Long Beach officials urge residents to evacuate

Flooding in parts of the Canals and West End; scattered power outages reported

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Long Beach officials continued to urge residents to evacuate the city and barrier island on Monday, as parts of the city have already flooded — mainly parts of the Canals and the West End — as Hurricane Sandy barrels toward the New York metropolitan area.

“It’s pretty bad in the Canals and parts of the West End,” said city spokesman Gordon Tepper. “We urge residents to take it extremely seriously …”

At noon, the city reported 358 power outages in Long Beach. New York State Police also announced the following road closures: The Meadowbrook State Parkway, south of Merrick Road; The Wantagh State Parkway, south of Merrick Road; and The Loop Parkway and Robert Moses Causeway, south of Montauk Highway. Residents of Lido Beach and Long Beach will be able to access the eastbound Loop Parkway and northbound Meadowbrook Parkway for evacuation purposes.

As of 5 a.m. Monday morning, hurricane Sandy was located 385 miles southeast of the New York. The storm is moving at 15-miles-per-hour up the East Coast on Monday morning and will soon be starting to turn to the left and aiming for the Delaware-New Jersey shoreline, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla.

At 5 a.m. on Oct. 29, this “superstorm” was intensifying, increasing the certainty that it will bring hurricane-force winds up to 85 mph, drenching rain and heavy tidal surges from Maryland-Delaware to Long Island and beyond. In its 5 a.m. briefing, the National Hurricane Center predicted that there was an 80 percent chance the South Shore could see hurricane-force winds in the coming days, and there was a 50 to 70 percent chance that coastal areas of Long Island could see a tidal surge of at least four feet. Sandy's greatest impacts will be felt on the South Shore from Monday afternoon into Monday night, according to the National Weather Service. The storm was predicted to weaken Tuesday into Wednesday.

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