Flooded data center takes down websites

NEW YORK (AP) — Flooded data centers in downtown Manhattan brought down Gawker, Huffington Post and many popular New York-based blogs Tuesday while phone and cable companies were scrambling to assess damage and restore service in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. 

Photos: Superstorm Sandy

News and gossip site Gawker.com was still down in the afternoon, but Huffington Post was back online. Their webhost, Datagram Inc. said power was out, and flooding in their basement was preventing their backup generators from pumping fuel. Internet connectivity from three providers was also down.

Verizon Communications Inc., the biggest phone company in the region, said some facilities in downtown Manhattan are flooded, shutting down phone and Internet service.

Renesys Corp., which monitors the pathways of the Internet, said the storm caused major outages in New Jersey and New York. The city is a major transit point for international telecommunications traffic, and the firm said carriers were scrambling to route traffic around it.

Cablevision Systems Corp., which serves parts of Long Island, New York City and New Jersey, says it's experiencing widespread outages due to the loss of power. The company doesn't yet know the extent of outages in New Jersey, which bore the brunt of the storm.

Time Warner Cable Inc., the other big New York-area cable company, said it had no reports of significant damage to its network, but customers without power obviously had no cable service.

AT&T Inc. says there are "issues" in hard-hit areas, and it's in the early stages of checking for damage and restoring service.