Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Residents on Michigan Ave. in Long Beach, N.Y., banded together to keep a lookout for looters.
The patchy recovery from Hurricane Sandy exposed a fractured region on Saturday: The lights flickered on in Manhattan neighborhoods that had been dark for days and the city’s subways rumbled and screeched through East River tunnels again. But in shorefront stretches of Staten Island and Queens that were all but demolished, and in broad sections of New Jersey and Long Island, gasoline was almost impossible to come by, electricity remained absent and worried homeowners wondered when help would finally arrive.
Drivers in New Jersey faced 70s-era gasoline rationing imposed by Gov. Chris Christie, while in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said 8 million gallons had been unloaded from commercial tankers and another 28 million gallons would go into distribution terminals over the weekend. He also said the Defense Department was sending in 12 million gallons of fuel to be pumped from five mobile stations.
“They’ll have a 10-gallon limit,” the governor said. “The good news is, it’s going to be free.”
Only about 5,800 people in Manhattan awoke to find that they still lacked power, and crowds streamed into parks that reopened on a blindingly bright Saturday morning. Horse-drawn carriages were circling the roadways in Central Park again, and the grandstands were still in place for the New York Marathon. The race long been scheduled for Sunday, but on Friday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg canceled it for the first time in its 42-year history.
On Long Island, there was a profound sense of isolation, with whole towns cut off from basic information, supplies and electricity — and people in washed-out neighborhoods saying the felt increasingly desperate. “I just keep waiting for someone with a megaphone and a car to just tell us what to do,” said Vikki Quinn, standing amid a pile of ruined belongings strewn in front of her flooded house in Long Beach. “I’m lost.”
David O’Connor, 44, has begun to use his living room chairs as firewood. A neighbor, Gina Braddish, a 27-year-old newlywed, was planning to siphon gas from a boat that washed into her front yard. Older people on darkened streets have been shouting for help from second-floor windows that are eye-level with buoys still trapped in trees.
Mr. Cuomo, at a briefing in Lower Manhattan, said that the city was moving forward.
“We are getting through it,” he said. “The worst is behind us.” But he also cautioned, “This entire situation is going to go on for a while.”
Mr. Cuomo said four subway lines that tie Manhattan to Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens — the 4, 5, 6,and 7 lines — had returned to life on Saturday morning, with four others—the D, F, J and M lines — set to begin running by the nightfall. Trains were also expected to begin running again on the commuter rail line on Staten Island.
He said that 60 percent of the power who lost power in the storm had had it restored, but that 900,000 were still in the dark. On Long Island, where 1.2 million people lost power, he said some 550,000 had power by Saturday morning. And in Midtown Manhattan, riggers went to work high above West 57th Street, where the storm broke the boom on a construction and left it dangling 74 stories up. They hand-cranked the boom closer to the partly completed building, a condominium and hotel complex, and the plan was to strap the boom to the structure. Once that process was completed, the surrounding streets, which had been closed since the boom snapped in punishing winds on Monday afternoon, could begin to reopen.
“Where are the police?” asked Anna Beigelman, a realtor in Merrick, who said she was afraid to drive.
The authorities estimated that as many as 100,000 homes and businesses on Long Island had been destroyed or badly damaged in the storm, from bedroom communities in Nassau County to the leafy towns of the South Shoreto Long Island’s notable summer refuges — Fire Island, the Hamptons, Jones Beach —which were decimated by the storm. Sand dunes were flattened and whole rows of beach houses crushed. The storm’s furious flood tide created new inlets that could become permanent parts of the topography.
“Fire Island is changed forever,” Steve Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, said.
As the storm approached, Long Island appeared be far from its path. But its incredibly wide, counterclockwise swirl of damaging winds and rain, combined with an unusually high tide, sent a huge storm surge along its top like a right hook, slamming both the ocean and sound shores of Long Island.
Fractured Recovery a Week After Hurricane Sandy
This article
Fractured Recovery a Week After Hurricane Sandy
can be opened in url
http://newsbillboards.blogspot.com/2012/11/fractured-recovery-week-after-hurricane.html
Fractured Recovery a Week After Hurricane Sandy
