Sandy moves inland, leaving 16 dead The vast storm that inundated New York City and much of the rest of the northeast US coast rolled inland on Tuesday with weaker winds but still leaving chaos in its wake. The storm that had been hurricane Sandy caused the deaths of at least 16 people in the US and Canada, cut power to more than 7m people and brought unprecedented flooding to Wall Street and much of lower Manhattan. Business life was wholly disrupted in the US financial centre, with all markets closed and data releases postponed: latest figures on US consumer confidence, due for release on Tuesday, were delayed until Thursday. New York's three major airports remained closed on Tuesday morning. The city's subway system was also closed, with seven tunnels flooded, as was the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel and a number of other river crossings. The subway system "has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night," said Joseph Lhota, chairman of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. A record storm surge hit southern Manhattan on Monday night, with levels of 14ft - about 4ft above the highest previously recorded, in 1960. It caused water to pour into subway tunnels as a confluence of hurricane-force wind and tide swamped the financial district. Authorities estimated that it would take between 14 hours and four days to clear subways. Hundreds of vehicles and buildings were damaged around New York and surrounding areas as underground garages, basements and ground floors were flooded. In parts of Manhattan several blocks from the rivers that flank it, several feet of water left the streets looking like canals. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York reported that almost 2m people had lost power and authorities were struggling to restore supplies as soon as possible. The damage to business and personal property was still being assessed as the storm passed inland but insurance experts estimated that it would be measured in the billions of dollars. Campaigning in the US presidential election came to a halt while President Barack Obama cancelled stump events to take charge of responses to the storm. He declared a major disaster in New York City, Long Island and parts of New Jersey, releasing millions of dollars in federal emergency aid. In several areas of the New Jersey coast, including Atlantic City, search and rescue teams were beginning operations to reach stranded people, Governor Chris Christie said on Tuesday morning. He said 2.4m households in New Jersey weer without power - twice the number affected by tropical storm Irene in 2011. Forecasters said the morning high tide in New York, due at about 9am EDT (noon GMT) could bring some additional flooding. Three towns in New Jersey were swamped with five feet of water after a levee on the Hackensack river was breached by the storm. Airlines were renewing services into and out of some other eastern seaboard cities hit by the storm. Airports in Washington, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore were operational on Tuesday morning, accepting international and domestic flights. While British Airways has cancelled all its Tuesday flights to New York as well as a Heathrow-Baltimore route, its 5pm flight to Washington remained on schedule as did four flights to Boston. According to flight-tracking website Flight Aware, almost 16,000 flights had been cancelled as of 9.30am eastern time on Tuesday, including 600 on Wednesday. "We expect more cancellations to happen [on Tuesday], especially in NYC, soon," said Flight Aware said. Lufthansa said it was still hoping to fly from Frankfurt to New York's JFK at 5.25pm, arriving at 9.30pm New York time. Across nine states and into southern Canada, authorities reported 16 deaths attributable to Sandy but on the whole emergency services seemed to have been well prepared and able to respond to tens of thousands of calls from the public. The death toll added to 66 confirmed fatalities when the same storm tore through the Caribbean over the weekend, most of them in Haiti. On Monday night, a nuclear power station in New Jersey issued an alert that high water levels could cause serious safety problems, but tidal levels subsided. The storm, which was downgraded from a hurricane to a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday, began to move west towards Pennsylvania and, as other weather systems developed in the midwest, caused heavy snowstorms in several states, particularly West Virginia. The stormfront was reported to be the largest ever known in the US, at about 900 miles wide and winds that peaked at more than 90mph but were slowing as the system crossed land, generating less energy as it did so. The threat of disruption to the election process would have repercussions if, as seemed likely on Tuesday, it struck Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states where Mr Obama and his rival Mitt Romney were in close contention for victory. New Yorkers were concentrating on when they could emerge to begin cleaning up their city. A fire in the borough of Queens destroyed 50 homes, already flooded, with firefighters using boats to rescue 25 people. It was still burning early Tuesday. Additional reporting by Stephen Foley, Robert Wright and Ed Crooks in New York and Rose Jacobs, Lina Saigol and Brooke Masters in London