New York, Evacuation | featured news

Hundreds of thousands of people were told to flee low-lying areas, New York and Washington shut down their subways, federal offices and local schools closed, and presidential candidates curtailed their campaigning as Hurricane Sandy roared ever closer to the Eastern Seaboard on Sunday, promising epic storm surges, howling winds and drenching rain across much of the Mid-Atlantic region and Northeast.

Nearly 100,000 people were ordered to flee the rising Susquehanna River on Thursday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee dumped more rain across the Northeast, socking areas still recovering from Hurricane Irene and closing major highways at the morning rush. At Binghamton, N.Y., the wide river broke a flood record and flowed over retaining walls downtown. Interstate 88 was closed and emergency responders scrambled to evacuate holdouts who didn’t heed warnings to leave neighborhoods.

A busy terminal in New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport was reopened on Monday after a partial evacuation prompted by an unattended bag was found, according to a spokesman for American Airlines.

The main terminal at New York's LaGuardia Airport was evacuated Saturday morning, stranding hundreds of passengers, after a man entered the building with a fake bomb, police said.