New York readies for Veterans Day as region struggles
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NEW YORK (REUTERS) - New York City is preparing to stage its first major event since cancelling its annual marathon as thousands of victims of Superstorm Sandy continue to struggle with power outages, gasoline shortages and freezing weather conditions.
Sunday's annual Veterans Day Parade is expected to attract crowds of over 600,000 people to central Manhattan and will be a test for a city still struggling to clean up after one of the worst natural disasters in the region's history.
Thousands are in temporary shelters and in New Jersey, a tent city on the edge of Monmouth Park racetrack is home to hundreds. Authorities in the region say they do not have access to enough alternative housing or hotel rooms for all those who have been displaced.
There are still over a quarter of a million people without power nearly two weeks after the storm. As of Saturday, 66,000 of those were on Long Island, where residents hit hard by the storm protested outside the headquarters of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) in Hicksville.
