0 on the crane 1,000 feet above the ground. it's called crane cam. we'll now turn crane cam over to rach rachel maddow as "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> we'll keep good custody to the crane cam. thanks for staying with us for the next hour. only eight days from now, a week from tomorrow, vote iing will bn nationwide in the presidential election. and on a normal night, the story of that election being this close to upon us, that would drive our coverage and dominate this news hour. but tonight is not a normal night. right outside this building in the biggest city in the country, there's a massive storm that's just made landfall and all day long has been imposing its will on the atlantic coast from the carolinas all the way up to new england. it has toppled cranes on skyscrapers. this is that crane falling today. yeah, it has toppled cranes on skyscrapers, it has flooded the eastern sea board. it has messed up the presidential election. but this giant storm called sandy is not over yet. the storm making landfall just outside atlantic city, new jersey, at 8:00 p.m. eastern time tonight. forecasters calling sandy a post pos post-tropical cyclone which might sound better, but it isn't better. all it means is the storm has lost the characteristics of a tropical cyclone but still has hurricane-force winds. we want to go near where sandy made landfall. thank you for joining us. what can you tell us about the scene at the site of the landfall? >> reporter: things are a little calmer now than a couple hours ago as sandy came ashore just a few miles south of where we are. the winds have kicked up again, but the rain has stopped. the tide, which the high tide came in at 8:00 p.m. and almost breached these dunes over here, the tide has gone back out. but it's just an eerie scene looking -- >> that's chris live on the scene at atlantic city, which is near where the storm made landfall. we lost the shot. that happens a lot in circumstances like this. and we'll try to get wcau back tonight if we can. do we have him back? chris, i think we lost you for a second, but you were explaining about the eeriness of the calm where you are right now. telling us what you're looking at down that road behind you. >> reporter: yeah the boardwalk, everyone knows the boardwalk, it took a et beating in this storm. earlier today a 50-foot section on the north end collapsed after some heavy wind and rain at the beginning of the storm. but it's held up very well after that. mandatory evacuation has been in place for atlantic city since sunday. most people heeded that warning. however, some did not. there's been a bit of a political pushback going on this evening. governor chris christie earlier this afternoon called out atlantic city mayor admonishing him for keeping shelters on this barrier island instead of bussing people off the island as they did last year during irene. and that's why we have a situation. let's walk over here and show you what the rest o of atlantic city is dealing with. this is an access ramp that takes you up to the boardwalk. so these are the streets of atlantic city down here. this is what it looks like. several feet of water covering the street. and here's where things became a problem. you have 400 people on the other side of the city who decided to ride out the storm and stay in their homes and as we talked earlier today, flood water was coming into those homes and there was no way for local emergency crews to get to them. so they had to mobilize national guard units to get those people out of their homes. things got so dangerous they had to pull the personnel back. so there were a couple hundred people still in their homes on the bay side of the city. the governor said it's a situation they will have to monitor and first thing in the morning at first light respond to and try to get those people out. not far from here just a couple blocks, one of the city's last resort shelters a guard unit went in there and pulled those people out and took them to atlantic city high school. so the shelters that were kept if place drawing criticism. power when the time comes. the new york governor warning that power outages at this point are to be expected. not to be wondered about, they are to be expected. you should be surprised if you're in the field of the storm and your power does not go out. he's saying the outages should be expected and should not be a cause for panic. >> it's made a dangerous situation on the bridges and the metropolitan area, we're going to be closing a number of bridges, there may be some brief intervals in electric service also, i want you to know. that may very well happen. don't be alarmed if it does. >> part of the choreography of a natural disaster in progress. a crisis like this one is seeing public officials like governor cuomo and the governor of new jersey and the mayor of new york city michael bloomberg holding regular news conferences to update residents on what to expect. it's useful information and sometimes reassuring. if you're not too freaked out, it can also be entertaining. but the thing it never is is partisan. this is a nonpartisan time for our elected officials. this is the part of their job that's about cooperation and taking charge of public safety and informing people about what they need to be informed about. because of that, what can seem weird on a day like today, even out of the range of the storm, what can seem weird is politicking. even when a storm hits eight days before a very important national general election, especially when that storm takes aim for the most densely populated part of this country. president obama cancelled his event in florida. he had flown down to florida for the event before canceling both today's event and tomorrow's full schedule in wisconsin before flying back to d.c. this morning. back in the white house, the president was briefed by security officials. he also spoke to cameras himself. president clinton held president obama's campaign event in orlando without him. as well as a second event in ohio with vice president biden. the republican challenger mitt romney cancelled one of three campaign events on his schedule today. he did still address crowds in ohio and davenport, iowa. he held a town hall with voters in ohio by teleconference. but now romney's slate of events for tomorrow has been cleared. mr. romney's running mate paul ryan held one event in florida before cutting the day short and heading to his home in wisconsin. in terms of hurricane sandy's direct effect on next week's election, chuck todd reports tonight that the fema director craig foou gait has told states if they incur extra costs because of the storm, if they have to move polling places or bring in generators for power, should sandy cause elections officials any expensive changes, states and cities will be reimbursed for those costs by the federal disaster relief, ev if one doesn't believe in that sort of thing. this is not a time for ideology. let's bring in michelle franzen in battery park in lower manhattan. everybody has been keeping an eye on the storm surge and wondering how high the water is going to rise. and what threat it's going to impose. what can you tell us about the conditions and how they are changing now? >> reporter: they have certainly deteriorat deteriorat deteriorated. we have a photo to show you. there's some water that's been reported gushing into the brooklyn battery tunnel. that's not a good sign of all this water pouring into lower manhattan. we have a picture of that to show you. obviously, it's a dangerous situation for emergency workers too. trying to assess the damage or what's going on exactly. and then back here at battery, we've also reached a new record. 11.87-foot record. the last time that happened was in 1821. let me show you back here. this is certainly not -- this water has been coming over here in battery park. these are waves that are just coming in. this is grass right here. you have the whole walkway and all the lights have been cut down here to the battery area and other areas are still showing they have power whether that's generator power or whether the utility company is selectively taking downpour, we don't know. but that's part of their plan. they are hoping that they will be able to shut down parts of the grid in order to make it more easily to restore those areas after sandy comes through. of course, we're still continuing to get these big gusts. there's also some localized street flooding also in the lower manhattan area. so a lot of areas here that are still of great concern. we're just going to have to wait to see what the next few hours bring. we're past the high tide point, but as you well know, rachel, we're in a big unknown right now. >> just briefly in terms of what we have seen already, we have seen the flooding in the tunnel. you described there's some minor street flooding at least further south of where you are. do we know anything about the extent of the street flooding or how much is expected given how high the surge came up? >> reporter: well, they were talking initially about the surge between 6 and 12 feet. so it's just a matter of just how long the water is going to continue to inundate this lower man h manhattan area and whether it's going to compromise the subway systems or not. it's a big system down here. a lot of train stops and we're just waiting word to see what those systems look like, the subway systems tonight. but we're still just trying to assess the water as it comes over here. it's just not backing down at all yet. it's still rising here in battery park city. >> michelle franzen, thank you. and good luck and stay safe down there. we appreciate it. >> we have much more to come on the storm and on the campaign. stay with us.