14 dead as Superstorm Sandy throws a 13 foot wall of water at US coast(photos)

Blackout: The skyline of lower Manhattan sits in darkness after a preventive power outage in New York on Monday night

New York City looks like the set of a disaster movie this morning after a night of being battered by Superstorm Sandy. 

It hit the mainland at 6.30pm local time last night having laid waste to large parts of the coast during the day. The US city shut its mass transit system, schools, the stock exchange and Broadway, and ordered hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to leave home to get out of the way as Sandy zeroed in. 

A 13ft wall of water caused by the storm surge and high tides resulted in severe flooding to subways and road tunnels. Torrents of water poured into building works at Ground Zero, cars were swept down streets and power was cut across lower Manhattan in a bid to minimise damage to infrastructure.

Superstorm Sandy knocked out power to at least 6.2million people across the US East, and large sections of Manhattan were plunged into darkness by the storm, with 250,000 customers without power as water pressed into the island from three sides, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads.

New York City's 911 dispatchers were receiving 20,000 calls per hour. An extraordinary 24 hours saw what was originally classed as a hurricane close in and converge with a cold-weather system that turned it into a superstorm - a monstrous hybrid consisting not only of rain and high wind, but also snow.

Sandy smacked the boarded-up big cities of the Northeast corridor, from Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia, New York and Boston, with stinging rain and gusts of 85mph. Sixteen deaths were reported in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Flooding: Water rushes into the Carey Tunnel (previously the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel), caused by Sandy on Monday night in the financial district of New York

God please save your children

Source dailymail