Hurricane Sandy cuts short Statue of Liberty’s big reopening
The long-awaited reopening of the Statue of Liberty went off Sunday on the landmark’s 126th anniversary. But it abruptly closed, as did everything else in New York City, because of Hurricane Sandy.
The public will have to wait a few days longer to see the $30-million year-long makeover -- the new 393 steps to the crown, the new wheelchair access area and other upgrades. (Visiting the crown requires advance tickets.) The statue is closed Monday and Tuesday with no word yet on plans for Wednesday.
Meanwhile, here’s a time-lapse video made by EarthCam of the year’s construction as seen from above the pedestal.
And a word of warning: You might not want to share those Facebook and Twitter photos making the rounds Monday of the Statue of Liberty in the hurricane -- one with spooky cloud-laden skies and another with waves crashing as high as her crown.
“These images of the Statue of Liberty in the midst of a hurricane might be described by viewers using any number of adjectives: beautiful, ominous, prophetic, majestic, etc. For our purposes, however, the single most relevant adjective is ... fake,” says online debunker Snopes.com.
Snopes says the photo with what looks like surge-stoked waves comes from the 2004 thriller “The Day After Tomorrow.” The image with the spooky sky merges a photo of the statue with a supercell thunderstorm in Nebraska shot in 2004.
mary.forgione@latimes.com
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