North America

Sandy leaves 600K homes without power nine days on

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses are still without electricity nine days after hurricane Sandy slammed into the US East Coast, United States as another huge storm is said to be on its way.

According to a report released by the Department of Energy on Wednesday, over 650,000 homes and businesses located in the country’s eastern states remain without power, particularly affecting the states of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The superstorm has left a gas shortage across the northeastern United States, prompting opportunistic price gouging with a gallon selling at as much as USD 30.

Local authorities and the International Red Cross Society have stepped up relief efforts as many Americans are infuriated with the slow response of rescue and relief teams.

A total of over 8,500,000 combined total peak outages have been reported for all 21 states affected by the superstorm.

The hybrid superstorm slammed into the East Coast on Monday killing 103 people in the United States, including 41 in New York City. Deaths were also reported in the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Maryland.

The number of US deaths has exceeded the toll from the Caribbean, where Sandy killed 69 people as it was charging through last week. Sandy also killed at least two people in Canada.

The economic losses inflicted by the huge storm have been estimated at 50 billion US dollars, according to Moody’s Analytics.

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