Sandy recovery: Death toll up, gasoline lines grow after monster storm

Subways started running again in much of New York City on Thursday for the first time since Superstorm Sandy, but traffic at bridges backed up for miles, long lines formed at gas stations, and crowds of hundreds of people, some with short tempers, waited for buses. Lines formed at gas stations amid fuel shortages around the U.S. Northeast and emergency utility crews struggled to reach the worst hit areas and restore power to millions of people.At least 82 people in North America died in the superstorm, which ravaged the northeastern United States on Monday night, and officials said the count could climb higher as rescuers searched house-to-house through coastal towns.

More deaths were recorded overnight as the extent of destruction became clearer in the New York City borough of Staten Island, where the storm lifted whole houses off their foundations. Authorities recovered 15 bodies from Staten Island. Among those still missing were two boys aged 4 and 2 who were swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters, the New York Post reported. In all, 34 people died in New York City. In hard-hit New Jersey, where oceanside towns saw entire neighborhoods swallowed by seawater and the Atlantic City boardwalk was destroyed, the death toll doubled to 12. The trains couldn't take some New Yorkers where they needed to go. There was no service in downtown Manhattan and other hard-hit parts of the city, and people had to switch to buses. But some of those who did use the subway, after three days without service, were grateful. About 4.7 million homes and businesses in 12 U.S. states remained without power early Thursday as utilities scrambled to restore service disrupted by Sandy, U.S. Department of Energy data showed. Power companies had restored electricity to more than 3 million customers across states on the East Coast. In total, Sandy left more than 8 million customers in 21 states from North Carolina to Maine when the storm came ashore in New Jersey late Monday. Three days after Sandy slammed the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, New York and New Jersey struggled to get back on their feet, the U.S. death toll stood at more than 70, and more than 4.6 million homes and businesses were still without power. Nearly 20,000 people remained stranded in their homes by floodwaters in Hoboken, N.J., across the river from the New York, and swaths of the New Jersey coastline lay in ruins, with countless homes, piers and boardwalks wrecked. Downtown Manhattan, which includes the financial district, Sept. 11 memorial and other tourist sites, was still mostly an urban landscape of shuttered bodegas and boarded-up restaurants. People roamed in search of food, power and a hot shower. Some dispirited and fearful New Yorkers decided to flee the city. Flights took off and landed Thursday at LaGuardia Airport, the last of the three major New York-area airports to reopen since the storm. With the electricity out and gasoline supplies scarce, many stations across the metropolitan area closed, and the stations that were open drew long lines of cars that spilled out onto roads. New Jersey power company Public Service Enterprise Group Inc (PSEG) CEO Ralph Izzo said on Thursday that Hurricane Sandy's tidal surge caused significant damage to the electric transmission system and some switching stations. The storm left 1.7 million customers without service at the peak, he said, adding that the company has already restored service to about a million.