Cuomo: N.Y. superstorm damage could total $33B

NEW YORK — Damage in New York state from Superstorm Sandy could total $33 billion when all is said and done, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday as the state began cleaning up from a nor’easter that dumped snow, brought down power lines and left hundreds of thousands of new customers in darkness.

A damage forecasting firm had previously estimated that Sandy might have caused $30 billion to $50 billion in economic losses from the Carolinas to Maine, including property damage, lost business and extra living expenses. Cuomo’s estimate will likely push the bill even higher.

A damage estimate of even $50 billion total would make Sandy the second most expensive storm in U.S. history, right behind Hurricane Katrina. Sandy inundated parts of New York City and New Jersey with a storm surge as high as 14 feet, killed more than 100 people and left more than 8.5 million people without power at its peak.

Sandy left more people in the dark than any previous storm, the Department of Energy has said, and it left drivers desperate for gas when it complicated fuel deliveries.

“We are going to have to look at a ground-up redesign,” Cuomo said of the power and fuel supply systems. “With power outages, you paralyze the nation, and chaos ensues.”

In particular, Cuomo noted New York City’s problems, largely due to the surge of seawater that inundated utilities lying 15 to 20 stories below ground.

“That’s a brilliant engineering masterpiece, yes, but if Manhattan floods, you flood all that infrastructure,” he said. “We don’t even have a way to pump it out.”

On Thursday, a nor’easter that stymied recovery efforts from Sandy pulled away from New York and New Jersey, leaving hundreds of thousands of new people in darkness but failing to swamp shorelines anew, as feared.

Residents from Connecticut to Rhode Island saw 3 to 6 inches of snow on Wednesday. Worcester, Mass., had 8 inches of snow, and Freehold, N.J., had just over a foot overnight. Some parts of Connecticut got a foot or more.

From Brooklyn to storm-battered sections of the Jersey shore and Connecticut, about 750,000 customers — more than 200,000 from the new storm — in the region were without power in temperatures near freezing, some after already living for days in the dark.

“We lost power last week, just got it back for a day or two, and now we lost it again,” said John Monticello, of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. “Every day it’s the same now: turn on the gas burner for heat. Instant coffee. Use the iPad to find out what’s going on in the rest of the world.”

But most were just grateful the new storm didn’t bring a fresh round of devastation.

“For a home without power, it’s great. It came through the storm just great,” said Iliay Bardash, 61, a computer programmer on Staten Island without electricity since last week. “But things are not worse, and for that I am thankful.”

Nearby, Vladimir Repnin emerged from his powerless home with a snow shovel in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and a question from someone cut off from the outside world.

“Who won? Obama?” he asked.

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