Hurricane Sandy death toll rises; Ontario may be worst hit when massive storm reaches Canada

Canadian Press, Associated Press and Reuters | Oct 27, 2012 6:20 PM ET | Last Updated: Oct 27, 2012 6:27 PM ET

National Hurricane Center/Handout A satellite image taken on Saturday Oct. 27, 2012 shows Hurricane Sandy churning towards the east coast of North America. The flooding threat from the storm has been described by one observer as “serious as a heart attack for anybody near the rising water.”

 

HALIFAX — Ontario may see the worst Sandy when it hits early next week as the so-called Frankenstorm continues to grow, the Canadian Hurricane Centre said Saturday.

Spokesman Bob Robichaud said while rainfall amounts are still hard to predict, southern and eastern Ontario could see between 50 and 100 millimetres late Monday and early Tuesday.

“That’s certainly in the realm of possibility for that part of Ontario,” said Robichaud in an interview on Saturday. “It looks like southeastern and eastern Ontario might be getting the most rainfall out of this.”

Robichaud said those areas will also see high winds, although they will likely not hit hurricane strength. He said 80 km/h winds are a possibility.

Sandy is currently moving northward over the Bahamas and is expected to continue to track north while maintaining its hurricane strength.

The latest computer models predict its effects will be far-reaching on Canadian territory, with rainy and blustery conditions also expected for Quebec and the Maritime provinces.

Western Nova Scotia will likely see the strongest winds of eastern Canada, said Robichaud.
“I don’t think we’ll necessarily get up close to the point where we’ll have to issue warnings, but we could see some pretty blustery conditions,” he said.

Typically, large hurricanes like Sandy have been known to race up the coast and clip the edges of the Maritimes and Newfoundland. But a large, high-pressure system over the Maritimes is expected to block Sandy’s advance, pushing it into the mid-Atlantic states on late Monday or early Tuesday. The storm is also being fed by a trough of low pressure in the U.S. Midwest.

Robichaud said the complex interaction between these weather systems makes it difficult to predict the progress of the storm.

The storm is comparable in size to the so-called “Perfect Storm” of 1991, which remained off the coast of New England, pushing huge waves and causing $200 million in damage.

But Robichaud said Canada shouldn’t be bracing for the same sort of danger.

“We’re not going to be feel the same impacts that they’re feeling down in the U.S., that’s for sure.”
The Caribbean death toll from Hurricane Sandy rose again sharply on Saturday, even as the storm swirled away toward the U.S. East Coast. Officials said the hurricane system has cost at least 58 lives in addition to destroying or badly damaging thousands of homes.

Ricardo Rojas/ReutersResidents walk amidst floodwaters in the neighbourhood of Barquita, after days of heavy rain in Santo Domingo, October 26, 2012. The Caribbean death toll from Hurricane Sandy stands at, at least, 58 lives.

 

While Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas took direct hits from the storm, the majority of deaths and most extensive damage was in impoverished Haiti, where it has rained almost non-stop since Tuesday.

The official death toll in Haiti stood at 44 Saturday, but authorities said that could still rise. The country’s ramshackle housing and denuded hillsides are especially vulnerable to flooding when rains come.

“This is a disaster of major proportions,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told The Associated Press. “The whole south is under water.”

He said the death toll jumped on Saturday because it was the first day that authorities were able to go out and assess the damage, which he estimated was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the bulk of it in lost crops.

Nineteen people are reported injured and another 12 are missing, according to Haiti’s Civil Protection Office.

If death comes, we’ll accept it. We’re suffering, we’re hungry, and we’re just going to die hungry

One of the remaining threats was a still-rising muddy river in the northern part of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“If the river busts its banks, it’s going to create a lot of problems. It might kill a lot of people,” said 51-year-old Seroine Pierre. “If death comes, we’ll accept it. We’re suffering, we’re hungry, and we’re just going to die hungry.”

Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images 

A woman in a tent city cleans up after hurricane Sandy passed through Haiti, Oct. 27, 2012.

 

Officials reported flooding across Haiti, where 370,000 people are still living in flimsy shelters as a result of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Nearly 17,800 people had to move to 131 temporary shelters, the Civil Protection Office said.

Among those hoping for a dry place to stay was 35-year-old Iliodor Derisma in Port-au-Prince, who said the storm had caused a lot of anguish.

“It’s wet all my clothes, and all the children aren’t living well,” he said. “We’re hungry. We haven’t received any food. If we had a shelter, that would be nice.”

The storm hit eastern Cuba as a Category 2 hurricane early Thursday. Eleven people died in Santiago and Guantanamo provinces and official news media said the storm caused 5,000 houses to at least partially collapse while 30,000 others lost roofs. Banana, coffee, bean and sugar crops were damaged.

The storm then churned into the Bahamas archipelago, toppling light posts, flooding roads and ripping down tree branches. Police said the British CEO of an investment bank died when he fell from his roof in upscale Lyford Cay late Thursday while trying to repair a window shutter. Officials at Deltec Bank & Trust identified him as Timothy Fraser-Smith, who became CEO in 2000.

In Puerto Rico, police said a man in his 50s died Friday in the southern town of Juana Diaz, swept away in a river swollen by rain from Sandy’s outer bands. Flooding forced at least 100 families in southwestern Puerto Rico to seek shelter.

Authorities in the Dominican Republic evacuated more than 18,100 people after the storm destroyed several bridges and isolated at least 130 communities. Heavy rains and wind also damaged an estimated 3,500 homes.

Hurricane Sandy closed in on the United States on Saturday as it threatened to hit the eastern third of the country with torrential rains, high winds, major flooding and power outages a week before U.S. presidential and congressional elections.

A massive but slow-moving storm, with tropical storm-force winds extending across 650 miles (1,050 km), forecasters warn Sandy’s flood impact could span multiple tides with a storm surge of 4 to 8 feet (1.2-2.4 meters) in Long Island Sound, the southern portion of Lower New York Bay and Delaware Bay.

Rain accumulations of up to 12 inches (30 cm) were likely in some areas.

As it merges with an Arctic jet stream, forecasters said Sandy had all the ingredients to morph into a so-called “super storm,” unlike anything seen over the eastern United States in decades.

Coastal flooding posed a major threat, particularly in low-lying areas like New York City and Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington D.C.

That threat was described in a blog posted on Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com) by veteran weather forecaster Bryan Norcross as “serious as a heart attack for anybody near the rising water.”

Governors in states along the U.S. East Coast declared emergencies, with officials urging residents to stock up on food, water and batteries.

Coming in the hectic run-up to the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6, the storm presented a challenge to the campaigns of President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.
As Sandy approached, Romney was rescheduling all of his campaign events planned for Virginia on Sunday and flying to Ohio instead. And Obama’s campaign announced that Vice President Joe Biden had canceled a Saturday trip to Virginia Beach.

Ahead of the election, millions of Americans are taking advantage of early voting arrangements to cast their ballots. State officials said they had put in place contingency plans in case Sandy caused extended power outages or other problems that could disrupt voting.

The White House said the president convened a call with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate and other officials to receive a Saturday update on ongoing government actions to prepare for the storm.

Carlo Allegri/Reuters    Ominous clouds gather over New York on Oct. 27, 2012. Hurricane Sandy is due to hit the area in the next couple days.

 

In New York, authorities were considering closing down the city’s buses, subways, commuter railroads, bridges and tunnels in preparations for the storm’s onslaught.

A decision on the transportation system was likely to come on Sunday, said state operations director Howard Glaser.

A potential shutdown could begin at 7 p.m. on Sunday, when the last commuter trains would depart, with the entire system to be closed down by 3 a.m. Monday, officials said.

Sandy was about 335 miles (540 km) southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and packing top sustained winds of 75 miles (120 km) per hour on Saturday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said. The cyclone had briefly dropped just below hurricane strength early Saturday.

Little overall change in strength was expected ahead of its anticipated U.S. landfall early next week, the Miami-based Hurricane Center said.

The storm picked up a little forward speed but was still moving slowly over the Atlantic at 11 mph (18 kph). A jog east late Saturday morning briefly took Sandy further out to sea.

The storm’s windfield has continued to expand, with hurricane force winds now extending 105 miles (165 km) from its center, government forecasters said.

Gale force winds were expected to reach portions of the mid-Atlantic coast by late Sunday and would begin hitting New York’s Long Island and southern New England by Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.

“It’s hard to imagine how millions of people are not going to be without power for an extended period of time,” Norcross said.

Perhaps the biggest concern, at the very end, may be the extreme rainfall that’s going to occur after landfall

“Regardless of the exact landfall spot this system has … much of New England and the mid-Atlantic states are going to be impacted, perhaps very severely, by this storm,” National Hurricane center meteorologist Chris Landsea told Reuters.

“It’s certainly going to be a very significant storm when it gets up to the mid-Atlantic states,” he added.

Sandy battered the Bahamas southeast of Florida on Friday after causing widespread destruction in eastern Cuba a day earlier. Th e storm’s powerful winds and rains were blamed for at least 41 deaths in several Caribbean countries, including 11 in Cuba. Most were killed by falling trees and building collapses.

On its current projected track, Sandy could make U.S. landfall on Monday night or Tuesday anywhere between Maryland and southern New England, forecasters said.

“Perhaps the biggest concern, at the very end, may be the extreme rainfall that’s going to occur after landfall,” Landsea said. In addition to coastal and inland flooding, along with widespread power outages, Sandy was expected to dump heavy wet snow in southwest Pennsylvania and as far inland as Ohio.

High winds also threaten to disrupt air travel along the U.S. East Coast.

Tropical storm warnings and watches along Florida’s east coast were lifted on Saturday as the storm moved north.

Tropical storm-force winds were being felt near the North Carolina coast and tropical storm warnings for all of the coastal portion of the state, along with about half of South Carolina, were in effect.
Along North Carolina’s Outer Banks barrier islands, which jut out into the Atlantic, residents and officials said they were taking a wait-and-see approach to the storm.

As the winds and rains increased Saturday, ferry service between Ocracoke and Hatteras Islands on the Outer banks was suspended due to water on Ocracoke’s only highway.

“Right now it’s blowing pretty hard,” said Ray Waller, manager of the Ocracoke office of North Carolina Ferry Division.

Outer Banks residents, with memories of damaging flooding from last year’s Hurricane Irene, moved vehicles to higher ground and secured outside objects ahead of winds of more than 60 mph (96 kph) beginning Saturday night and potentially lasting into Monday.

A buoy 225 miles (362 km) south of Cape Hatteras recorded 26-foot (8-metre) waves amid blistering wind gusts early on Saturday, authorities said.