On New York City's darkest night in over 25 years, thousands of people set up camp wherever they could early today to try and catch some sleep.
After the major power cut in the northeast United States late yesterday, many people were stranded without lodging and forced to make beds of newspaper, cardboard or clothing and camp out on sidewalks, office building foyers, parking garages and church pews. They did so amid high humidity, with temperatures barely leaving the high twenties overnight.
Power grid officials called the multi-city blackout the biggest blackout in North American history, dwarfing previous blackouts in 1977 and 1965.
By early today, power had been restored to some New York suburbs and some neighbourhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island boroughs, according to power company officials and the mayor's office.
"We are continuing to restore power to our customers in a gradual manner," said a power company spokeswoman.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg predicted today would be a "normal day," but government and business officials could not say when most power would be restored or whether Wall Street - the nation's financial heart - would open as scheduled.
With no promise of power, New York's fabled subway system was not expected to be back in operation for the start of the day, a City Hall spokesman said.
Transit officials said the system, which carries six million passengers a day, would need six or eight hours after the restoration of power to resume service.
All three airports were open, but no flights were reported arriving overnight. Some rail lines were functional. Buses and ferries, the only systems consistently operating throughout the crisis, were expected to be the reliable form of transportation.
At the Marriott Marquis on Times Square, hundreds of people were sprawled on its driveway outside locked doors, and on sidewalks, curbs and patches of grass everywhere, exhausted men, women and children rested their heads wherever they could.
A block from Grand Central, commuters lay on sidewalks with their heads on briefcases. A man walking by said: "Everybody is homeless tonight. Now you get a taste of what homelessness is like."
The city was mostly calm overnight, but sporadic incidents of looting were reported in Brooklyn, with 20 people arrested after breaking into a shoe store, five arrested for looting an equipment rental center and one for breaking into a phone store, police said.