Salon.com > Hurrican Sandy

House approves $9.7 billion in Sandy aid

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:54:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than two months after super-storm Sandy struck, the House on Friday overwhelmingly approved $9.7 billion to pay flood insurance claims for the many home and business owners flooded out by the storm.

The 354–67 vote came days after Northeast Republicans erupted over House Speaker John Boehner's decision to delay a vote earlier in the week; all of the no votes were cast by Republicans. The Senate was expected to pass the bill later in the day.

"It's the right step," said Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

The bill gives more borrowing authority to the National Flood Insurance Program to pay about 115,000 pending Sandy-related claims as well as about 5,000 claims unrelated to Sandy.

Northeast lawmakers say the money is urgently needed for victims of one of the worst storms ever to strike the region. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had warned that the National Flood Insurance Program would run out of money next week if Congress didn't provide additional borrowing authority to pay out claims. Congress created the FEMA-run program in 1968 because few private insurers cover flood damage.

Tens of thousands already without power

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:17:00 +0000

At just before 1pm EST, CBS News reported that tens of thousands of homes along the Eastern Seaboard have already lost power because of Hurricane Sandy. Over 67,000 customers have experienced outages in Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, and several other states. Via CBS:

Connecticut

Connecticut Light & Power (which offers outrage reports in both map and table formats) says about 16,200 customers were without power Monday.

Delaware

Delmarva reports about 1,500 customers without power.

Maryland

BGE reports restoring service to about 4,000 customers Monday; about 2,300 are still without power.

Additional scattered outages were reported by Mon Power and Potomac Edison, and by PEPCO.

Massachusetts

NStar reported about 2,500 outages Monday morning. National Grid had fewer than 1,000 outages, down from about 5,200 earlier in the morning.

New Jersey

More than 24,400 customers in the Garden State are without power.

Public Service Electric & Gas, which is tweeting outage information, says 2,100 customers are offline. Jersey Central Power & Light, which publishes map of outages, is reporting 16,800 homes are without power. Atlantic City Electric has about 5,500 outages,

New York

LILCO reports more than 21,000 customers on Long Island were without power Monday morning. Con Edison reports at least 2,000 customers in New York City and in Westchester County are without power.

In Upstate New York NYSE&G reports 3,900 customers affected.

North Carolina

Duke Energy reports more than 4,100 customers without power. Progress Energy reports more than 1,100 customers without power Monday morning.

Pennsylvania

PPL Electric Utilities reports more than 2,100 customers without power in eastern Pennsylvania.

Rhode Island

National Grid says about 2,600 customers had lost power by around 9 a.m. Monday.

Virginia

Dominion Virginia says it has restored power to about 3,000 customers by early Monday; about 2,000 remain without service.

Webcams on Sandy

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:28:00 +0000

As with so many major news events these days, this storm will not only be televised, but tweeted, Instagramed and brought to you second by second via livestream.

A series of webcams along the East coast offer a variety of views from which to watch Sandy barreling inland. A few striking views to keep an eye on.

New York Harbor

From Lady Liberty's viewpoint, looking on to Downtown Manhattan

Coney Island

Far Rockaways

USS Intrepid (Manhattan)

The Jersey Shore (Point Pleasant)

Virginia Beach Boardwalk

Meanwhile independent videographer Tim Pool, known for his protest livestreams, will be filming from New York throughout the day. Here's a video he filmed early this morning from the evacuated Zone A in Downtown Manhattan: