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| First responders who worked through last Monday's storm surge by Superstorm Sandy, listen as they are acknowledged by Diocese of Trenton American Roman Catholic Bishop David M. O'Connell during services at the Church of Saint Rose in Belmar, N.J., Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012. |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Shivering victims of Superstorm Sandy went to church Sunday to pray for deliverance as cold weather settling in across the New York metropolitan region - and another powerful storm forecast for the middle of the week - added to their misfortunes and deepened the gloom.
With
overnight temperatures sinking into the 30s and hundreds of thousands
of homes and businesses still without electricity, New York City
officials handed out blankets and urged people to go to temporary
warming shelters set up during the day at senior citizen centers.
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
Michael 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
fiercely 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 spent the
night under two blankets and layers of clothing because the power was
out. She had a propane heater but turned it on for only a couple of
hours in the morning. She did not want 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.
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 filled a
garbage bag until it was bulging.
"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."
Six days after Sandy slammed
into the New Jersey coastline in an assault that killed more than 100
people in 10 states, gasoline shortages persisted across the region,
though odd-even rationing got under way in northern New Jersey in an
echo of the gas crises 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.
With
more subways running and most city schools reopening on Monday, large
swaths of the city were getting back to something resembling normal. But
the coming week could bring new challenges, namely an Election Day
without power in hundreds of polling places, and a nor'easter expected
hit the area 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."
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.
Churchgoers packed the pews Sunday in parkas, scarves and boots and looked for solace in faith.
At
the chilly Church of St. Rose in Belmar, N.J., its streets still
slippery with foul-smelling mud, Roman Catholic Bishop David O'Connell
assured parishioners: "There's more good, and there's more joy, and
there's more happiness in life than there is the opposite. And it will
be back."
In the heart of the Staten Island
disaster zone, the Rev. Steve Martino of Movement Church headed a
volunteer effort that had scores of people delivering supplies in
grocery carts and cleaning out ruined homes. Around midday, the work
stopped, and volunteer and victim alike bowed their heads in prayer.
In the crowd was Stacie Piacentino. After a singularly difficult week, she said, "it's good to feel God again."
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 others 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.
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."
