New York struggles back 2 days after killer storm

Com­muters cross New York’s Brook­lyn Bridge Wednes­day. Morn­ing rush-hour traf­fic appeared heav­ier than on an ordi­nary day as peo­ple started to return to work in a New York with­out func­tion­ing sub­ways. Cars were bumper to bumper on sev­eral major high­ways. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Richard Drew)

JENNIFER PELTZ

LEANNE ITALIE

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — Flights resumed, but slowly. The New York Stock Exchange got back to busi­ness, but on gen­er­a­tor power. And with the sub­ways still down, great num­bers of peo­ple walked across the Brook­lyn Bridge into Man­hat­tan in a reverse of the exo­dus of 9/11.

Two days after Super­storm Sandy ram­paged across the North­east, killing at least 72 peo­ple, New York strug­gled Wednes­day to find its way. Swaths of the city were still with­out power, and all of it was torn from its daily rhythms.

At lux­ury hotels and drug­stores and Star­bucks shops that bub­bled back to life, peo­ple clus­tered around out­lets and elec­tri­cal strips, des­per­ate to recharge their phones. In the Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict of Man­hat­tan, a line of peo­ple filled pails with water from a fire hydrant. Two chil­dren used jack-o’-lantern trick-or-treat buckets.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that parts of the sub­way would begin run­ning again Thurs­day, and that three of seven tun­nels under the East River had been pumped free of water, remov­ing a major obsta­cle to restor­ing full service.

“We are going to need some patience and some tol­er­ance,” he said.

On Wednes­day, both were frayed. Bus ser­vice was free but delayed, and New York­ers jammed on, crowd­ing buses so heav­ily that they skipped stops and rolled past hordes of wait­ing passengers.

New York City buses serve 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple on an aver­age day, and two days after the storm they were try­ing to han­dle many of the 5.5 mil­lion daily sub­way rid­ers, too.

As far west as Wis­con­sin and south to the Car­oli­nas, more than 6 mil­lion homes and busi­nesses were still with­out power, includ­ing about 650,000 in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The mayor said 500 patients were being evac­u­ated from Belle­vue Hos­pi­tal because of storm dam­age. The hos­pi­tal has run on gen­er­a­tors since the storm. About 300 patients were evac­u­ated from another Man­hat­tan hos­pi­tal Mon­day after it lost gen­er­a­tor power.

Bloomberg also can­celed school the rest of the week, and the Brook­lyn Nets, who just moved from New Jer­sey, scratched their home opener against the Knicks on Thursday.

Still, there were signs that New York was flick­er­ing back to life and wasn’t as iso­lated as it was a day earlier.

Flights resumed at Kennedy and Newark air­ports on what author­i­ties described as a very lim­ited sched­ule. Noth­ing was tak­ing off or land­ing at LaGuardia, which suf­fered far worse dam­age. Amtrak said trains will start run­ning in and out of New York again on Friday.

The stock exchange, oper­at­ing on backup gen­er­a­tors, came back to life after its first two-day weather shut­down since the bliz­zard of 1888. Mayor Michael Bloomberg rang the open­ing bell to whoops from traders below.

“We jok­ingly said this morn­ing we may be the only build­ing south of mid­town that has water, lights and food,” said Dun­can Nieder­auer, CEO of the com­pany that runs the exchange, in hard-hit lower Manhattan.

Most Broad­way shows returned for Wednes­day mati­nees and evening shows.

Across the Hud­son River in New Jer­sey, National Guards­men in trucks deliv­ered ready-to-eat meals and other sup­plies to heav­ily flooded Hobo­ken and rushed to evac­u­ate peo­ple from the city’s high-rises and brown­stones. The mayor’s office put out a plea for peo­ple to bring boats to City Hall for use in res­cu­ing victims.

Nat­ural gas fires erupted in Brick Town­ship, where scores of homes were wrecked by the storm. And some of the state’s bar­rier islands, which took a direct hit from Sandy on Mon­day night, remained all but cut off.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama took a heli­copter tour of the rav­aged coast with New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie.

“We are here for you,” Obama said in Brig­an­tine, N.J. “We are not going to tol­er­ate red tape. We are not going to tol­er­ate bureaucracy.”

In New York, masses of peo­ple walked shoulder-to-shoulder across the Brook­lyn Bridge to get into Man­hat­tan for work, rem­i­nis­cent of the escape scenes from the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attack and the black­out of 2003.

They entered an island sharply divided between those who had power and those who did not.

In Man­hat­tan at night, it was pos­si­ble to walk down­town along an avenue and move in an instant from a mostly nor­mal New York scene — delis open, peo­ple milling out­side bars — into a pitch-black cityscape, with police flares mark­ing intersections.

Peo­ple who did have power took to social media to offer help to neighbors.

“I have power and hot water. If any­one needs a shower or to charge some gad­gets or just wants to bask in the beauty of arti­fi­cial light, hit me up,” Rob Hart of Staten Island posted on Facebook.

A respected New York steak­house in the black­out zone, Old Home­stead, real­ized its meat was going to go bad and decided to grill what was left and sell steaks on the side­walk for $10. A center-cut sir­loin usu­ally goes for $47.

“Give back to the peo­ple of New York,” said Greg Sherry, the steakhouse’s co-owner. He said it had served nearly 700 peo­ple on Wednesday.

Simon Massey and his 9-year-old son, Henry, took one last walk near their pow­er­less apart­ment in down­town Man­hat­tan before decamp­ing to a friend’s place in Brook­lyn where the elec­tric­ity worked.

“We’re jump­ing ship,” he said. “We gorged on eggs and sausage this morn­ing before every­thing goes bad. We don’t want to spend another three or four days here.”

They live on the 10th floor of a 32-floor build­ing, where they were flush­ing the toi­let with water from their filled tub and cook­ing on their gas stove. They found their way down the stairs with glow­sticks and flash­lights, and rationed iPad and phone use.

“I’m feel­ing scared,” said Henry, who was home from third grade for a third straight day. “It just feels really, really weird. New York’s not sup­posed to be this quiet.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.