Most have stocked up on emergency suppliesResidents leave in droves, markets are closed and travel is disrupted as Hurricane Sandy nears 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

NEW YORK - In the city that never sleeps, Singaporean Loo Ke Ying went to bed on Sunday to an unfamiliar, unsettling serenity.

Gone were the periodic police and ambulance sirens. Restaurants and stores were shuttered. One of the worst hurricanes in recorded history was coming. And nothing helps kick in the Singaporean "kiasu" side quite like a looming natural disaster.

Ms Loo, whose New York apartment is located in an area next in line for evacuation, did everything the authorities recommended to prepare for the hurricane.

The 28-year-old housewife fought with supermarket crowds to stock up on food for her family and dog, and emergency supplies, enough "to last us a week or so".

Ms Loo also filled coolers with water, ensured her portable gas cooker would help her tide over any power outages and kept a disaster supply kit handy.

But what worried her the most were the floor-to-ceiling windows in her apartment. "If our windows do break, we will hide at the hallway instead," she said.

Most Singaporeans in New York who spoke to The Straits Times are similarly prepared.

But some remain unperturbed, especially since tropical storm Irene threw New York into a panic last year but ended up barely scratching the city.

"When Irene came, I scrubbed out my bathtub to save water but nothing actually happened, so I'm not bothering with that for this year," said consumer strategies analyst Yang Yang, 23. Still, she has enough food for a couple of days.

In San Francisco, some 240 Singaporean students had flown in from around the US for a Public Service Commission seminar and some were stranded. Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Daryl Poon, 24, does not know when he can return to Boston. Classes were cancelled on Monday.

Others, like University of Pennsylvania student Matthias Chia, 19, got home with some difficulty. "Besides lots of gate changes and delays, there were plenty of shouting matches, some jostling and a tense atmosphere in general," he said. "The situation here was so ridiculous, it's hard to imagine if you're not there."

Typhoon Son Tinh kills 7 in Vietnam, death toll rises to 31 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

 A resident walks past falling trees after the passage of typhoon Son Tinh in the northern city of Nam Dinh on Oct 29, 2012. Typhoon Son Tinh blew the roofs of thousands of homes in northern Vietnam, killing at least seven people and raising its death toll over the past week to at least 31. --PHOTO: AFP

HANOI (AP) - Typhoon Son Tinh blew the roofs of thousands of homes in northern Vietnam, killing at least seven people and raising its death toll over the past week to at least 31.

Vietnam's disaster agency reported on Tuesday that the typhoon killed seven people, left five missing and injured 43 in the north. The typhoon's centre did not make landfall before dissipating at sea on Monday, but it blew roofs off more than 13,000 houses and damaged nearly 19,000 hectares of rice crops.

Son Tinh was a tropical storm when it swept through the central Philippines last week, killing 24 people and leaving six others missing. It gained typhoon strength with sustained wind speeds of up to 149kmh as it crossed the South China Sea.

Crane dangles from New York high-rise 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

A partially collapsed crane hangs from a high-rise building in Manhattan as Hurricane Sandy makes its approach in New York October 29, 2012. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

NEW YORK (AP) - A construction crane atop a US$1.5 billion (S$1.8 billion) luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds on Monday and dangled precariously as a Hurricane Sandy bore down on the New York.

Some buildings, including the nearby Parker Meridien hotel, were being evacuated as a precaution and the streets below were cleared, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Meteorologists said winds atop the 74-story building could have been close to 155 kilometres per hour at the time.

The nearly completed high-rise is known as One57 and is in one of the city's most desirable neighborhoods, near Carnegie Hall, Columbus Circle and Central Park. It had been inspected, along with other city cranes, on Friday and was found to be ready for the impending bad weather.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said later on Monday it wasn't clear why the accident happened. "It's conceivable that nobody did anything wrong and there was no malfunction, it was just a strange gust of wind," Mr Bloomberg said.

Engineers and inspectors were planning to hike up the 74 flights of stairs to examine the crane. The harrowing inspection was being undertaken by experts who are "the best of the best," city Buildings Department spokesman Tony Sclafani said.

The New York Times recently called the building a "global billionaires' club" because the nine full-floor apartments near the top have all been sold to billionaires.

Among them are two duplexes under contract for more than US$90 million each.

Ms Shannon Kaye, 96, lives in the building next door.

"We heard a noise, but we didn't know what it was," she said. Minutes later, she and her neighbours were told to leave.

"I never liked that building, looking down into my bedroom," she said. "I always had the feeling that something would come falling down from it."

Construction cranes have been a source of safety worries in the city since two giant rigs collapsed within two months of each other in Manhattan in 2008, killing a total of nine people.

Storm sinks tall ship HMS Bounty, one missing 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

In this July 7, 2010 file photo, the tall ship HMS Bounty sails on Lake Erie off Cleveland. The U.S. Coast Guard has rescued 14 members of the crew forced to abandon the HMS Bounty caught in Hurricane Sandy off North Carolina. --

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A replica of the HMS Bounty that starred in Hollywood movies sank on Monday in towering waves whipped up by mega-storm Sandy; fourteen crew survived, but one was missing and one was found "unresponsive."

The US Coast Guard said it had found Ms Claudene Christian, 42, "unresponsive" late on Monday and she had been helicoptered to hospital amid a dramatic sea search for one man still missing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The crew abandoned the 55-metre three-mast ship, built in 1960 for the film "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando, before it sank in the fierce seas, its owner said.

The ship was off the coast of North Carolina when it radioed in a distress call on Sunday night. Before dawn on Monday, with the ship lacking power and taking on water and the crew unable to pump fast enough, they abandoned ship and took to two life boats in cold water survival suits and life jackets, the US Coast Guard said. Coast Guard helicopters initially plucked 14 crew members out of the raging water. The woman was found later in the day, but a man believed to be the ship's captain named as Mr Robin Walbridge, 63, was still missing, the Coast Guard said.

This voyage, with the ship's permanent, paid crew, left from Connecticut last week and had been due to arrive in Florida on November 10, said Tracey Simonin, director of the ship's owner, The HMS Bounty Organization.

"A crew aboard an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City ... located Ms Christian who was unresponsive, hoisted her into the helicopter and took her to Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City," it said in a statement.

The HMS Bounty was a replica of the eponymous British transport vessel known for the mutiny that took place in Tahiti in 1789.

Besides being used in documentaries and Hollywood movies, including "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" with Johnny Depp, the vessel offered tours for people to learn about 18th century square-rigged sailing.

Storm-driven waves crashed ashore and flooded seafront communities across the US East Coast late on Monday as Sandy bore down on the shoreline, amid fears it could cause widespread chaos and damage.

Sandy slams into New York, sea surge floods streets 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

Rising water, caused by Hurricane Sandy, rushes into a subterranian parking garage on Oct 29, 2012, in the Financial District of New York, United States. -- PHOTO: AFPNEW YORK (AFP) - Howling winds and a major sea surge thrown up by Hurricane Sandy flooded into New York streets late on Monday US time cutting power and swamping cars in Brooklyn.

The seawater burst the banks of the East and Hudson rivers, rushing into Manhattan cutting power to giant apartment blocks. Fierce 150 kilometre gusts pushed over a crane on a Midtown skyscraper - leaving it dangling - and pulled down the facade of another building.

Tens of thousands of people ignored appeals by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to leave the districts at risk. But Mr Bloomberg said the only reported casualty so far was a jogger injured by a falling tree.

New York authorities closed the subway train system and nearly all tunnels and bridges that take traffic off Manhattan as the full force of Sandy hit America's biggest city. Authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 375,000 people at risk from a storm surge but the vast majority decided to brave it out. As night fell, Mr Bloomberg said it may be too late to get away.

On the streets of Manhattan, police cars used to block streets gradually retreated as flood water moved further into the island.

The ConEd power company said that more than 150,000 homes across New York lost electricity because of floods and trees torn up by the hurricane.

Schools and landmark attractions such as the Empire State Building were all closed and were to stay closed on Tuesday. Hardly a car ventured onto the streets.

Only the hardiest store-owners stayed open. Supermarkets had been stripped of batteries, pocket lamps, bread and water.

Floods across New York as Sandy slams into eastern US 

Published on Oct 30, 2012REHOBOTH BEACH, Delaware (REUTERS) - Sandy, one of the biggest storms to hit the United States, pounded the east coast on Tuesday, flooding large parts of New York City, bringing transport to a halt and interrupting the US presidential campaign.

More than 5.5 million people were left without electrical power by the storm and more than one million people across a dozen states were ordered to evacuate.

Two people were killed in the New York borough of Queens - a man in a house hit by a falling tree and a woman who stepped into an electrified puddle of water. Massachusetts police said one man was killed in Peabody in an accident related to the bad weather. Toronto police also recorded one death, a woman hit by flying debris. Associated Press reported that at least 10 deaths are blamed on the storm so far.

Heavy snows threatened mountainous regions inland, and huge population centres of Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. lay in the storm's path. Trees were downed across the region, falling debris closed a major bridge in Boston and floodwater and gusts of wind buffeted coastal towns such as Fairfield, Connecticut, home to many commuters into New York City, where police cruisers blocked access to the beaches.

"We have not seen the kind of flooding problems that certainly could have happened thus far, but we've still got a long ways to go to get through this storm," Washington Mayor Vincent Gray said on local television.

New York streets filled with floodwater, raising fears that the city's subway tunnels could be inundated, and flying debris blew along deserted sidewalks.

The city closed down subway, bus and commuter train systems as of Sunday night.

In lower Manhattan, firefighters used inflatable orange boats to rescue utility workers trapped for three hours by rising floodwaters inside a power substation.

One of the workers pulled from the floodwater, Mr Angelo Amato, said he was part of a crew who had offered to work through the storm.

"This is what happens when you volunteer," he said.

"People are definitely not taking this seriously enough,"said police officer Tiffany Barrett. "Our worst fear is something like [Hurricane] Katrina and we can't get to people."

The storm's wind field stretched from the Canadian border to South Carolina, and from West Virginia to an Atlantic Ocean point about halfway between the United States and Bermuda, easily one of the largest ever seen.

The National Hurricane Centre said Sandy came ashore as a"post-tropical cyclone," meaning it still packed hurricane-force winds but lost the characteristics of a tropical

storm. It had sustained winds of 129 kph, well above the threshold for hurricane intensity.

With eight days to go before the presidential election, US President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney cancelled scheduled campaign events. Both candidates acted cautiously to avoid coming across as overtly political while millions of people are imperiled.

US stock markets were closed on Monday for the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and were set to remain shut on Tuesday. The federal government in Washington was closed, and schools were shut up and down the East Coast.

NYSE Euronext said there had been no damage to the New York Stock Exchange headquarters that could impair trading floor operations, but it was making contingency plans in case of such damage.

One disaster forecasting company predicted economic losses could ultimately reach US$20 billion (S$24.4 billion), only half insured.

Governors up and down the East Coast declared states of emergency. Maryland's Martin O'Malley warned there was no question Sandy would kill people in its path.

Sandy made landfall just south of Atlantic City, about 190 km south-west of Manhattan. Casinos in the gambling destination had already shut down.

In New York, officials evacuated neighbors of a 90-story super luxury apartment building under construction after its crane partially collapsed in high winds, prompting fears the entire rig could crash to the ground.

New York electric utility Con Edison said it expected "record-size outages," with 588,000 customers in the city and nearby Westchester County without power.

The company is facing both falling trees knocking down power lines from above and flood waters swamping underground systems from below.

While Sandy does not have the intensity of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, it killed 66 people in the Caribbean last week before pounding US. coastal areas as it moved north.

An AccuWeather meteorologist said Sandy "is unfolding as the Northeast's Katrina," and others said Sandy could be the largest storm to hit the mainland in US history.

Off North Carolina, the US. Coast Guard rescued 14 of the 16 crew members who abandoned the replica ship HMS Bounty, using helicopters to lift them from life rafts. The Coast Guard later recovered the body of an "unresponsive" 42-year-old woman while continuing to search for the 63-year-old captain of the ship, which sank in 5.5 metre seas.

In New Jersey, Exelon Corp declared an alert around its Oyster Creek nuclear power plant because of rising waters, the US. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Officials said if waters rise further, they may be forced to use emergency water supplies from a fire hose to cool spent uranium fuel rods.

An alert-level incident, the second-lowest of four action levels, means there's a "potential substantial degradation in the level of safety" at a reactor.

Storm Sandy floods seven New York subway tunnels 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

A sign announcing the temporary closure of the New York subway system, due to Hurricane Sandy, is seen in the subway prior to the arrival of Hurricane Sandy on Oct 28, 2012 in New York City. Surging seawater forced ashore by superstorm Sandy flooded seven New York subway tunnels and six bus garages in the worst disaster in the history of city transport, the network's chief said on Tuesday. -- PHOTO: AFP

NEW YORK (AFP) - Surging seawater forced ashore by superstorm Sandy flooded seven New York subway tunnels and six bus garages in the worst disaster in the history of city transport, the network's chief said on Tuesday.

"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," said Joseph Lhota, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

"Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on our entire transportation system, in every borough and county of the region. It has brought down trees, ripped out power and inundated tunnels, rail yards and bus depots," he said.

The MTA released the statement after Monday's disaster, in which high tides driven onwards by hurricane-force winds flooded a vast swathe of the US East Coast, including lower Manhattan, the heart of New York.

More than half a million households and businesses lost electric power and much of the city's underground mass transit system, which had pre-emptively halted before the floods, filled up with seawater.

"As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded.

Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line," Mr Lhota's statement said.

"Six bus garages were disabled by high water. We are assessing the extent of the damage and beginning the process of recovery," he warned, without being able to put a timetable on the repairs needed to get the city moving.

"In 108 years, our employees have never faced a challenge like the one that confronts us now. All of us at the MTA are committed to restoring the system as quickly as we can to help bring New York back to normal." he said.

Sandy leaves death, damp and darkness in US 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

Debris litter a flooded street in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn after the city awakens to the affects of Hurricane Sandy on October 30, 2012 in New York, United States. At least 15 people were reported killed in the United States by Sandy as millions of people in the eastern United States have awoken to widespread power outages, flooded homes and downed trees. New York City was hit especially hard with wide spread power outages and significant flooding in parts of the city. -- PHOTO: AFPNEW YORK (AP) - As Superstorm Sandy marched slowly inland, millions along the US East Coast awoke on Tuesday without power or mass transit, with huge swaths of the nation's largest city unusually vacant and dark.New York was among the hardest hit, with its financial heart shuttered for a second day and seawater cascading into the still-gaping construction pit at the World Trade Center.

The storm that made landfall in New Jersey on Monday evening with 130kmh sustained winds killed at least 16 people in seven states, cut power to more than 6 million homes and businesses from the Carolinas to Ohio and put the presidential campaign on hold one week before Election Day.

"This will be one for the record books," said Mr John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Consolidated Edison, which had more than 670,000 customers without power in and around New York City.

Trading at the New York Stock Exchange was cancelled again on Tuesday - the first time the exchange suspended operations for two consecutive days due to weather since an 1888 blizzard struck the city.

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in New York and Long Island, making federal funding available to residents of the area.

New York City's three major airports remained closed. Overall, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware, more than 13,500 flights had been cancelled for Monday and Tuesday, almost all related to the storm.

An unprecedented 3.9m surge of seawater - 0.9m above the previous record - gushed into lower Manhattan, inundating tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street and sent hospital patients and tourists scrambling for safety. Skyscrapers swayed and creaked in winds that partially toppled a crane 74 stories above Midtown.

In New Jersey, where the superstorm came ashore, hundreds of people were being evacuated after a levee broke early on Tuesday. Bergen County executive chief of staff Jeanne Baratta told The Record newspaper as many as 1,000 people could need help. There are no reports of injuries or deaths.

The massive storm reached well into the Midwest. Chicago officials warned residents to stay away from the Lake Michigan shore as the city prepared for winds of up to 96kmh and waves exceeding 7.2m well into Wednesday.

As Hurricane Sandy closed in on the Northeast, it converged with a cold-weather system that turned it into a monstrous hybrid of rain and high wind - and even snow in West Virginia and other mountainous areas inland.

Remnants of the now-former Category 1 hurricane were forecast to head across Pennsylvania before taking another sharp turn into western New York state by Wednesday morning. As of 5am local time (9am GMT, 5pm Singapore time) on Tuesday, the storm was centred about 145km west of Philadelphia.

Although weakening as it goes, the massive storm - which caused wind warnings from Florida to Canada - will continue to bring heavy rain and local flooding, said Mr Daniel Brown, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Officials blamed at least 16 deaths in the US on the converging storms - five in New York, three each in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, two in Connecticut, and one each in Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia. Three of the victims were children, one just 8 years old. At least one death was blamed on the storm in Canada.

Sandy, which killed 69 people in the Caribbean before making its way up the Atlantic Coast, began to hook left at midday Monday toward the New Jersey coast. Even before it made landfall, crashing waves had claimed an old, 15m piece of Atlantic City's world-famous Boardwalk.

"We are looking at the highest storm surges ever recorded" in the Northeast, said Mr Jeff Masters, meteorology director for Weather Underground, a private forecasting service.

Sitting on the dangerous northeast wall of the storm, the New York metropolitan area got the worst of it.

An explosion at a ConEdison substation knocked out power to about 310,000 customers in Manhattan.

"We see a pop. The whole sky lights up," said Ms Dani Hart, 30, who was watching the storm from the roof of her building in the Navy Yards in Brooklyn.

"It sounded like the Fourth of July," Mr Stephen Weisbrot said from his 10th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan.

A huge fire destroyed at least 50 homes in a flooded neighborhood by the Atlantic Ocean in the New York City borough of Queens. Firefighters told WABC-TV that the water was chest high on the street, and they had to use a boat to make rescues. Two people suffered minor injuries, a fire department spokesman said.

New York University's (NYU) Tisch Hospital was forced to evacuate 200 patients after its backup generator failed. NYU Medical Dean Robert Grossman said patients - among them 20 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit who were on battery-powered respirators - had to be carried down staircases and to dozens of ambulances waiting to take them to other hospitals.

Not only was the subway shut down, but the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey was closed, as was a tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and several other spans were closed due to high winds.

A construction crane atop a US$1.5 billion (S$1.8 billion) luxury high-rise in midtown Manhattan collapsed in high winds and dangled precariously. Thousands of people were ordered to leave several nearby buildings as a precaution, including 900 guests at the ultramodern Le Parker Meridien hotel.

Ms Alice Goldberg, 15, a tourist from Paris, was watching television in the hotel - whose slogan is "Uptown, Not Uptight" - when a voice came over the loudspeaker and told everyone to leave.

"They said to take only what we needed, and leave the rest, because we'll come back in two or three days," she said as she and hundreds of others gathered in the luggage-strewn marble lobby. "I hope so."

Off North Carolina, not far from an area known as "the Graveyard of the Atlantic," a replica of the 18th-century sailing ship HMS Bounty that was built for the 1962 Marlon Brando movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" sank when her diesel engine and bilge pumps failed. Coast Guard helicopters plucked 14 crew members from rubber lifeboats bobbing in 18-foot (5.4-meter) seas.

A 15th crew member who was found unresponsive several hours after the others was later pronounced dead. The Bounty's captain was still missing.

President Barack Obama scrapped his campaign events for Monday and Tuesday to stay at the White House to oversee the government's response to the superstorm.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was going ahead with a planned event in Ohio on Tuesday, but his campaign said its focus would be on storm relief.

About 360,000 people in 30 Connecticut towns were urged to leave their homes under mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders. Christi McEldowney was among those who fled to a Fairfield shelter. She and other families brought tents for their children to play in.

"There's something about this storm," she said. "I feel it deep inside."

Sandy leaves 145,000 Canadians without power, 1 dead 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

Flowers are left on the site where a woman was killed after she was hit by a flying sign that came apart due to high winds from the remnants of Hurricane Sandy in Toronto, October 30, 2012. Sandy toppled trees and power lines in the Canadian province of Ontario, leaving at least 145,000 people without power on Tuesday, including 55,000 in Toronto, the country's financial center. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

WINNIPEG (REUTERS) - Sandy toppled trees and power lines in the Canadian province of Ontario, leaving at least 145,000 people without power on Tuesday, including 55,000 in Toronto, the country's financial centre.

Strong winds whipped up debris, killing a Toronto woman on Monday.

The Toronto Stock Exchange was set to remain open, making it a North American island of equity trading for the second successive day, with US stock markets closed.

Numerous flights on Air Canada, WestJet Airlines, Porter Airlines and other carriers between the US Northeast and Toronto's Pearson International Airport and Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport were cancelled.

"It's been a long night," said Mr Mike Bradley, mayor of the Lake Huron border city of Sarnia, Ontario, where winds are expected to gust to 100 km/h.

"Waves were running from six to nine metres, which people around here cannot remember for at least a generation," he told CBC. "I'm sitting in the dark, we've just lost the power."

Ontario officials had warned people to stay inside as gusts from the huge storm swept through the province, citing risks of flooding and other damage. But the impact was tiny compared to the vast outages and widespread flooding seen in the US East Coast.

US companies hustle to re-staff, reopen after Sandy 

Published on Oct 30, 2012NEW YORK/CHICAGO (REUTERS) - Hurricane Sandy may have devastated the East Coast on Monday, but the water-logged wheels of commerce keep turning, storm damage or not.

As cities from New York down to Washington began to dig out from the historic destruction brought by Sandy, companies scrambled on Tuesday to assess their facilities with an eye toward reopening as soon as possible.

At least 15 people were reported killed along the Eastern seaboard by Sandy, one of the biggest storms to ever hit the country, which dropped just below hurricane status before making landfall on Monday night in New Jersey.

With the holiday season quickly approaching and tourists unlikely to be dissuaded from shopping, retailers in particular were hurrying on Tuesday to get back to business.

Luxury department store Saks said it would reopen on Tuesday three of the stores that it had to close because of Sandy, including stores in greater Washington and Philadelphia.

The retailer's flagship on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, which generates about 20 per cent of company sales, along with five other stores in New Jersey and Connecticut, are set to reopen on Wednesday, a spokeswoman said.

Saks said it would not be coordinating transportation for employees.

"In the NYC store, many associates live nearby, and we can operate the store with lower staffing levels if needed," a representative said.

Similarly, Macy's said its iconic Herald Square flagship store in Manhattan, and others in the city and in parts of New Jersey, would stay closed on Tuesday. Others in the East will open through the course of the day.

"The determining factor is if the store and shopping center have electricity, and if associates are able to get to work," a Macy's spokesman said, adding that the company had 195 stores closed all or part of the day on Monday, about a quarter of its footprint.

Wal-Mart Stores had 267 stores closed as of late Monday night due to the storm. By Tuesday morning, that was down to 168, with plans in progress to reopen some stores on generator power.

The world's largest retailer said none of its facilities had been seriously damaged and there was no disruption of holiday planning.

Drugmakers, heavily concentrated in New York and New Jersey, were also laid low by the storm. Novartis AG said all offices in the area would remain closed on Tuesday, as did top insulin maker Novo Nordisk.

GlaxoSmithKline Plc said it had implemented a continuity plan to ensure medicines would continue to be distributed, especially given the numerous airport closures still in effect. But the company also said there was sufficient inventory in the supply chain to avoid serious disruptions.

Relatively high amounts of pharmaceuticals move by air, since drugs are light and high-value items, meaning companies like GSK have to arrange road transport in the meantime.

Multiply a decision like that by a few dozen or even hundreds of companies, and Sandy could actually end up being a boon to the trucking industry despite the short-term costs of widespread road closures.

"In the long run, however, the effect is clearly positive, perhaps close to US$1 billion (S$1.2 billion), because resupply and rebuilding generates freight growth and because trucking is the mode of choice for time-sensitive resupply," said Noel Perry, managing director at transportation consulting firm FTR Associates. 

US East Coast power outages from Hurricane Sandy reach 8m 

Published on Oct 30, 2012

(REUTERS) - US East Coast electric companies say outages from Hurricane Sandy so far have hit more than 8.1 million homes and businesses, the US Department of Energy (DOE) said in a report early on Tuesday.

Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey at about 8pm EDT (8am Singapore time) on Monday, the DOE said.

New Jersey was the hardest hit state with about 2.5 million customers out, about 62 per cent of the state total.

Other hard hit states include Connecticut with 31 per cent or 626,400 customers out; Rhode Island with 23 per cent or 116,300 out; West Virginia with 21 per cent or 212,100 customers out; New York with 21 per cent or about 2 million out; Pennsylvania with 20 per cent or 1.3 million out; and New Hampshire with 20 percent or 142,000 out.

The utilities with the most customers out of service were units of FirstEnergy Corp, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc, Consolidated Edison, Northeast Utilities, PPL Corp, National Grid PLC, Pepco Holdings Group Inc and Iberdrola SA.