Cold weather and new storm add to victims’ misery

JENNIFER PELTZ

MICHAEL HILL

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW YORK — 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 six days after Sandy howled through, peo­ple slept in 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 will 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.

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. Nearly 1 mil­lion homes and busi­nesses were still with­out power in New Jer­sey, and about 650,000 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 to hit by Wednes­day, with the poten­tial for 55 mph gusts and more beach ero­sion, flood­ing and rain.

“Pre­pare for more out­ages,” said National Weather Ser­vice mete­o­rol­o­gist Joe Pol­lina. “Stay indoors. Stock up again.”

“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.”

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.”

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.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.