Weather, Natural Disaster | featured news

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on Sunday argued Superstorm Sandy not only wreaked havoc on the Northeast this week, but blunted Mitt Romney's campaign as well. "The hurricane is what broke Romney's momentum.

The massive storm that started out as Hurricane Sandy slammed into the East Coast and morphed into a huge and problematic system, killing at least 94 people in the United States. Power outages now stand at more than 3.6 million homes and businesses, down from a peak of 8.5 million. Here's a snapshot of what is happening, state by state....

Following Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, FEMA became a national punching bag, ridiculed for its slow and cumbersome response to the disaster along the Gulf Coast. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its administrator W. Craig Fugate are garnering more positive reviews from public officials in northeastern states hit by the superstorm, as well as from disaster-management experts.

GeoEye images show a section of beach in Seaside Heights, New Jersey before Hurricane Sandy, and the damage after.

After the storm comes the rebuilding, and the scammers capitalizing on fear and need. With $20 billion estimated in property damage, demand for clean-up and repair is high, putting anxious homeowners at risk for hard-sell fly-by-night contractors.

Flights resumed, but slowly. The New York Stock Exchange got back to business, but on generator power. And with the subways still down, great numbers of people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan in a reverse of the exodus of 9/11....

A day after it launched a punishing strike on the East Coast of the United States, Superstorm Sandy remained a threat Tuesday. The storm made landfall along the coast of southern New Jersey on Monday night, but its mammoth size affected a much wider area -- and continued to do so as it shuffled northward toward Canada, leaving at least 30 U.S. deaths in its wake.

Superstorm Sandy will end up causing about $20 billion in property damages and $10 billion to $30 billion more in lost business, according to IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm....

Monster Storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast Monday, killing at least 16 people, hurling a record-breaking 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City and knocking out power to more than 7.5 million across the East Coast.

A huge fire destroyed 80 to 100 houses in a flooded beachfront neighborhood Tuesday, forcing firefighters to undertake daring rescues and injuring three people. More than 190 firefighters contained the blaze but were still putting out some pockets of fire more than nine hours after it erupted.