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New York City’s subways stopped running Sunday night. (Angel Zayas / Demotix)
People board up their business in Queens as Hurricane Sandy bears down. (Getty Images)
Hurricane Sandy is strengthening – and it’s closing in on New York City.
According to the National Hurricane Center’s 5 a.m. advisory, the storm’s maximum sustained winds have reached 85 miles per hour.
The eye of the storm was located about 385 miles away from New York City at 5 a.m., with Sandy’s rain and winds looming. The worst of the storm – including a “life-threatening” seawater surge of anywhere from 6 to 11 feet – is expected in the region after 4 p.m.
Sandy is currently heading north and should turn inland toward the northwest today.
Millions of New Yorkers grappled with mandatory evacuations everywhere from Battery Park City to Coney Island to the Rockaways, a total mass-transit shutdown, and widespread school and service closures.
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In preparation for Frankenstorm — expected to peak in the city at about 4 p.m. — officials:
* Shut city schools and mass transit until further notice.
* Ordered the mandatory evacuation of 375,000 people from low-lying areas.
* Put thousands of extra cops on duty and reassigned others to storm duty.
* Mobilized the National Guard to deal with impending mayhem.
* Declared a state of emergency for New York, qualifying it for federal aid.
And, with the effects of Sandy expected to linger into Wednesday, there was no word on when things would be back to normal.
The storm was likely to be the worst in the region since 1938, when a hurricane killed 60 people in New York state alone and sent the new Empire State Building swaying.
Getting anywhere today will be a daunting task.
Rail and bus service is nonexistent. Metro-North, LIRR, NJ Transit, PATH and Amtrak service across the Northeast is shut down, as is the Staten Island Ferry.
City-area airports were still open late last night but were expecting only a handful of flights. Just about all flights today have been canceled.
“The afternoon commute should be just horrific. We’re talking record-level flooding along the Hudson River, plenty of debris being flown around, widespread outages,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Mark Paquette. He added that high tides will surge as much as 11 feet above normal high tide tonight because of storm surges and a full moon.
City schools were closed, along with CUNY, Columbia, NYU and several other institutions.
All city courts were closed, too, except for arraignments and emergency applications.
But city government offices were expected to be open. Mayor Bloomberg said city workers were supposed to show up.
Even tourists are losing out.
Not only are the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island closed, but all Broadway and off-Broadway shows were canceled last night and tonight.
Marcelo Teixeira, 27, a Ph.D. student from DC, lamented his luck last night outside the Foxwoods Theatre, home of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
“We drove all the way from DC for this. The show was the biggest event of the weekend,” he said, adding he would have to drive home tonight.
Major movie-house chains, including AMC, Clearview and City Cinemas, also closed their theaters.
At JFK Airport, Canadian Mike Jakmakian, 43, was stunned to see his 9:30 p.m. American Airlines flight home to Montreal canceled.
“What am I going to do? Hitch? I’m not staying here ’til Wednesday. That’s for sure,’’ he said.
And don’t expect to try riding Sandy out with a good book in a warm library. All public libraries in the city are closed.
In New Jersey, Atlantic City’s 12 casinos are shuttered for only the fourth time in the 34-year history of legalized gambling there.
The New York Stock Exchange, which originally had planned to conduct electronic trading, will be completely shut. The last time the Big Board was closed because of weather was during 1985’s Hurricane Gloria.
City police started doing extended tours yesterday, and there will be thousands of additional cops on duty.
Patrol cars will illuminate their roof racks to make them easier to spot, and plainclothes and organized-crime cops will be in uniform to show police presence.
The NYPD is also having cops drive buses to evacuate people, and deploying boats to assist in evacuations in low-lying areas.
Early yesterday, Bloomberg ordered coastal areas, called “Zone A,” to be evacuated by 7 p.m.
The zone — which has 375,000 residents — includes Battery Park City and the Lower East Side, parts of Brooklyn, including Red Hook and Coney Island, the Rockaways in Queens, City Island and parts of the South Bronx and Staten Island.
FIND OUT WHICH ZONE YOU LIVE IN
More than 1,000 people chose to go to city-provided shelters, while others went to stay with friends and family.
Those who remain behind are “not going to get arrested, but they are being, I would argue, very selfish,” Bloomberg fumed.
New York Downtown Hospital, in the Financial District was among several hospitals that began evacuating patients.
The city took a stern stance with residents of 26 public housing projects in the threatened coastal areas. Elevators and hot water were being shut down in those buildings. Bloomberg said, to protect residents.
“If electricity goes out, the elevators will stop, and people will be trapped in them,” he noted.
President Obama declared a state of emergency and asked residents to heed the orders of state and local authorities.
“This is a serious and big storm,” he said.
Sandy is expected to make landfall this afternoon or early evening at Atlantic City, but the winds will be worse away from the center, meteorologist Tom Kines of AccuWeather said.
“It’s not your typical hurricane,” he said.
Forecasters said Sandy would affect the lives of 50 million Americans and could wreak havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. Some areas could get as much as two feet of snow.
The peak sustained winds of about 40 mph are expected this evening and tonight.
Gov. Cuomo warned yesterday that there would be speed restrictions on the MTA’s seven bridges if sustained winds hit 30 mph, that motorcycles and some other vehicles would be barred if they reach 40 and that they would be closed above 60. Closures would be made case by case, he said.
In addition, Cuomo said 1,175 National Guard members would be mobilized, including 200 in the city and 400 on Long Island.
Additional reporting by Beth DeFalco, Jennifer Fermino, Carl Campanile and Andy Soltis
Photo credit of clouds forming over New York City: Dicko / Butters / Splash News