Hurricane Sandy has grounded thousands of flights. American Airlines, Delta and United canceled all flights through Tuesday out of New York. As Hurricane Sandy batters cities up the east coast, a Wichita couple finds themselves stuck in New York.
“They put us on a new flight for Wednesday morning, and now we got an email that that one is canceled so it’s the whole run around to find something to get us back home,” said Wichitan Jordan Doom.
The weekend was already a big one for the couple. Jordan Doom proposed to his girlfriend Natalie Vandervort. She said yes. Now their romantic weekend gets a little cozier. 8 people in a 2 bedroom apartment are prepping for the storm.
“They're telling us to take precaution. We went to the grocery store, it was extremely packed. Everyone is buying water, supplies just in case the power goes out,” said Vandervort.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has already ordered thousands to evacuate their homes.
“We are 6 blocks away from the river and they have evacuated the first 4 blocks. So luckily we're up high enough where they haven't evacuated our area,” said Doom.
Doom visited a pier at around 4:00 Monday afternoon to see how bad it was.
“Right now it's just really strong winds which obviously we're used to that back in Kansas. The rains starting to pick up a little bit, and really big waves crashing into the pier,” said Doom.
He’s more excited than worried.
“I'm kind of excited to experience the hurricane. I experienced the past tornado we had, you always hear about people talking about hurricanes, but we're going to experience this. We're taking precautions but we feel pretty safe,” said Doom.
While these Kansas tourists have experienced tornadoes, this will be their first hurricane.
“It's been more memorable for us, more of an adventure for us to start our new relationship,” said Vandervort.
About one quarter of all U.S. flights travel in or out of New York airports each day. New York City's governor expects the tides to surge through at least 10:30 Monday night.
