By Rosie Ngure
Many Americans were left without news coverage last night as Superstorm Sandy cut off the connection to a number of website servers.
The flooding of a data centre in Lower Manhattan, New York, and the loss of power contributed to websites Gawker, Buzzfeed, Gizmodo and The Huffington Post appearing offline.
After going temporarily offline, the websites found different ways of reaching their audiences – mostly through social media.
We’re continuing to work on our servers and will be back online as soon as is possible. We miss you already. Stay dry.
— Gawker (@Gawker) October 30, 2012
Even when theres no power, we can still keep up with each other and find out whats going on with twitter and our phones. Pretty crazy
— Gizmodo (@Gizmodo) October 30, 2012
Our site is down. Problems with NY-area servers due to Sandy. Be back ASAP.
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) October 29, 2012
The Huffington Post also tweeted, “We’re having technical difficulties due to power outages. Working to get site back up. Newsroom still monitoring Sandy. Will keep tweeting.”
A large number of these websites have since been able to restore their normal service.
Meanwhile people from all over the world have taken to Twitter and Facebook to offer sympathy to the people of New York affected by the storm which hit US shores significantly over the past couple of days, reportedly leaving 38 people dead.
President Barack Obama has since declared a “major disaster” in New York and Long Island, and suspended his election campaign alongside Mitt Romney in the swing state of Ohio.