NEW YORK CITY — Although power steadily returned to many homes hard hit by Hurricane Sandy, drivers still faced long lines at the pump to refuel their cars at area gas stations across the five boroughs.
Residents of Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn were still contending with epic lines for gas and stations that had either run out of fuel or could not even pump gas because they had no power.
Locals complained that gas had not made it to the region by Monday, posting the names and locations of stations throughout the five boroughs on Twitter under the hashtag #nogas.
DNAinfo.com New York put together a list of tips on how to find gas in New York City.
Lines for gas were already blocks long as early as 4 a.m. Monday morning in Manhattan, leaving many to drive out of state in search of fuel. Cabbies headed as far as Connecticut to refuel their vehicles.
In Inwood, local resident Mike Jimenez drove out to Elizabeth, N.J., after seeing long lines jamming the upper Manhattan neighborhood all weekend.
When the New Jersey station ran out of regular gas, he opted for premium at $4.29 a gallon.
“There are some gas stations definitely taking advantage of people while they’re down,” he said of the inflated gas prices he saw while driving through New Jersey.
In Astoria, men filled 10-gallon water coolers with gasoline after dumping the water on the ground, wrote Kelly Micahaelian on DNAinfo.com New York's Facebook page Monday.
“[I] was surprised the station allowed that, but this is an usual situation,” she wrote.
In Washington Heights, contractor Kevin Klepper said he waited three hours to fill his gas tank at a Shell Station at West 181st Street and Audubon Avenue so that he could get to work.
“People out of gas on NYC streets were out of gas and carrying cans, but police would not let anyone pump [into] a gas can,” he wrote in an email, reporting that he saw similar lines in Flushing, Queens, Great Neck on Long Island and in Westchester County.
“Everything is closed with no electric,” he wrote, “and the few stations I saw open have huge lines.”
In Harlem, two of three gas stations at West 145th Street between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard were closed after running out of gas.
At the Hess station across the street, police stood guard as drivers waited in a queue that snaked from West 145th Street and Lenox Avenue around the corner to Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and West 139th Street.
Customers were generally in good spirits, despite hearing about the mayhem that struck others when trying to buy gas over the weekend.
"I stood in line for two-and-a-half hours,” said Neville Gordon, who borrowed a gas can from an employee at one of the closed stations next door.
"There were no problems, everything was smooth." he said. “The police officers were so great, they're doing a fine job"
