The New York Marathon will not be held Sunday, NBC 4 New York reported Friday, and accompanied by a statement from the Mayor's Office
Mayor Michael Bloomberg had earlier defended his decision to hold it despite heavy criticism as the city struggles back from Superstorm Sandy.
“If you think back to 9/11, I think Rudy [Giuliani] made the right decision to run the marathon,” Bloomberg said at a press conference Friday. “It pulled people together and we have to find some ways to express ourselves and show solidarity to each other.”
The New York City marathon is the world largest, with tens of thousands of participants. In a typical year, New Yorkers line the route’s 26 miles, turning the city into a giant party.
The race winds through all five boroughs, but it starts in hard-hit Staten Island, parts of which look like a disaster zone.
New York City Councilman James Oddo, who represents sections of Staten Island and Brooklyn, has been leading the charge against the marathon.
“If they take one first responder from Staten Island to cover this marathon, I will scream. We have people with no homes and no hope right now,” he posted on Twitter earlier in the week.
At least 19 of New York's 41 deaths occurred in the oft-forgotten borough, home to 500,000. Officials are still searching homes for survivors. The death toll in the U.S. from Superstorm Sandy neared 100 victims on Friday, as New York City reported one more death and Mayor Bloomberg warned: "There could be more fatalities."
“The prudent course of action here — postpone the marathon, come back a different day,” Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie. “Our first priority, let’s help people who lost their homes, who are missing loved ones."
Stringer said downtown Manhattan, the city’s financial hub, "looks like a wasteland" and is not close to being ready for the race, which goes through each of New York’s five boroughs.
Bloomberg has vowed the marathon will not divert any resources from victims, and expects power to be restored to downtown Manhattan by race day. In defending his decision to go forward, the mayor cited the thousands of out-of-town visitors who come for the marathon.
Workers assemble the finish line for the New York City Marathon in New York's Central Park, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. The crane atop a high rise that collapsed during Superstorm Sandy is visible at background left.
Those visitors need hotel rooms, but many of them already are occupied by New Yorkers displaced from their homes. Richard Nicotra, who owns the Hilton Garden Inn in Staten Island, has refused to throw out evacuees to honoir reservations for marathon runners, according to NY1.
With power scarce, the three generators set up Friday to provide electricity to the marathon’s media tent in Central Park along the Upper West Side drew some attention.
The two active generators crank out 800 kilowatts of electricity, which would be enough to power 400 homes, the New York Post reported. The third unit, a backup, sits idle, in case one of others fails, the paper said.
Paul McCarthy, 43, who lives nearby, was walking his dog down Central Park West on Friday as marathon workers and runners whizzed by him.
“I woke up this morning and a lot of people on my Facebook page were saying they should shut it down, but my neighbour just reminded me that a third of the runners come from overseas. So logistically, they wouldn’t be able to reschedule it, I don’t think,” he said. “Maybe it would be a good thing for the city just to get something positive going.”
Source: NBC
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