Mayor Bloomberg as well as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo have issued a state of emergency that includes shutting down the entire rail and bus system by 7pm tonight along with a mandatory evacuation of New York’s “Zone A”, which is the state’s lowest lying coastal area. Here’s a pic of the evacuation areas courtesy of WNYC:
Bloomberg has also announced that the entire school system will be shut down Monday as all signs point to Hurricane Sandy becoming the worst storm the northeast has ever faced when it meets a Canadian cold front along with a storm from the west—in other words, a “perfect storm”.
65 public schools are opening their doors today to evacuees from these low-lying areas and as of 5pm today, all city parks will be closed. The storm is set to touch down somewhere along the Southern New Jersey coastline on Monday, and make its way north to New York, with the bulk of the storm slamming the entire area late Monday or early Tuesday.
New Jersey has already called for Atlantic City to shut down its casinos by 4pm today, and Governor Chris Christie has called for mandatory evacuations for all the New Jersey coastal communities. A shutdown of the NJ Transit service is also set to begin. Here’s a graph of Sandy’s path of destruction along with a proposed timeline:
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