Michael Appleton for The New York Times
The marathon's course does not pass through Lower Manhattan, which lost power Monday night and experienced significant flooding.
As officials evaluated widespread storm damage, organizers for the New York City Marathon began work Tuesday to determine how Sunday's race might be affected by flooding and power outages.
Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Central Park, the home for the finish of the New York City Marathon, will remain closed until debris and fallen trees have been cleared.
"N.Y.R.R. continues to move ahead with its planning and preparation," Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of New York Road Runners, the group that organizes the marathon, said in a statement. "We will keep all options open with regard to making any accommodations and adjustments necessary to race day and race weekend events."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — a marathon booster because it generates hundreds of millions dollars in economic activity — said Tuesday night that the race would go on as scheduled, but that additional details would be provided Wednesday.
Putting on a five-borough race with 47,000 runners, 8,000 volunteers, 1,000 staff and 2 million spectators just days after a devastating storm will be challenging as the police and fire departments, electric utilities and transportation agencies attempt to get the city back on its feet.
Race officials were weighing which race-related events to reschedule or eliminate, and waiting to see how many runners would seek to defer their entries.
"There will be a marathon," said Norman Goluskin, a board member at New York Road Runners. "I don't know how many thousands of people will run it, but I will say with confidence that 47,000 people will not be the number."
Runners and fans, though, have been arguing whether holding the marathon is an act of triumph or tastelessness in light of the storm, a debate that evokes the days after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when Major League Baseball considered when to restart the season.
"They need to cancel and focus on getting their city back together," Crystal Sara Martin wrote on the New York City Marathon's event page. "It doesn't seem right to continue to have this marathon when their city and their own people are affected."
Some runners questioned whether the food used for the race should be diverted to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost power. Others, including a few who would have come from overseas, said they had already deferred their spot in this year's race and were hoping to recoup the cost of their plane tickets and hotel rooms.
For now, the course remains a question mark. Many of the city's bridges and tunnels only reopened Tuesday afternoon and some roads are still impassable, so race officials had not determined whether any part of the 26.2-mile course was flooded. Typically, race officials drive the course several times in the days before the race to ensure that nothing is blocking the roadways and their equipment is in place.
The marathon's course does not pass through Lower Manhattan, which lost power Monday night and had significant flooding. But about half of the nearly 50,000 runners take the Staten Island Ferry, which leaves from the Battery, to get to the starting line early Sunday morning. The ferry may resume service, but subways leading to the Battery may not be operating.
And although the starting line is high up on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the first leg of the course in Brooklyn curls up Fourth Avenue, not far from areas that were flooded Monday night. From there, runners head north through Queens, hugging the East River and crossing over the Queensboro 59th Street Bridge.
The course winds up Manhattan's Upper East Side, through the Bronx and down into Central Park, which will remain closed until debris and fallen trees are cleared. Critically, many fans, runners and volunteers rely on New York City subways to get to the race. Limited bus service was expected to return Tuesday night, but there is no timetable for the resumption of subway and railroad service.
Race officials said they were in contact with city agencies. At least for Road Runners, electricity is less an issue because it uses its own generators to power equipment at the start and finish lines.
Juliet Macur contributed reporting.
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