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| Jack Biondo ties a tarp down to protect donated supplies from a coming storm in the New Dorp section of Staten Island, New York, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012. Residents of New York and New Jersey who were flooded out by Superstorm Sandy are waiting with dread Wednesday for the second time in two weeks as another, weaker storm heads toward them and threatens to inundate their homes again or simply leave them shivering in the dark for even longer. |
NEW YORK (AP) -- A nor'easter blustered into New York and New Jersey on Wednesday with rain and wet snow, plunging homes right back into darkness, stopping commuter trains again, and inflicting another round of misery on thousands of people still reeling from Superstorm Sandy's blow more than a week ago.
Under ordinary circumstances,
a storm of this sort wouldn't be a big deal, but large swaths of the
landscape were still an open wound, with the electrical system highly
fragile and many of Sandy's victims still mucking out their homes and
cars and shivering in the deepening cold.
Exactly
as authorities feared, the nor'easter brought down tree limbs and
electrical wires, and utilities in New York and New Jersey reported that
some customers who lost power because of Sandy lost it all over again
as a result of the nor'easter.
"I know
everyone's patience is wearing thin," said John Miksad, senior vice
president of electric operations at Consolidated Edison, the chief
utility in New York City.
As the nor'easter
closed in, thousands of people in low-lying neighborhoods staggered by
the superstorm just over a week ago were urged to clear out. Authorities
warned that rain and 60 mph gusts in the evening and overnight could
swamp homes all over again, topple trees wrenched loose by Sandy, and
erase some of the hard-won progress made in restoring power to millions
of customers.
"I am waiting for the locusts
and pestilence next," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said. "We may take a
setback in the next 24 hours."
Ahead of the
storm, public works crews in New Jersey built up dunes to protect the
stripped and battered coast, and new evacuations were ordered in a
number of communities already emptied by Sandy. New shelters opened.
In
New York City, police went to low-lying neighborhoods with
loudspeakers, urging residents to leave. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg
didn't issue mandatory evacuations, and many people stayed behind, some
because they feared looting, others because they figured whatever
happens couldn't be any worse than what they have gone through already.
"We're
petrified," said James Alexander, a resident of the hard-hit Rockaways
section of Queens. "It's like a sequel to a horror movie."
All
construction in New York City was halted - a precaution that needed no
explanation after a crane collapsed last week in Sandy's high winds and
dangled menacingly over the streets of Manhattan. Parks were closed
because of the danger of falling trees. Drivers were advised to stay off
the road after 5 p.m.
Airlines canceled at
least 1,300 U.S. flights in and out of the New York metropolitan area,
causing a new round of disruptions that rippled across the country.
The
city manager in Long Beach, N.Y., urged the roughly 21,000 people who
ignored previous mandatory evacuation orders in the badly damaged
barrier-island city to get out.
Forecasters
said the nor'easter would bring moderate coastal flooding, with storm
surges of about 3 feet possible Wednesday into Thursday - far less than
the 8 to 14 feet Sandy hurled at the region. The storm's winds were
expected to be well below Sandy's, which gusted to 90 mph.
By
evening, the storm had created a slushy mess in the streets in the
metropolitan area. Eight-foot waves crashed on the beaches in New
Jersey. The Long Island Rail Road, one of the nation's biggest commuter
train systems, suspended all service again after struggling over the
past several days to get up and running in Sandy's wake.
The
early-afternoon high tide came and went without any reports of serious
flooding in New York City, the mayor said. The next high tide was early
Thursday. But forecasters said the moment of maximum flood danger may
have passed.
Con Ed said the nor'easter
knocked out power to at least 11,000 homes and businesses, some of whom
had just gotten it back. The Long Island Power Authority said by evening
that the number of customers in the dark had risen from 150,000 to
nearly 187,000.
Similarly, New Jersey
utilities reported scattered outages, with some customers complaining
that they had just gotten their electricity back in the past two day or
two, only to lose it again.
On Staten Island,
workers and residents on a washed-out block in Midland Beach continued
to pull debris - old lawn chairs, stuffed animals, a basketball hoop -
from their homes, even as the bad weather blew in.
Jane Murphy, a nurse, wondered, "How much worse can it get?" as she cleaned the inside of her flooded-out car.
Sandy
killed more than 100 people in 10 states, with most of the victims in
New York and New Jersey. On Tuesday, the death toll inched higher when a
78-year-old man died of a head injury, suffered when he fell down a
wet, sandy stairwell in the dark, authorities said. Long lines persisted
at gas stations but were shorter than they were days ago.
At
the peak of the outages from Sandy, more than 8.5 million customers
lost power. Before the nor'easter hit, that number was down to 675,000,
nearly all of them in New Jersey and New York.
The
storm could bring repairs to a standstill because of federal safety
regulations that prohibit linemen from working in bucket trucks when
wind gusts reach 40 mph.
Authorities warned
also that trees and limbs broken or weakened by Sandy could fall and
that even where repairs have been made, the electrical system is
fragile, with some substations fed by only a single power line instead
of several.
