Record Snow as 200,000 More Power Outages Strike Northeast US – FEMA Centers Remain Closed

Parts of the Northeastern US were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in the last week, causing widespread damage and knocking power out for upwards of 10 days.

Now, residents are battling a new storm front that has brought record early snowfall, extreme winds, and temperatures.

As many as 200,000 homes reportedly lost power Thursday morning as a result of the storm.

Residents along the coastline of New York and New Jersey were evacuated. No one knows for sure how many more will be displaced.

This is a massive Nor’ Easter storm that has struck before the usual season, differing from the normal weather patterns that we usually see.

NBC reported record snowfall totals that were recorded across the area:
 

• New York’s Central Park received 4.4 inches of snow on Wednesday — a record for a Nov. 7 and the earliest 4-inch total in the park’s history, NBCNewYork.com reported. By Thursday morning the total had reached 4.7 inches.
   
• A record snowfall of 2 inches was set at Newark, N.J., breaking the old record of a trace amount set in 1981.

• Bridgeport, Conn., received 3.5 inches of snow, beating the Nov. 7 record of 2 inches set in 1953.

    Some areas inland got 12 to 13 inches of snow.

In New York, the situation remains tense, with FEMA Centers actually closed due to the bad weather.

The WSJ reported. “The Long Island Power Authority was reporting that nearly 40,000 of its customers had lost power in the new storm. At least another 11,000 Con Edison customers had been knocked out in the new round of bad weather, with the worst damage in Westchester County.”

These are very tough times for citizens all across the Northeast and the fact that FEMA is so incompetent that they can’t keep their centers open during a storm is furthering the suffering of citizens throughout the storm ravaged area.

Because the FEMA centers were located with food distribution and warming services, some residents who arrived there were confused by the closed centers.

The city’s food distribution centers, a lifeline for the thousands left without power, heat and water for more than a week, would only be operating until noon Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced.

And the National Guard, which was handing out food and water in Coney Island also shut down at 1:30 p.m. because of the weather, but continued handing out water to the line of approximately 30 people.

A spokemsan for the New York National Guard, Eric Durr, said that he could not comment on that specific instance but “we instructed our troops to pay attention to the weather and don’t take unecessary risks.”

Still, he said the guard would continue to provide relief as long as was needed.

In Staten Island, a printed paper sign taped to the front door of on the center at 6581 Hylan Blvd. at 10:30 a.m. read “FEMA Center Closed Due to Weather.”

The front doors of the disaster recovery center, which is housed inside the Mount Lorretto Catholic Youth Organization, were unlocked, but there was no staff anywhere in sight for at least a half an hour.

And a set of buses which served as a pair of warming centers at the site for the past several days were missing, according to non-FEMA volunteers who continued to hand out supplies from a nearby building despite the storm.

Still as of Thursday morning many FEMA Centers remain closed.

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