A deluge of water floods the Battery Tunnel in Manhattan as superstorm Sandy made its approach in New York, Oct 29, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]

In New York, officials evacuated neighbors of a 90-story super luxury apartment building under construction after its crane partially collapsed in high winds, prompting fears the entire rig could crash to the ground.

New York electric utility Con Edison said it expected "record-size outages", with 588,000 customers in the city and nearby Westchester County without power. The company is facing both falling trees knocking down power lines from above and flood waters swamping underground systems from below.

While Sandy does not have the intensity of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, it killed 66 people in the Caribbean last week before pounding US coastal areas as it moved north.

An AccuWeather meteorologist said Sandy "is unfolding as the Northeast's Katrina," and others said Sandy could be the largest storm to hit the mainland in US history.

Off North Carolina, the US Coast Guard rescued 14 of the 16 crew members who abandoned the replica ship HMS Bounty, using helicopters to lift them from life rafts. The Coast Guard later recovered the body of an "unresponsive" 42-year-old woman while continuing to search for the 63-year-old captain of the ship, which sank in 18-foot (5.5 meters) seas.

In New Jersey, Exelon Corp declared an alert around its Oyster Creek nuclear power plant be ause of rising waters, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Officials said if waters rise further, they may be forced to use emergency water supplies from a fire hose to cool spent uranium fuel rods.

An alert-level incident, the second-lowest of four action levels, means there's a "potential substantial degradation in the level of safety" at a reactor.

A man walks through a mostly deserted Times Square ahead of Superstorm Hurricane Sandy in New York, Oct 29, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]