“The state of New Jersey took it in the neck worse than any other state,” said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in an interview with CBS News Tuesday morning. “It’s going to take us a while to dig out from under it, but we will dig out from under it.”

Several towns in New Jersey - Moonachie, Little Ferry and Carlstadt - were “devastated” by the sudden pounding of 4 to 5 feet of water, Jeanne Baratta, Bergen County Executive Chief of Staff, told Reuters.

The mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, told MSNBC that half the city was flooded and that emergency crews could only reach a few areas.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued an alert at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey due to rising water levels in the plant’s intake structure. The alert was the second lowest of four warning levels.

Several homes were reported washed into the sea along the coast at Fire Island, New York.

Many towns along the New Jersey shore, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were flooded.

From the Carolinas to Ohio, officials said 16 people were killed, three of them children, one just eight years old, according to The Associated Press.

Many of the victims died because of falling trees.

Schools and businesses were closed again on Tuesday, and the New York Stock Exchange remained closed as well; the first time since 1888 that weather has halted trading for two consecutive days.

"This will be one for the record books," said John Miksad of Consolidated Edison, which powers New York City.

"This will be the largest storm-related outage in our history," he said.

The storm surge so many had feared exceeded predictions and rose to a record 13 feet (4 meters) in New York City, flooding roads, and seven tunnels in the shuttered subway system.

The New York subway system “is 108 years old, but it has never faced a disaster as devastating as what we experienced last night,” Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota said in a statement.

New York’s subway system carries about 5 million people a day, and the effect of salt water flooding could delay getting trains back up and running again.

In the New York City borough of Queens, 200 firefighters fought a massive blaze early Tuesday in a flooded area that had destroyed at least 50 homes.

Rescuers climbed an awning to reach 25 people in an upstairs apartment who were trapped in the fire, and carry them to safety by boat, according to WABC-TV.

Another dramatic, mass rescue played out at New York University’s Tisch Hospital, where a failed generator forced the evacuations of more than 200 patients including 20 babies from the neonatal intensive care unit, some on respirators with backup battery power, reported The Associated Press.

"We knew that this was going to be a very dangerous storm, and the storm has met our expectations," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "This is a once-in-a-long-time storm."

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in the New York City area on Tuesday, which makes federal funding available to people affected by the storm.

The damage toll from the storm could come to $20 billion.

The weather system that was once Hurricane Sandy is still expected to produce strong winds and heavy rains over portions of the Mid-Atlantic, and 2-3 feet of snow in the mountains of West Virginia, according to the National Weather Service.