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"We have, probably, about 20,000 people that still remain in their homes, and we're trying to put together an evacuation plan, get the equipment here," Zimmer told MSNBC TV. (Update: 05.40 am EDT The National Guard has arrived in Hoboken, a town of around 50,000 in New Jersey, according to AP. The Guard will be using high-wheeled trucks to transport residents out of the most hard-hit areas as well as ferrying in supplies, AP said. Thank gawd.)

Zimmer said the city's elecric utility vehicles were too big to make it down many of the flooded streets. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49605748/ns/weather/]
The National Guard told her tonight some could arrive tomorrow morning.

•People are without water, despite being surrounded by it. The water is becoming increasingly contaminated as it sits there.

•More than 8.2 million homes and businesses were without electricity, about two-thirds of them in New York and New Jersey. That number represents individual structures, including large businesses, meaning the number of people without light, heat or refrigeration is likely much higher.

02.50 am A picture of the New York skyline post-Sandy

•They saved some of the electrical grid by powering it down. Now that they're returning power, some of those lines are in the water. "Arthur Kasprzak, 28, an off-duty NYPD police officer, was killed in the basement of his home after ushering his girlfriend, child, and friends and relatives to the attic of their home in South Beach, according to slive.com. Police believe he was electricuted by a live wire when he went down into the basement and touched the flood water." How many more of those will there be?

•Some of you may have seen pix of the massive fire in the Breezy Point community of Queens, N.Y.; it destroyed at least 110 homes and damaged 20 others. Firefighters had difficulty reaching the blaze because of the severe weather. Here's what's left:





"More than 100 homes were destroyed, hundreds more suffered flood damage and dozens of houses were swept off their foundations, officials said.":

"To describe it as looking like pictures we've seen of the end of World War II is not overstating it," Bloomberg said. "The area was completely leveled. Chimneys and foundations were all that was left of many of these homes."

•Nearly 7,500 National Guard soldiers and airmen were on duty in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia. Does anyone think things will stay peaceful in the ensuing weeks, with this mess?

•Drinking water:

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Raw sewage, industrial chemicals and floating debris filled flooded waterways around New York City on Tuesday.

Left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the toxic stew may threaten the health of residents already dealing with more direct damages from the disaster.

"Normally, sewer overflows are just discharged into waterways and humans that generate the sewage can avoid the consequences by avoiding the water," said John Lipscomb of the clean water advocacy group Riverkeeper. "But in this case, that waste has come back into our communities."

There's Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn, which abuts a 1.8 mile canal that was recently designated a Superfund cleanup site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency due to a legacy of industrial pollution and sewage discharges.

And New York City's other Superfund site, Newtown Creek, a waterway that forms the border between Brooklyn and Queens. "The fact is that waste from all these industries -- metal-working, pencil manufacturing, everything -- all this stuff is going to rise up into the dirt, basements, everywhere," Richard Platzman, 30, said, noting Greenpoint's widely-recognized designation as New York City's most polluted neighborhood.

A number of older U.S. communities -- including a number of East Coast cities affected by Sandy -- sit atop antiquated plumbing that carries sewage, industrial wastewater and rainwater together to treatment plants.

"You can think about this like an Exxon Valdez accident, but instead of there being one contaminant it's a zillion contaminants -- from floatables to dissolvables to containers of contaminants -- and instead of one location, there's a zillion point sources," John Lipscomb of the clean water advocacy group Riverkeeper said. "This is a stunning pollution event. I don't think the harbor has ever taken a hit like today." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-sewage-toxic-
_n_2046963.html]

•Many are now homeless...think of the volume of newly-homeless people in just NY and NJ right now. What happens to them? Where do they all go?

•A half-dozen nuclear power plants were shut down or otherwise affected, while the nation's oldest facility declared a rare "alert" after the record storm surge pushed flood waters high enough to endanger a key cooling system.

Here's, in my opinion, the biggie: Transportation.

• The tunnels are flooded. South Ferry subway station was "flooded up to the ceiling," while each tube of the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel — better known as the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel — was filled with 43 million gallons of water.

• All 10 subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn were flooded during the storm. Services is unlikely to resume for four or five days, according to Bloomberg. Christies says PATH train service between Manhattan and New Jersey is likely to be suspended for seven to 10 days.

21.10 am EDT: This is why it's going to take several days before New York's subways can re-open. This picture, put out by Governor Cuomo's office, shows Whitehall subway station.

• The airports are closed. As of two hours ago,

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•The New York region's airports were closed Tuesday. JFK International and Newark Liberty will open early Wednesday and offer limited service; LaGuardia will remain closed "due to extensive damage," Cuomo said. More than 18,000 flights had been canceled, while Amtrak canceled all of its Northeast Corridor rail service Tuesday, in addition to some other lines. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49605748/ns/weather/

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That area, unlike us Crazy Californians, depends on its rapid transit almost exclusively just to GET AROUND. They can't. They won't be able to for a while, days or more. They can't go to work, school, the market (if there were any markets nearby with food and/or electricity). How many no longer have cars even if the tunnels and roads WERE open? What's going to happen to those people, as days go by?

I think this will be bigger than Katrina, in the long haul. New Orleans, aside from the city itself, is from what I saw of it an area of FAR less dense population than the areas Sandy hit worst. Unquestionably the initial death toll will be far lower than Katrina, but it's already obvious that the infrastructure and economic costs are already higher.

Chris Christie is damned impressive. He said right out he isn't interested in whether Romney will come to tour the area with him, that if anyone thinks he gives a damn about politics right now, they don't know him. I believe it. I've been watching him throughout tonight, and I'm damned impressed. What was it Ann Coulter said?

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Bear in mind the following:

• Highest rainfall totals: Easton, Md., with 12.55 inches, according to AccuWeather.com.

• Highest wind gusts: Eatons Neck, N.Y., with 94 mph, according to AccuWeather.com.

• Highest snow amounts: Redhouse, Md., with 26 inches, according to AccuWeather.com; second highest was Bowden, W.Va., with 24 inches.

• Height of waves on Lake Michigan: 20 feet, according to NBC affiliate WTHR.

• A record tide of 13.88 feet was set at The Battery in Lower Manhattan on Monday night, breaking the previous record of 11.2 feet in 1821.

• Sandy broke low pressure records in six cities: Atlantic City, N.J.; Philadelphia; Harrisburg, Pa.; Scranton, Pa; Trenton, N.J.; and Baltimore. There were near records in: Newark, N.J.; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Lynchburg, Va.; and Elkins, W.Va.

• Hurricane Sandy is officially listed as the largest hurricane to have formed in the Atlantic Basin, according to the National Hurricane Center, as it reached 1,000 miles in diameter.

• The confluence of these three meteorological events isn't unheard of, but the ride of sea level and the increased intensity of weather because of climate change--yes, that again--will make calling things like this "100-year storms" a thing of the past.

Bear in mind that global warming is actually a misnomer. It should be called "global swings", so that we can have droughts, flooding, forest fires, etc. happening at the same time in different points of the earth. So global warming is actually the weather on steroids. This is consistent with the 100 year floods, 100 year forest fires, 100 year droughts that we seem to have every few years now.

The problem is, the longer it takes to convince people global warming/climate change EXISTS, the longer before we do anything about it.