East Coast Warned on Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy, a large storm tracking toward landfall on the East Coast early next week, could become the worst storm to hit the Northeast in 100 years, Bloomberg reported Friday.
Sandy could combine with a second storm coming out of the Midwest to create a system that would rival the New England hurricane of 1938 in intensity, Bloomberg said, citing the National Weather Service.
The Weather Channel reported that Sandy could cause “severe disruptions in transportation” and said damage was likely to be more widespread than Hurricane Irene, which hit the East Coast last year.
Hurricane Irene, which disrupted transportation and trucking in New York and southern New England, caused massive flooding inland as far north as Vermont after making landfall in Connecticut in August 2011.
American Trucking Associations warned motorists and truck drivers to use caution as the storm approaches.
“We are asking all motorists and truckers to use appropriate caution and common sense,” said ATA President Bill Graves. “There’s no delivery, no errand that is worth putting yourself or others in danger.”
Once the storms pass, the trucking industry will immediately begin working with officials on relief and recovery efforts, he said in a statement.
The National Hurricane Center’s Friday morning projection put Sandy on a track to make landfall anywhere from Virginia to New England late Monday, with a wide “cone” of possibilities from the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia beaches up to the New Jersey shore.
The slow-moving storm is then projected to move inland into Pennsylvania, with potential flooding and power outages reaching as far as West Virginia and Ohio, news and weather reports said.
States are already preparing for Sandy’s impact, news services reported.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency Friday in advance of the storm, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed agencies to monitor the storm and Massachusetts’ Emergency Management Agency warned residents to expect the worst.
