As New York freezes, 40,000 victims of Sandy face a winter without a home

Fuel shortages and power outages lingered nearly a week after one of the worst storms in US history flooded homes in coastal neighbourhoods, leaving many without heat and in need of shelter. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said 30,000 to 40,000 people in New York City alone would need housing.

Overnight on Saturday, at least two more bodies were found in New Jersey as the overall death toll in America from Sandy climbed to at least 111.

“People are in homes that are uninhabitable,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said. “People don’t like to leave their homes, but the reality is going to be in the temperature.”

Officials were working out how to provide housing for tens of thousands of people, Cuomo said.

Temperatures dipped to 39F (4C) early yesterday morning in New York City, the lowest in days, with freezing temperatures expected today. An early-season “Nor’easter” storm was expected to hit the battered New England coast this week with strong winds and heavy rain.

Fuel supplies continued to rumble toward disaster zones and electricity was slowly returning to darkened neighbourhoods, after the storm hit the coast last Monday.

It would be days before power is fully restored and fuel shortages end, Mayor Bloomberg said. Cuomo said fuel shortages are improving, but problems will persist for “a number of days”.

On Friday, Mr Bloomberg abruptly called off the city’s marathon, which was set for yesterday, bowing to criticism that the event would divert resources from flood-ravaged neighbourhoods. Instead, hundreds of runners set off on informal runs to deliver food and clothes to the borough of Staten Island and other hard-hit areas.

Power restorations over the weekend relit the skyline in Lower Manhattan for the first time in nearly a week and allowed 80 per cent of the New York City subway service to resume. Some 1.9 million homes and business still lacked power across the Northeast yesterday, down from 2.5 million.

President Barack Obama ordered emergency response  officials to cut through government “red tape” and work without delay to help affected areas return to normal.

Officials have expressed concern about getting voters displaced by Sandy to polling stations for tomorrow’s election.

Scores of voting centres were rendered useless by the record surge of seawater in New York and New Jersey. Mr Bloomberg said the Board of Elections has “real problems”, but the city would do “anything we can” to get people to the polls.

Some voters in New York could be casting their ballots in tents. New Jersey is allowing voters displaced by Sandy to vote by e-mail. “I’m not thinking about the election too much right now,” said Frank Carrol, 59, a retired transit worker who lives in Staten Island.

New Jersey authorities also took the step of declaring that any voter displaced from their home by Sandy would be designated an overseas voter, which allows them to submit an absentee vote by fax or e-mail.