Cold Hits Storm Victims Ahead of Election

Victims of super storm Sandy on the East Coast struggled against the cold on Sunday amid fuel shortages and power outages, two days ahead of an election that polls suggest is a dead heat between President Barack Obama and his Republican rival.

Fuel supplies were rumbling toward disaster zones and a million customers regained electricity as n ear-freezing temperatures descended on the U.S. Northeast overnight. But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned the city that it would be days before power was fully restored and fuel shortages ended.

Obama, neck-and-neck in opinion polls with Mitt Romney, ordered emergency response officials to cut through government “red tape” and work without delay to help ravaged areas return to normal as quickly as possible, according to Reuters.

The power restorations relit the skyline in Lower Manhattan for the first time in nearly a week and allowed 80 percent of the New York City subway service to resume. But some 2.5 million homes and business still lacked power across the Northeast, down from 3.5 million on Friday.

Officials across the storm-ravaged U.S. Northeast are increasingly worried about getting voters displaced by Sandy to polling stations for Tuesday’s election. Scores of voting centers were rendered useless by the record surge of seawater in New York and New Jersey.

New Jersey is allowing voters displaced by super storm Sandy to vote by email, while some voters in New York could be casting their ballots in tents in an 11th-hour scramble to ensure voting in Tuesday’s elections.

The post-storm chaos in the region has overshadowed the final days of campaigning, making voting an afterthought for many New Jersey authorities took the uncommon step of declaring that any voter displaced from their home by super storm Sandy would be designated an overseas voter.

The storm’s death toll rose to at least 110 with nine more deaths reported in New Jersey on Saturday, raising the total in that state to 22. Bloomberg put New York City deaths at 41, according to Reuters.

Sandy killed 69 people in the Caribbean before turning north and hammering the U.S. Eastern Seaboard on Monday with 80 mile-per-hour (130-kph) winds and a record surge of seawater that swallowed Oceanside communities in New Jersey and New York, and flooded streets and subway tunnels in New York City.

 New York City’s overstretched police got a break with the cancellation of Sunday’s marathon, a popular annual race that became a lightning rod for critics who said it would divert resources.

Hundreds of runners in New York City are refusing to let the canceled marathon spoil their Sunday plans and are channeling months of preparation into a series of informal runs intended to benefit victims of super storm Sandy.

 Police said that New York City crime dropped by a third in the days after super storm Sandy, but there was a slight increase in burglaries after at least 15 people were charged with looting empty businesses and homes blacked out since the disaster.