the storm to move out. The worst impacts are now over. Thats good news. Jeff at its worst, did it exceed our expectations . Reporter you know i think we knew this was going to happen. It was hard, though to imagine it in our minds, that this would really be the outcome. We did expect this kind of outcome. But to actually see it in pictures and to see what the folks in the northeast are going through is very tough to see. And i have to tell you it was forecast very well. How do you prepare for something this bad that people have never seen, or at least we havent seen in centuries across the northeast. Jeff thank you. Craig fugate with the federal Emergency ManagementAgency Monitoring the storm at the fema National Headquarters in washington. Good morning. Good morning. Whats the most important thing for us to know from your standpoint . One, if you are not in an area of immediate danger stay inside, off the roads. We still have dangerous conditions. The other thing is last night president obama talking to the governor s governors of new jersey and new york granted a major president ial disaster declaration in addition to previous assistance to ensure that all resources are being made available to governors. We are very much in a response situation. As you pointed out, this is not over. We are not talking about recovery. We are still talking about loif Safety Operations and working with the governors teams to get resources in there as theyve requested them. Lets talk about those search and rescue teams. Where are you deploring your resources now . Teams were moving yesterday. Primarily right now were assisting in new jersey, along some of the coastal communities. This is a rapidly changing situation. As you point out, we are very closely linked up with West Virginia about the snow and what may be needed there as well as additional rainfall and flooding. So, really the heavy hit areas of new york city and new jersey coast last night topped a lot of requests. We so more of these impacts come in. What can you tell us about these reports in ber gechlt n county, new jersey where people are on the roofs of their homes . Have you been made aware of those reports . Yeah. Whoa know that there was a levee breach. This is all very preliminary. We know that there was a levee breach being reported. We know that there were several thousand homes that were flooded, water levels of six feet or greater. New jersey and other teams were responding in those areas. We have other reports that we are monitoring. But we are working with and are embedded with the state teams. As they need additional resources, bringing those in as quickly as we can. Our lead role is to support the search and rescue operations, u. S. Coast guard. We also have local teams, mutual aid, search and rescue teams weve sent in to support this response. Craig, whats been the Biggest Surprise to you so far in this storm . Unfortunately it hasnt been a surprise. Its been what we were looking at. You hoped it wasnt going to be this bad. But i think what weve seen is this storm surge was going to be one of the biggest threats. I think that was one of the things that people needed to understand. Unfortunately, it did happen. Craig fugate thank you. Earlier, we heard from jim axelrod, that New York UniversityMedical Center had to evacuate patients last night, losing power and emergency generators failed. Dr. Jon lapook was there. God good morning. God morningod morning, charlie. I got there late last night. The lobby was filled with doctors, nurses firemen, police trying to get people out of the hospital. Theyve gotten all but 50 out. That included kids neonatal icu kids. Four of them were intubated. When i got there, they were being brought out, bagged manually. One was a 29weekold premature baby, swaddled with a small face mask. This nurse was carrying this premature baby and doing some of the absolutely. How could this happen in a hospital like this one of new yorks premiere hospitals, that generators fail . I found out, and i think this is really news. There were two generators. There was a primary backup generator that was on the roof. Then there was a secondary backup generator that was at a lower level. What happened was the flood came in. It took out the secondary backup generator. The problem was that the pump that was lower down that sent fuel up to that primary backup generator on the roof that got flooded. So it ran out of fuel. Just for a moment transporting patients like this from one place to another its extraordinary. I went up the staircase. Youre talking about 15 18 floors of very narrow staircase. They were being brought down one by one. It took a long time to get them around the corner. And they were brought down in sleds, almost like with mountain climbing gear that grappling arm that hooked on to the side to stop them from falling down. They must have had extraordinary anxiety. I saw it in their eyes, you could see it. I was extremely impressed with the coordination and professionalism of the rescue effort there. The nurses the doctors, everybody really kept everything under control. And this is what theyre used to doing, responding to emergencies. Everybody kept their cool. Dr. Jon dense fog to start the day if you are heading around the bay area, watch out. Very thick in spots visibilities less than quarter mile. Fog continues. Looks like it will break up throughout the Morning Hours and by the afternoon lots of sunshine. 40s and 50s right now. Toward the afternoon hours, should be warm but a little cooler than yesterday, plan on highs in the mid to upper 70s warmest spots inland, 60s at the coastline. And 60s and 70s inside the bay. Chance of rain returns late tomorrow. New jersey governor Chris Christie had been dealing with sandy nonstop. He called residents who wouldnt evacuate stupid and selfish. And criticized the mayor who said they could stay. I wish he would do his job. It would make life easier or get the hell out of the way. He will be asked about the damage in his state and the danger of mixed messages. Power station explodes and a chunk of new york city goes dark. 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