A Warm Place to Sleep

"The power is back, but we have no heat.  A lot of people haven't been able to bathe or stay warm.  Last night was cold and this night is going to be much worse." 
Adeline Camacho, a volunteer handing out sandwiches and soup to needy Lower East Side of Manhattan residents.

And the mayor of all the people, has declared "We don't have a lot of empty housing in this city.  It's a problem to find housing.  We're not going to let anybody go sleeping in the street.  But it's a challenge and we're working on this as fast as we can."

Part of the problem, of course, is that it's beginning to seem to some people living in their tenement-style apartments that sleeping in their unheated flats is little different than sleeping in the street.  They're trapped either way in misery and discomfort, their health mental state affected and nowhere else to go.

Still a million people in New Jersey alone without power.  And it's getting mighty cold to be without heating, without light, during these shorter approaching-winter days.  Fuel shortages haven't helped, nor power outages.  Some are wondering why FEMA, which had plenty of advance notice of the approaching storm, hadn't stocked up with fuel and food to be on hand for distribution when needed.

It seems to be neighbourhood groups who are organizing assistance to those in need.  And local NGOs that have been coming to peoples' aid.  Not the federal program that promises everything and delivers little.  It had plenty of practise doing that during New Orleans' disaster with Hurricane Katrina.

More freezing overnight temperatures in the offing.  And just to ensure that misery doesn't entirely depart the scene with peoples' hope for rescue from this ongoing nightmare, an early 'Nor-easter' storm is now being anticipated with more strong winds and heavy rain.  A situation that can only make those struggling shudder.

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• A girl helps her family sift through donated clothing in the Rockaways, Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 4. Temperatures fell to near freezing overnight in a city where more than 700,000 are still without power almost a week after the destruction of superstorm Sandy. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

How many more people will be found dead of hypothermia.  The death toll now standing at 113 from Cyclonic Hurricane Sandy.  How many Americans will be thinking of their civic duty on Tuesday, making their way to voting stations that may or may not have been moved, while they're in despair over their personal situation?

"It's like the city, the officials, have forgotten us.  Only our neighbours and strangers, volunteers, have been here.  We don't need food or water.  We need a warm place to sleep and some sign that we aren't forgotten", said one resident forlornly, in the Rockaways, as people dug out from under sand trying to clean up from the deluge of water.