Hurricane Sandy moved ashore along the U.S. eastern seaboard Monday with winds, storm surge and rain that will endanger up to 50 million people for days.
Thousands of miles away, travelers at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field were stranded. In some situations, fliers were waiting for a ride home.
A spokesperson for the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority says that those who are flying need to stay in touch with the airline, not the airport.
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"It's going to take a while for the hurricane to pass completely, and then once that does there's a ripple effect for all of these kinds of flights," said airport spokesperson Katie Jones.
Airlines worked with travelers over the weekend and advised them that if they were trying to head to certain parts of the east coast, it wouldn't happen Monday morning.
Those warnings held true when as of 4 a.m., dozens of flights scheduled for Philadelphia or Washington D.C. area airports were canceled. Flights to other cities throughout the U.S. are canceled as well, as the planes may be grounded in East Coast cities.
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Myla Tayco of Chula Vista told NBC 7 that she went to a wedding in the New Jersey and found out this morning that her flight was canceled because of the storm.
Tayco said she is staying in a hotel in Times Square, waiting for the storm to be over.
"We talked to our airline and we tried to get the earliest flight back, and it looks like it might be Thursday if we're lucky," she said.
San Diego Gas & Electric is planning to send 40 employees and 20 pieces of equipment later this week to help with power outage and utility issues.
The San Diego Fire Department's swift water rescue team is on standby.
Airlines canceled nearly 14,000 flights and Amtrak began suspending train service across the Northeast. New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore moved to shut down their subways, buses and trains.
Gale-force winds blew overnight over coastal North Carolina, southeastern Virginia, the Delmarva Peninsula and coastal New Jersey.
Sandy was expected to hook inland Monday, colliding with a wintry storm moving in from the west and cold air streaming down from the Arctic, and then cut across into Pennsylvania and travel up through New York state.
