Northeast Counts Costs Of Damage

A statue of the Virgin Mary sits amid rubble in the Breezy Point neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., Tuesday. Fire destroyed at least 80 homes there as Sandy hit the beachfront community.

Sandy Cuts Wide Swath of Damage

WSJ – Megastorm Sandy’s march of destruction claimed at least 43 lives in the U.S. and left more than eight million people without electricity by late Tuesday, in one of the largest storms ever to strike the East Coast.

Diminished but still dangerous, the storm churned across Pennsylvania on Tuesday in an arc toward Canada, and the northeastern U.S. began its slow process of recovery. In New York, financial markets were expected to resume trading Wednesday, though big chunks of the city are without electricity and its vast network of subways remains idled by historic flooding.

As dawn broke Tuesday on the storm’s trail of wreckage, it began exposing stories of heroism and tragedy, bad decisions and lucky breaks.

New Jersey took a particularly severe hit. Portions of the famed Atlantic City boardwalk were reduced to splinters, the casino town itself all but submerged. The Seaside Park roller coaster lay twisted in the Atlantic Ocean. Countless homes were damaged or destroyed.

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