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"It's a little disconcerting to be in the dark, but I feel safe
-- these guys are great," Stacey Vuolo said as she headed to her brother-in-law's nearby apartment, which at least had cold water for a shower. Bloomberg promised "a very heavy police presence" in the darkened neighborhoods, which include much of Manhattan south of the Empire State Building, from the East River to the Hudson River. Even outside the blackout areas, police deployed vans and patrol cars with their roof lights on, along with officers on the streets in a robust show of force. For the 8 million people who live here, the city was a different place one day after being battered by the megastorm
-- a combination of Hurricane Sandy, a wintry storm and a blast of arctic air. Schools were shut for a second day and were closed Wednesday, too. And people inside and outside the city scrambled to find ways to get to work. Traffic volume appeared to have doubled Wednesday morning in lower Manhattan from the day before, yet there were few signs, if any, that traffic was being directed by police through intersections with darkened stoplights. The city modified its taxi rules and encouraged drivers to pick up more than one passenger at a time, putting New Yorkers in the otherwise unthinkable position of having to share a ride with a stranger. Jeff Storey, of Goshen in the Hudson Valley north of the city, is a regular on the Metro-North Railroad and has been forced to work from home this week. He may have to switch to a bus until commuter rail service is running again, he told the Times-Herald Record of Middletown. Problems with high-voltage systems caused by the storm forced the utility to cut power Tuesday night to about 160,000 additional customers in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Consolidated Edison, the power company, estimated it would be four days before the last of the 323,000 customers in Manhattan and Brooklyn who lost power have electricity again. For the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County, with more than 450,000 outages, it could take a week.
[Associated
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