New York City mayor orders schools closed, some evacuation

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday ordered public schools closed on Monday and said that areas of the city from City Island to Coney Island to Battery Park City were under mandatory evacuation because of approaching Hurricane Sandy.          

Bloomberg said during a press conference that the mandatory evacuation applies to people in Zone A, which covers coastal areas.

Tens of millions of people in the eastern third of the U.S. in the path of a massive freak storm had braced Sunday for the first raindrops that were expected later in the day, to be followed over the next few days by sheets of rain, high winds and even heavy snow.

The warning from officials to anyone who might be affected was simple: Be prepared and get out of the way.
    
Hurricane Sandy was headed north from the Caribbean, where it left nearly five dozen dead, to meet a winter storm and a cold front, plus high tides from a full moon, and experts said the rare hybrid storm that results will cause havoc over 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.

The danger was hardly limited to coastal areas. Forecasters were far more worried about inland flooding from the storm surge than they were about winds. Rains could saturate the ground, causing trees to topple into power lines, utility officials said, warning residents to prepare for several days at home without power.

President Barack Obama warned on Sunday that Hurricane Sandy was a "serious and big storm" and called on East Coast residents to heed the orders of state and local officials to protect themselves from its onslaught.
   
Obama, speaking after a briefing at the federal government's storm response center in Washington, said officials had assured him that they had all the resources they needed in place, and he stressed that "it is important for us to respond big and to respond fast" to the hurricane's onslaught.
   
"We're going to cut through red tape and we're not going to get bogged down in a lot of rules," said Obama, who was having to juggle both is re-election bid and his efforts to stay on top of the storm's impact just nine days before Election Day.


REUTERS/AP