New Yorkers Told to Expect Weeks Without Heat As New Storm Lashes Northeast

Residents of Babylon, Long Island, already coping with the horrific damage and horrifyingly inept government response to Superstorm Sandy have been informed by their gas company that it may be as much as 2-3 weeks before gas for hot water and home heating is restored to their homes.

Local power authorities will not even attempt to provide an estimate of when electrical service will be restored.

"We've been siphoning gas out of our (stranded) boats to keep each other's generators going for a few hours each day," one resident said.

"The police are great, but we're getting reports of looters coming down the canals. I have the 12-gauge loaded, and I will split them in half.

"FEMA are walking around here with clipboards saying they're shocked."

Meanwhile in Staten Island, FEMA abandoned one of the few food and warming stations established and literally disappeared before the arrival of the new storm.  Local volunteers continued issuing food from stocks on hand, but FEMA took the vehicles used as warming huts for storm victims with them.

Generators and large stocks of relief supplies transferred to Central Park from Staten Island for the abortive NY Marathon remain unused there.  As of this date there are no reports any of the material has been  returned to the people who need it.

Similar reports continue to come out of the Coney Island and Rockaway regions of the borough of Queens, where Mayor Bloomberg was confronted by an angry crowd when he made an inexplicable unannounced visit to the community, inexplicably not bringing any relief supplies with his motorcade.

Even given the scale of the disaster, the slapdash and erratic relief efforts indicate a serious lack of prior planning on the part of federal, state and city agencies which had many days warning of the approaching storm.