| By NBC News staff and wire reports The lower Manhattan skyline lit up early Saturday morning for the first time since superstorm Sandy slammed into the U.S. Northeast while thousands of storm victims in New Jersey and elsewhere remained in the dark and awaiting disaster relief. The power restoration came as gasoline supplies headed to coastal zones devastated by the record storm surge and to motorists whose patience has been tested by gasoline rationing during the painstaking effort to rebuild. With the U.S. presidential election just three days away, about 3 million homes and business remained without power in a region choked with storm debris and long gas lines reminiscent of the 1970s-era U.S. fuel shortage. Angry storm victims wondered when their lives would return to normal. President Barack Obama won early praise for the federal response to Sandy, which hammered the U.S. northeast coast on Monday with 80 mile-per-hour winds and a record surge of seawater that swamped homes in New Jersey and flooded streets and subway tunnels in New York City. But continued television and newspaper images of upset storm victims could hurt the Democrat, who is locked in a virtual draw with Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The U.S. death toll hit 109 on Friday, after Sandy killed 69 people as a hurricane in the Caribbean. It struck the New Jersey coast on Monday as a rare hybrid after the hurricane merged with a powerful storm system in the north Atlantic. The death toll in the nation's largest city is now 41, according to the governor's office. However, the New York Polic Department had reported 40 deaths in the city. Half the city's deaths were on Staten Island. Besides New York City, the deaths NBC News has confirmed are:
The National Guard, FEMA and the Red Cross, among other agencies, set up camp to help the hard-hit working class community of Staten Island. NBC's Andrea Canning reports. Lights slowly turning back on "There's enough light and activity to get a lot of people on the street and get rid of that movie set look as if were in some kind of ghost town or horror movie," Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee told NY1 television. In New Jersey, the utility PSE&G said 612,000 customers were still without lights after power to 1 million had been restored. Con Ed said it had restored power to 70 percent of the 916,000 customers in the New York City area who were cut off. The company was still busy assisting tens of thousands more without power in New York City's outer boroughs, where some people complained of being ignored. Read more Sandy coverage on NBCNews.com "We have nobody down here with video coverage," said Grace Lane, a grandmother who defied evacuation orders and rode out the storm in her second-story bedroom as water rushed through the first floor of her house. Eight people - Lane, her husband, their two daughters, their husbands and her two grandchildren - were sleeping on air mattresses on the floor of the upstairs bedroom, the last usable room in the house. "At least my children are OK," she said. Many houses were gutted by 5 feet of floodwater that raced through Broad Channel, where residents hauled broken furniture and soggy belongings out of their homes on Friday. In a sign of security worries in the neighborhood, one garage full of debris stood open with a sign next to it reading: "LOOTERS WILL BE CRUCIFIED - GOD HELP YOU." Tempers flared as people camped out all night, waiting for their turn at the pump in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. NBC's Tom Costello reports. Fuel on the way The government announced it would tap strategic reserves for diesel for emergency responders and waived rules that barred foreign-flagged ships from taking gas, diesel and other products from the Gulf of Mexico to Northeast ports. The moves could help to quell anger triggered by growing lines - some of them miles long - at gas stations. Less than half of the stations in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey were operating on Friday. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie ordered gas rationing in 12 counties to begin on Saturday under an "odd-even" system in which motorists with license plates ending in odd numbers would be able to buy gas on odd-numbered days. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also moved to tamp down rising anger in the most populous U.S. city by dropping plans to hold the city's annual marathon. The city had been expecting more than 40,000 runners in Sunday's event. Obama, who is back on the campaign trail after touring the disaster zone this week, planned to meet on Saturday morning with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Federal Emergency Management Agency director Craig Fugate and others to discuss the storm response. After the meeting, federal officials will travel to hard-hit areas including Manhattan, Breezy Point, Brooklyn, Long Island, Staten Island and cities in New Jersey to review response efforts. Disaster modeling company Eqecat estimated Sandy caused up to $20 billion in insured losses and $50 billion in economic losses. The 26.2 mile race that would have wound its way through each borough in the city on Sunday has been canceled, Mayor Bloomberg said, because it has become "the source of controversy and division." NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports. At the high end of the range, it would rank as the fourth costliest U.S. catastrophe, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the September 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Five days after Sandy struck the U.S., New York and the wider region were in full recovery mode:
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.  Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast. More content from NBCNews.com:
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11/03/2012
Electricity slowly restored to lower Manhattan
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