[h=3]By LISA FLEISHER , TED MANN and REBECCA SMITH[/h]Millions of people in the Northeast woke up in the dark again Friday, and many went right back out to hunt for gas or brave packed trains after Sandy slammed the region four days ago.
As overnight temperatures fell to the 40s, power crews in more than a dozen states navigated a tangle of fallen trees, downed power lines and dangerous floodwaters in the painstaking, house-by-house work of reconnecting millions of customers left in the dark by Sandy.
Power was restored by late Thursday to about half of 10 million households and businesses that lost electricity during the storm, according to the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group that represents investor-owned utilities. But millions more remained cut off from power needed to operate furnaces, heaters, refrigerators and lights.
"It's freezing like an ice box," said Lydia Crespo, who was using a gas stove to heat her home in Staten Island, N.Y., still without power. "No hot water, no light. All you smell is the gas, the oil, the mold."
The death toll attributed to Sandy in the U.S. reached at least 102, authorities in individual states said Friday. Transit bottlenecks began to ease in New York City with the reopening of some subways, but in New Jersey and elsewhere long lines stretched from gas stations lucky enough to have both electricity and gasoline.
Amtrak began southbound train service from Pennsylvania Station on Thursday evening, and limited service to Boston on Friday. New Jersey Transit began limited service into New York's Penn Station on Friday, but the system remained largely out of service.
U.S. Air Force cargo planes were flying utility crews and 636 tons of equipment, including electric company bucket trucks, to speed power restoration.
Long-standing mutual-aid pacts, activated days before Sandy hit, drew an emergency team of more than 64,000 workers from 82 utility companies across the U.S., including a crew from San Diego Gas & Electric that arrived Thursday.
"It's epic," said Brian Wolff, senior vice president of Edison Electric. "I think it's the biggest mobilization we've seen."
Their task is Herculean: 1.7 million customers were without electricity in New Jersey; 1.5 million in New York; 500,000 in Pennsylvania; 348,000 in Connecticut; 139,000 in West Virginia; 40,000 in Maryland; and 21,000 in Rhode Island.
Until then, people went hunting for gas and commuters tried to figure out which trains and buses were running. In Jersey City, N.J., 45-minute-long lines for gas wrapped around the streets, blocks from the closed Holland Tunnel. People reached out to friends and relatives, asking for tips and leads on stations with short queues.
Meanwhile, in Cedar Grove, N.J., the wait for gas was far longer for many. A line began forming hours before a gas station was set to open at 6 a.m. By 7:30 a.m., the line was nearly a mile long and many drivers were still waiting to reach the pump three hours later.
For those who had gas, traffic into the city was much lighter than it has been over the past few days, as people adjusted to a three-person-per-vehicle minimum.
In New York City, the few subway lines running seemed even more crowded than usual, with frustrations of commuters boiling over. No trains ran below 34th Street in Manhattan or through tubes that extend between the bottom of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
"You people can't get on this train, it's already packed and no one can even move," one man said on the 1 train on the Upper West Side. "There's no room."
"Well, what do you expect us to do, stand on this damn podium all day?" a woman said as she pushed into the train at 125th Street. Several others laughed when she said it.
But in other places, people seemed more relaxed and patient.
The first Staten Island ferry to run since the storm was expected to leave St. George terminal at noon, the New York City Department of Transportation said, with service continuing on the half-hour.
New York state officials raised hopes late Thursday night that restoration of more normal operations could come quicker than some had feared. Service on the 4/5 and F lines could start up just two hours after power is restored, Metropolitan Transit Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota said, and work continued on pumping out the remaining water in other tunnels.
Until then, New Yorkers spent another day struggling along the "bus bridge" that the MTA, police and the city established to replace the cross-borough arteries severed by Sandy.
[h=3]Transit Tracker: What's Running[/h]Check the latest on trains, subways, and bridges and tunnels.
A fleet of 330 buses picked up passengers at Jay Street, Barclays Center and Hewes Street, ferrying them over the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges and up Third Avenue to Midtown. The lower level of the Manhattan Bridge was converted into a bus-only corridor to speed the movement of as many passengers as possible.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey did the same from the New Jersey side, opening one tube of the Holland Tunnel to bus traffic only.
Along Route 22 in New Jersey, motorists on a gas line got out of their parked cars, stood around and chatted with each other. With their car lights flashing, police watched over the scene along the highway in an attempt to keep the peace.
Lines of people standing with a red gas can, or two, or three to fill up generators or cars were common.
Bloomberg NewsDrivers wait in line for fuel at a Sunoco gas station in a service area on the Garden State Parkway in Bloomfield, N.J., on Thursday.
Despite New Jersey Transit bus service into Manhattan, some buses were nearly empty. The 114, which rides through Bridgewater, Somerville, Bound Brook and North Plainfield, had a handful of people in its toasty cabin as it arrived on time in Manhattan.
On the Ronkonkoma Line of the Long Island Rail Road, the 6:37 a.m. train to Penn Station had people standing in the aisles at Deer Park, the fourth stop the train made. People at later stations were yelling at people in the train to move in to let more people on, but there was nowhere to go.
Despite the region's many challenges, more signs of normalcy emerged on Friday. Teachers in New York City public schools, the nation's largest system, with 1.1 million schoolchildren, returned to work Friday. In New Jersey, Atlantic City's 12 casinos were allowed to reopen Friday morning, and the mandatory evacuation orders for the city have been lifted, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.
—Dionne Searcey, Josh Dawsey, Christopher Weaver, Tracy Armstead, Tracy Watson, Hammad Jawdat and Gabriella Stern contributed to this article.
As overnight temperatures fell to the 40s, power crews in more than a dozen states navigated a tangle of fallen trees, downed power lines and dangerous floodwaters in the painstaking, house-by-house work of reconnecting millions of customers left in the dark by Sandy.
Power was restored by late Thursday to about half of 10 million households and businesses that lost electricity during the storm, according to the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group that represents investor-owned utilities. But millions more remained cut off from power needed to operate furnaces, heaters, refrigerators and lights.
"It's freezing like an ice box," said Lydia Crespo, who was using a gas stove to heat her home in Staten Island, N.Y., still without power. "No hot water, no light. All you smell is the gas, the oil, the mold."
The death toll attributed to Sandy in the U.S. reached at least 102, authorities in individual states said Friday. Transit bottlenecks began to ease in New York City with the reopening of some subways, but in New Jersey and elsewhere long lines stretched from gas stations lucky enough to have both electricity and gasoline.
Amtrak began southbound train service from Pennsylvania Station on Thursday evening, and limited service to Boston on Friday. New Jersey Transit began limited service into New York's Penn Station on Friday, but the system remained largely out of service.
U.S. Air Force cargo planes were flying utility crews and 636 tons of equipment, including electric company bucket trucks, to speed power restoration.
Long-standing mutual-aid pacts, activated days before Sandy hit, drew an emergency team of more than 64,000 workers from 82 utility companies across the U.S., including a crew from San Diego Gas & Electric that arrived Thursday.
"It's epic," said Brian Wolff, senior vice president of Edison Electric. "I think it's the biggest mobilization we've seen."
Their task is Herculean: 1.7 million customers were without electricity in New Jersey; 1.5 million in New York; 500,000 in Pennsylvania; 348,000 in Connecticut; 139,000 in West Virginia; 40,000 in Maryland; and 21,000 in Rhode Island.
Until then, people went hunting for gas and commuters tried to figure out which trains and buses were running. In Jersey City, N.J., 45-minute-long lines for gas wrapped around the streets, blocks from the closed Holland Tunnel. People reached out to friends and relatives, asking for tips and leads on stations with short queues.
Meanwhile, in Cedar Grove, N.J., the wait for gas was far longer for many. A line began forming hours before a gas station was set to open at 6 a.m. By 7:30 a.m., the line was nearly a mile long and many drivers were still waiting to reach the pump three hours later.
For those who had gas, traffic into the city was much lighter than it has been over the past few days, as people adjusted to a three-person-per-vehicle minimum.
In New York City, the few subway lines running seemed even more crowded than usual, with frustrations of commuters boiling over. No trains ran below 34th Street in Manhattan or through tubes that extend between the bottom of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
"You people can't get on this train, it's already packed and no one can even move," one man said on the 1 train on the Upper West Side. "There's no room."
"Well, what do you expect us to do, stand on this damn podium all day?" a woman said as she pushed into the train at 125th Street. Several others laughed when she said it.
But in other places, people seemed more relaxed and patient.
The first Staten Island ferry to run since the storm was expected to leave St. George terminal at noon, the New York City Department of Transportation said, with service continuing on the half-hour.
New York state officials raised hopes late Thursday night that restoration of more normal operations could come quicker than some had feared. Service on the 4/5 and F lines could start up just two hours after power is restored, Metropolitan Transit Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota said, and work continued on pumping out the remaining water in other tunnels.
Until then, New Yorkers spent another day struggling along the "bus bridge" that the MTA, police and the city established to replace the cross-borough arteries severed by Sandy.
[h=3]Transit Tracker: What's Running[/h]Check the latest on trains, subways, and bridges and tunnels.
A fleet of 330 buses picked up passengers at Jay Street, Barclays Center and Hewes Street, ferrying them over the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges and up Third Avenue to Midtown. The lower level of the Manhattan Bridge was converted into a bus-only corridor to speed the movement of as many passengers as possible.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey did the same from the New Jersey side, opening one tube of the Holland Tunnel to bus traffic only.
Along Route 22 in New Jersey, motorists on a gas line got out of their parked cars, stood around and chatted with each other. With their car lights flashing, police watched over the scene along the highway in an attempt to keep the peace.
Lines of people standing with a red gas can, or two, or three to fill up generators or cars were common.
Bloomberg NewsDrivers wait in line for fuel at a Sunoco gas station in a service area on the Garden State Parkway in Bloomfield, N.J., on Thursday.
Despite New Jersey Transit bus service into Manhattan, some buses were nearly empty. The 114, which rides through Bridgewater, Somerville, Bound Brook and North Plainfield, had a handful of people in its toasty cabin as it arrived on time in Manhattan.
On the Ronkonkoma Line of the Long Island Rail Road, the 6:37 a.m. train to Penn Station had people standing in the aisles at Deer Park, the fourth stop the train made. People at later stations were yelling at people in the train to move in to let more people on, but there was nowhere to go.
Despite the region's many challenges, more signs of normalcy emerged on Friday. Teachers in New York City public schools, the nation's largest system, with 1.1 million schoolchildren, returned to work Friday. In New Jersey, Atlantic City's 12 casinos were allowed to reopen Friday morning, and the mandatory evacuation orders for the city have been lifted, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said.
—Dionne Searcey, Josh Dawsey, Christopher Weaver, Tracy Armstead, Tracy Watson, Hammad Jawdat and Gabriella Stern contributed to this article.