NEW
YORKShivering victims of Superstorm Sandy went to church Sunday to pray
for deliverance as cold weather settling in across the New ...
CBS/AP/ November 4, 2012, 6:40 PM
NYC Mayor Bloomberg says up to 40,000 may need relocation
Kathy
Lahey sifts through her damaged home for items to save November 4,
2012, in the Breezy Point neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York
City. /Getty Images
NEW YORKShivering
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 six days
after Sandy howled through, people piled on layers of clothes, and New
York City officials handed out blankets and urged victims to go to
overnight shelters or daytime warming 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
expensive — though he said that number would probably drop to 20,000
within a couple of weeks as power is restored in more places.
U.S.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Sunday federal
agencies are looking for apartments and hotel rooms for people displaced
by Superstorm Sandy, Reuters reports.
"Our goal is to
try to get people out of the shelters," Napolitano said at a news
conference in New Jersey with Governor Chris Christie.
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.
Nearly a week 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 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.
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 week could bring new
challenges, namely an Election Day without power in hundreds of polling
places, and a nor'easter expected 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."
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 said he had no good answer for why God would allow such
destruction. But he 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 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." To help victims of Sandy, donations to the American Red Cross can be made by visiting Red Cross disaster relief,
or you can text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. You can also
make a donation to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City by visiting
here.
Wall Street Journal (blog)
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