At least 6 million people across the mid-Atlantic region are without power Tuesday morning after Hurricane Sandy inundated homes and underground infrastructure, toppled trees and downed power lines. Surreal scenes of a darkened Manhattan emerged after flooding and a substation explosion Monday night knocked out power for most buildings below 39th Street.

A statement on New York utility Con Edison’s website said more than 650,000 customers lost power in “the largest storm-related outage in our history.” The utility predicted that many outages, particularly those related to the substation explosion at East 14th Street, would last up to a week. (See related “Photos: World’s Worst Power Outages“)

Also Monday night, New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Generating Station, the oldest