Delaware now officially in the Sandy disaster declaration

President Obama has officially declared Delaware a disaster area in anticipation of what Hurricane Sandy will do the first state in the next 24 hours.

The order is retroactive to Saturday and the White House says it allows: “FEMA to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.  Emergency protective measures, limited to direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding.”

Meanwhile, the Delaware beaches continue to take a beating more than 24 hours after the first rain began. Route 1 remains closed.  A water rescue was conducted overnight in Oak Orchard where roads flooded faster than residents thought would happen.  

While the state is relying on social media to get out information there is one piece item on twitter that is absolutely FALSE.  A report was put out that the Indian River Inlet Bridge had collapsed.  Maria Counts a reporter with our content partner, Coastal Point, verifies first hand that is not true.

And while residents wait for the worst of the storm to pass there is a new report just released by a real estate and analyst group, Core Data.  They survey 8,894 properties, which are potentially in the path of the storm surge from Sandy.  The report claims there could be as much as $2.1billion dollars in potential damage from the storm.  

Our newsworks correspondent Chuck Snyder says the wave action Monday morning were the highest he’s ever seen and he was 7 years old during the storm of 1962.

Here’s the 10:30pm Monday update from Sussex County.