Children flocked to reopened schools across New York on Monday for the first time since superstorm Sandy, but colder weather piled on the misery for hundreds of thousands of people still lacking power. The sight of yellow school buses criss-crossing the Big Apple marked a major step back to normality for a city that suffered unprecedented damage from the hurricane-strength storm, which struck a week ago.
About one million children were back at their desks, with only 101 schools out of 1,700 still shut due to storm damage or because they were being used as emergency shelters. Many of those were to open in new locations on Wednesday. Monday's commute tested the recovering transit system to the maximum, with some passengers crammed into buses and trains, or walking down Manhattan sidewalks punctuated with growing piles of uncollected garbage.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the buses and subway trains in New York, said the system was up to 80 percent capacity. Buses in neighbouring New Jersey were up to 90 percent, but the major commuter rail link across the Hudson River to Manhattan remained shut.
With public transport still limited, more people than usual relied on cars - if they could find fuel. Despite improvements in restoring supplies, filling the tank remained a nightmare, with huge lines and rationing in New Jersey. "I waited eight hours at the station to finally get 30 dollars of gas, which was the limit," yellow cab driver Sherif Roby said in New York. "Many of my friends have been unable to work because they can't find gas."
Restoration of electricity continued apace, but that was little comfort to the remaining 1.4 million people who have already spent a week without light, and often heat, and still likely to faced at least several days more. The US Department of Energy said that 779,779 homes and businesses in New Jersey were in the dark, a fifth of all customers, while New York state had another 487,952 outages, six percent of the total.
Con Edison, the main power company for New York City, said 80 percent of its customers had their electricity restored, while New Jersey's PSEG utility said it expected that its last repairs would be complete by Friday. Another immediate challenge was Tuesday's presidential election.
In the worst-hit neighbourhoods 59 New York polling stations were listed as closed, and voters were instructed to go to alternative sites, while in New Jersey, authorities were allowing limited numbers to cast votes by email or fax. "Up to the minute changes are happening across the city," J. C. Polanco, president of the New York City Board of Elections, said on NY1 television.
The bigger problem looming for people left homeless, or with damaged homes, was the impending winter and, more immediately, a strong gale forecasted for Wednesday. Night-time temperatures were close to freezing this week and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 homes in the city alone had been left unusable by the October 29 storm.
"It is starting to get cold, people are in homes that are uninhabitable," New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo said. "We are going to have tens of thousands of people who need housing solutions right away." "This is going to be a massive, massive housing problem," the governor said.
Sandy, which began as a deadly hurricane in the Caribbean, pummelled 15 US states and prompted a huge tidal surge that killed at least 109 people in the United States and Canada and caused tens of billions of dollars worth of damage. A high-level government delegation, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Labour Hilda Solis and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, was due to tour the region Monday.