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One week after Sandy slammed the tri-state, most subways were running and schools were reopening Monday while hundreds of thousands were still without electricity, shivering through another night as temperatures dipped into the 30s.
The week could bring new challenges -- an Election Day without power in hundreds of polling places, and a Nor'easter expected to hit by Wednesday, with the potential for 55 mph gusts and more beach erosion, flooding and rain.
"Well, the first storm flooded me out, and my landlord tells me there's a big crack in the ceiling, so I guess there's a chance this storm could do more damage," John Lewis said at a shelter in New Rochelle, N.Y. "I was hoping to get back in there sooner rather than later, but it doesn't look good."
New York City schools resume Monday, but 65 schools will remain closed -- 57 because of storm damage and another eight because they are serving as shelters, officials said.
For the thousands displaced by Sandy, over the weekend New York City officials handed out blankets and urged victims to go to overnight shelters or daytime warming centers. Buses were being provided to take people to shelters if they did not have other ways to get there.
At the same time, government leaders began to grapple with a daunting longer-term problem: where to find housing for the tens of thousands of people whose homes could be uninhabitable for weeks or months because of a combination of storm damage and cold weather.
Mayor Bloomberg said 30,000 to 40,000 New Yorkers may need to be relocated — a monumental task in a city where housing is scarce and expensive — though he said that number would probably drop to 20,000 within a couple of weeks as power is restored in more places.
In a heavily flooded Staten Island neighborhood, Sara Zavala has been sleeping under two blankets and layers of clothing because the power was out. She had a propane heater but turns it on for only a couple of hours in the morning, not wanting to sleep with it running at night.
"When I woke up, I was like, 'It's freezing.' And I thought, 'This can't go on too much longer,'" said Zavala, a nursing home admissions coordinator.
Sandy made a direct hit on the New Jersey coastline, killing more than 70 people in the tri-state area.
A week later, gasoline shortages persisted across the region; odd-even rationing is under way in northern New Jersey in an echo of the gas crisis of the 1970s. More than 900,000 homes and businesses were still without power in New Jersey, and nearly 700,000 in New York City, its northern suburbs and Long Island.
On Tuesday, voting machines in hundreds of locations will be operating on generator power, some polling stations are being moved and there are likely to be delays in reporting election results in a few closely contested races because of extended deadlines for counting ballots cast by mail.
After the abrupt cancellation of Sunday's New York City Marathon, some of those who had been planning to run the 26.2-mile race through the city streets instead volunteered their time, handing out toothbrushes, batteries, sweatshirts and other supplies on Staten Island.
Thousands of other athletes from around the world ran anyway inside Central Park, where a little more than four laps around it amounted to a marathon. "A lot of people just want to finish what they've started," said Lance Svendsen, organizer of a group called Run Anyway.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York state is facing "a massive, massive housing problem" for those whose neighborhoods or buildings are in such bad shape that they won't have power for weeks or months.
"I don't know that anybody has ever taken this number of people and found housing for them overnight," Bloomberg said. "We don't have a lot of empty housing in this city," he added. "We're not going to let anybody go sleeping in the streets. ... But it's a challenge, and we're working on it."
The mayor and the governor gave no details of where and how the victims might be housed.
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita smashed the Gulf Coast in 2005, hundreds of thousands of victims were put up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in trailers, hotels, cruise ships and apartments across several states for months and even years.
George W. Contreras, associate director of the emergency and disaster management program at Metropolitan College of New York, speculated that large encampments of trailers might be set up at a stadium, in a park or in some other open space in the city — something he couldn't recall being done in New York ever before.
"The amount of actual units the city might have in buildings is probably very limited, so I think people will be in FEMA shelters for a while," he said.
On a basketball court flanked by powerless apartment buildings in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, volunteers for the city handed out bagels, diapers, water, blankets and other necessities. Genice Josey stuffed a blanket into a garbage bag.
"Nights are the worst because you feel like you're outside when you're inside," said Josey, who sleeps under three blankets and wears longjohns under her pajamas. "You shiver yourself to sleep." She added: "It's like we're going back to barbaric times where we had to go find food and clothing and shelter."
On Staten Island, emergency management officials distributed leaflets urging people to take shelter from the cold. But "people are apprehensive and don't want to leave their houses. It's a definite problem," said Fred Melendez, who helped run a shelter at Tottenville High School that was nearly empty of storm victims Sunday afternoon.
Fearing looters, Nick Veros and his relatives were hoping to hold out in their storm-damaged Staten Island home until power was restored. He figured the indoor temperature would plunge into the 40s.
"If we get two consecutive below-freezing days, I'm probably going to have to drain the water out of the pipes," he said, "and then we'll have to get out of the house."
NEW YORK CITY
NEW JERSEY
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[h=5]Copyright Associated Press / NBC New York[/h]
One week after Sandy slammed the tri-state, most subways were running and schools were reopening Monday while hundreds of thousands were still without electricity, shivering through another night as temperatures dipped into the 30s.
The week could bring new challenges -- an Election Day without power in hundreds of polling places, and a Nor'easter expected to hit by Wednesday, with the potential for 55 mph gusts and more beach erosion, flooding and rain.
"Well, the first storm flooded me out, and my landlord tells me there's a big crack in the ceiling, so I guess there's a chance this storm could do more damage," John Lewis said at a shelter in New Rochelle, N.Y. "I was hoping to get back in there sooner rather than later, but it doesn't look good."
New York City schools resume Monday, but 65 schools will remain closed -- 57 because of storm damage and another eight because they are serving as shelters, officials said.
For the thousands displaced by Sandy, over the weekend New York City officials handed out blankets and urged victims to go to overnight shelters or daytime warming centers. Buses were being provided to take people to shelters if they did not have other ways to get there.
At the same time, government leaders began to grapple with a daunting longer-term problem: where to find housing for the tens of thousands of people whose homes could be uninhabitable for weeks or months because of a combination of storm damage and cold weather.
Mayor Bloomberg said 30,000 to 40,000 New Yorkers may need to be relocated — a monumental task in a city where housing is scarce and expensive — though he said that number would probably drop to 20,000 within a couple of weeks as power is restored in more places.
In a heavily flooded Staten Island neighborhood, Sara Zavala has been sleeping under two blankets and layers of clothing because the power was out. She had a propane heater but turns it on for only a couple of hours in the morning, not wanting to sleep with it running at night.
"When I woke up, I was like, 'It's freezing.' And I thought, 'This can't go on too much longer,'" said Zavala, a nursing home admissions coordinator.
Sandy made a direct hit on the New Jersey coastline, killing more than 70 people in the tri-state area.
A week later, gasoline shortages persisted across the region; odd-even rationing is under way in northern New Jersey in an echo of the gas crisis of the 1970s. More than 900,000 homes and businesses were still without power in New Jersey, and nearly 700,000 in New York City, its northern suburbs and Long Island.
On Tuesday, voting machines in hundreds of locations will be operating on generator power, some polling stations are being moved and there are likely to be delays in reporting election results in a few closely contested races because of extended deadlines for counting ballots cast by mail.
After the abrupt cancellation of Sunday's New York City Marathon, some of those who had been planning to run the 26.2-mile race through the city streets instead volunteered their time, handing out toothbrushes, batteries, sweatshirts and other supplies on Staten Island.
Thousands of other athletes from around the world ran anyway inside Central Park, where a little more than four laps around it amounted to a marathon. "A lot of people just want to finish what they've started," said Lance Svendsen, organizer of a group called Run Anyway.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York state is facing "a massive, massive housing problem" for those whose neighborhoods or buildings are in such bad shape that they won't have power for weeks or months.
"I don't know that anybody has ever taken this number of people and found housing for them overnight," Bloomberg said. "We don't have a lot of empty housing in this city," he added. "We're not going to let anybody go sleeping in the streets. ... But it's a challenge, and we're working on it."
The mayor and the governor gave no details of where and how the victims might be housed.
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita smashed the Gulf Coast in 2005, hundreds of thousands of victims were put up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in trailers, hotels, cruise ships and apartments across several states for months and even years.
George W. Contreras, associate director of the emergency and disaster management program at Metropolitan College of New York, speculated that large encampments of trailers might be set up at a stadium, in a park or in some other open space in the city — something he couldn't recall being done in New York ever before.
"The amount of actual units the city might have in buildings is probably very limited, so I think people will be in FEMA shelters for a while," he said.
On a basketball court flanked by powerless apartment buildings in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, volunteers for the city handed out bagels, diapers, water, blankets and other necessities. Genice Josey stuffed a blanket into a garbage bag.
"Nights are the worst because you feel like you're outside when you're inside," said Josey, who sleeps under three blankets and wears longjohns under her pajamas. "You shiver yourself to sleep." She added: "It's like we're going back to barbaric times where we had to go find food and clothing and shelter."
On Staten Island, emergency management officials distributed leaflets urging people to take shelter from the cold. But "people are apprehensive and don't want to leave their houses. It's a definite problem," said Fred Melendez, who helped run a shelter at Tottenville High School that was nearly empty of storm victims Sunday afternoon.
Fearing looters, Nick Veros and his relatives were hoping to hold out in their storm-damaged Staten Island home until power was restored. He figured the indoor temperature would plunge into the 40s.
"If we get two consecutive below-freezing days, I'm probably going to have to drain the water out of the pipes," he said, "and then we'll have to get out of the house."
NEW YORK CITY
- Con Ed has about 5,000 customers out in Manhattan, 45,000 in Queens, 16,000 on Staten Island, 22,000 in Brooklyn and 10,000 in the Bronx.
- At least 41 storm-related deaths have been reported, most from drowning.
- Residents in Breezy Point are being told to drink only bottled water. While city drinking water remains safe, the distribution system for Breezy Point has been damaged and the water is not safe to drink, the city said.
- LIRR, Metro-North, subways and buses have resumed, most with partial service. Visit www.mta.info for the latest.
- The city has food and water distribution sites in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and Manhattan. See the list of sites here.
- The city has also set up warming centers around the five boroughs, which are open from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. See the list of sites here.
- Amtrak resumed service between New York City and Boston on Friday. Limited service between the city and points south resumed Thursday.
- The Holland Tunnel opened one tube Friday for commuter buses only. The Lincoln Tunnel is open but the Queens Midtown Tunnel and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel are closed indefinitely.
- The East River Ferry resumed its regular schedule Saturday.
- The Staten Island Ferry resumed at noon Friday with half-hourly service in both directions.
- A rule requiring cars entering Manhattan on East River bridges to have at least three passengers as a way to reduce congestion expired at 5 p.m. Friday.
- Those seeking federal disaster assistance are urged to start here.
- PATH Train service remains suspended indefinitely, the Port Authority said.
- Long Island Power Authority has 320,000 customers without power. The utility said Friday it expected to restore service to most customers by the weekend of Nov. 10 and 11.
- At least six storm-related deaths have been reported.
- The Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant was flooded during the storm, and critical infrastructure was damaged, causing sewage to back up into schools and homes. A conserve water order is in effect in Nassau County from the Queens border to the Meadowbrook Parkway, south of the Long Island Expressway.
NEW JERSEY
- Nearly 1 million customers were still without power. PSE&G estimated it would restore power to 493,000 customers within a week to 10 days. JCP&L said it expected to reconnect the remaining 485,000 of its customers within a week, and Atlantic City Electric, which has 11,000 outages, expects to restore service to customers on the mainland by Sunday.
- The storm killed at least 23 people throughout the state.
- Approximately 250 school districts were expected to be open Monday. More than half of the state's school districts will remain closed, Christie said Saturday.
- One tube of the Holland Tunnel opened Friday for commuter buses only.
- Northeast Corridor train service resumed Friday. NJ Transit had tried to get three lines up and running but a backup generator failed overnight. Ninety percent of bus routes were running Saturday.
- The following water systems have issued boil water advisories: Independence MUA - Highland System; Ship Bottom; Stafford Township MUA; Reflection Lakes Garden Apartment Complex, West Milford; Long Beach Township Water Department.
- About 38,014 customers were without power, down from a peak of more than 620,000.
- Connecticut Light & Power said it expects restoration to be "substantially complete" by Monday or Tuesday, with about 2 percent of customers still without power then.
- United Illuminating said it expects to restore power to 95 percent of its customers before midnight on Monday.
- Three deaths have been blamed on the storm.
- The state's storm site can be found here.
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[h=5]Copyright Associated Press / NBC New York[/h]