Despite power outages, flooding and a crippled transportation system, New Yorkers stepped out into the streets Wednesday, trying to regain their daily fast-paced rhythm. 

Getting to work 
The sun was not up yet over Central Park and torn branches and debris from Superstorm Sandy were still scattered along Fifth Avenue as several New Yorkers huddled around a bus stop on the Upper East Side. They lined up as the bus approached, and, as a woman wearing scrubs took the first steps into the bus, the driver stopped her from paying the fare. 

“It’s free today,” she said. 

Buses and taxis were only a small part of the traffic crisscrossing streets at a brisk and, at times, busy pace for 6:45 a.m. The congestion became a serious concern as the day progressed, and Wednesday afternoon New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would restrict car traffic coming into Manhattan to vehicles carrying three or more passengers until Friday. 

Jonathan Sanger / NBC News

Restaurant workers remove water from the flooded basement of the 11B Express pizzeria in the East Village, New York, on Wednesday.

While some bus service resumed and some bridges reopened, transit officials said they couldn't predict when the entire subway would be fully restored. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that parts of the subway would begin running again Thursday morning. 

On Broadway 
Many of Broadway’s 40 theaters, which had been closed Monday and Tuesday, were open Wednesday, but "The Lion King," "Mary Poppins" and “Evita” were among the performances that were canceled. That sent several dozen people – mostly tourists – to Minskoff Theater, where they waited in an orderly line at the box office to sort out their tickets. 

Museums, the Empire State Building and many stores also reopened Wednesday but parks, the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and many other top attractions remained shuttered. 

At the New York Stock Exchange 
Financial markets reopened after a two-day shutdown, with Bloomberg ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

If you took a quick glance at the neighborhood around the exchange, you would have thought it was a normal Wednesday morning on Wall Street. Traffic was moving, and a combination of locals, exchange workers and tourists populated the sidewalks. 

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

Traders and staff report to work at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

But this was no typical morning. No stores or restaurants were open -- not even a Starbucks. The traffic light at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street was dark; there was no power anywhere.  

The only building within view that had electricity was the iconic New York Stock Exchange, which has always been heavily fortified, with backups upon backups, lest the edifice of American capitalism be compromised. 

The building –- lit red, white and blue -- stood out against the rest of the Financial District, which was pitch black before dawn. 

Exchange workers began showing up slowly, some working on connecting their firms with the trading floor. 

"We'll have to run the servers from the floor," one worker said to another. 

Others walked around looking for a good cell signal. 

As the morning went on, traffic built up, and more workers arrived, some by taxi, some by limo, others in vans or buses. 

Many left behind difficult circumstances at home caused by the massive storm. 

"I need to find a whole-house generator," a security guard said. His house was without power, and he had toddlers at home. 

"You and me, we live through it," he said. "But the babies, they don't understand." 

Two exchange workers walked past. One pumped his fist. "We're back," he said. "We're back!" 

National Guard lends a hand 
Military trucks parked along Lexington Avenue with the Chrysler Building in the background is the type of sight that stops people in their tracks. 

“It’s pretty cool,” a biker said, snapping a photo on his iPhone. “You just don’t see this in New York.” 

Jonathan Sanger / NBC News

Army National Guard troops from upstate New York stand in front of the the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan, on Wednesday.

Army National Guard troops from upstate New York were deployed on a 24-hour schedule to the city to supplement the rescue and recovery efforts of the New York Police and Fire Departments in the storm’s aftermath. The troops are stationed at the 69th Regiment Armory, a historic building currently powered by a generator courtesy of the organizers of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, which takes place there later this year. 

“We’re here to help with anything the city can’t handle,” Capt. Brian Reed told NBC News. 

Capt. Kevin O’Reilly said the troops will likely stick around for a while as there’s still a lot of work to be done. So far, they helped evacuate a nursing home in the Rockaways, changed batteries in cell towers and brought fuel up numerous flights of stairs to Bellevue Hospital, among other things. 

“Our biggest challenge is ensuring that everybody around here is taken care of because of the power outages,” he said. 

A couple of blocks away, a deli worker who had poked a hole in a pizza box, wrote “open” in big letters across the front and put the box around his neck was standing in front of the Gramercy Star Café, hoping to attract customers to one of the very few open businesses on that block. 

The deli was without power, but the gas stoves were working, so kitchen staff worked by candlelight, making sandwiches and baking pastries. 

In the East Village
Vincent Sgarlato’s restaurant, “11B Express,” was closed Wednesday and dealing with a flooded basement, but residents in the neighborhood told us the pizzeria had given out free slices for most of the day Tuesday. 

Sgarlato said that once the restaurant lost power, he decided not to let the pizza dough go to waste. He and his team spent more than seven hours baking more than 125 pies, he said, which they sliced and gave away to whomever wandered in the restaurant. 

“It felt so good to do it,” Sgarlato, who opened the pizzeria about six years ago, told NBC News, adding that people wanted to give him tips but he couldn’t take them. 

“I don’t have the heart to do that,” he said.

Jonathan Sanger / NBC News

Vincent Sgarlato, owner of the 11B Express restaurant in the East Village, New York, stands behind the counter by the pizza ovens on Wednesday. His restaurant was closed for the day he gave away free pizza for several hours Tuesday.

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Two women who say they were sexually abused in the 1990s by a teacher who later committed suicide have each filed a $15 million claim against a California school district and three former administrators.

The women, referred to as Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2 in court documents, contend the Moraga School District had received multiple complaints of inappropriate conduct by the teacher, Dan Witters, over the years but did little or nothing to stop it.

Witters, who taught at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School, killed himself in 1996 shortly after the Jane Does came forward with allegations of sexual abuse, according to the Contra Costa Times. 

Witter never faced criminal charges and Moraga police stopped their investigation upon his death, according to the newspaper.

The tort claims filed last week follow an earlier claim filed in August by Kristen Cunnane, now a 30-year-old swim coach at UC Berkeley, against the same defendants. Cunnane alleges she was abused by Witters and another teacher two decades ago. Her claim was denied, and she filed a lawsuit Sept. 25 seeking unspecified damages, the Contra Costa Times reported.

According to the latest Jane Doe claims:

Claimant never suspected wrongdoing by Moraga School District until late May or early June 2012, when, for the first time, it was revealed to her that Moraga School District had received multiple complaints demonstrating that Witters was sexually abusing certain female students during the 1990-1994 timeframe and then had covered-up and concealed its knowledge after Witters killed himself in 1996. Claimant learned this information for the first time when she read an investigative news story in a local newspaper that detailed the District’s culpability. The news story was based on internal District documents that had never been previously released to the public and, in fact, had been previously concealed by the District.

After Witters committed suicide, the school district concealed and covered up its knowledge of past complaints, the claims allege.

“Claimant now knows that if District officials had simply done what the law required of them to do – report suspected child abuse and supervise their teacher appropriately – then Claimant would never have been abused or harmed by Witters,” the claims say.

Bruce Burns, superintendent of the Moraga School District, did not immediately return a telephone call for comment on Wednesday from NBC News.

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HOBOKEN, N.J. –  One of the most densely populated square miles in the U.S. is still full of floodwater and still out of power, and residents are starting to run out of patience with post-Sandy life.

“They’re saying we might not have power till Monday,” said Jessica Van Binsbergen, 28, a Hoboken, N.J., resident, who was waiting for a ferry to Manhattan. “There’s a lot of flooding where I live. I’m headed to a friend’s.”

Van Binsbergen, her cat in tow, was standing in a line of hundreds of people  – all of whom were eager to get out of Hoboken, a densely packed city of about 50,000 people along the Hudson River. Water up to four feet high remained pooled in some areas of the city, and flooded many of the basement apartments that line the streets; on Wednesday, National Guard vehicles arrived to assist with rescues and delivering meals to stranded people.

A Hoboken police officer estimated his department had performed “a couple hundred” rescues since the storm hit.

Gary Hershorn / Reuters

A woman makes her way through the floodwaters in Hoboken, N.J., on Wednesday.

‘It’s been nonstop,” the officer, who said he wasn’t authorized by the city to speak on the record, told NBC News as he and another officer, both wearing high rain boots, waded over to an apartment surrounded by deep floodwaters to help a woman with a liver condition. “We started doing rescues 28 hours ago and haven’t slept.”

Three of Hoboken’s four firehouses were flooded by Sandy, Battalion Chief Louis Moyeno said.

Gary Hershorn / Reuters

A man carries his wife through the floodwaters in Hoboken, N.J., on Wednesday.

“This is the only operational firehouse left,” he said, standing outside Hoboken Fire Department, Engine No. 2 on Washington Street. “The water has receded, but there is no power to any of the other firehouses, and there’s water damage.”

Omar Vicioso, 31, said Sandy poured water into his basement, and left cars floating in his street. He was eager to get back to his work at a boutique store in Manhattan, he said, but wasn’t sure when that would happen.

“All the cars were scattered around,” he said. “I don’t have a car -- I usually take public transportation -- but obviously that’s not happening. With my phone down, the PATH [train]down, the buses not working, it’s kind of a waiting game.”

Craig Ruttle / AP

David Bagatelle, of Hoboken, N.J., walks from his residence through high water in Hoboken, N.J., on Wednesday.

A couple blocks away, William Mirlas, a contractor with a water removal company, was pumping water from a Hoboken resident’s home.

“He had four to five feet [in here],” Mirlas said. “When I opened the door to his room, it was just like a movie: The water came in from outside, just like a river.”

In addition to the man’s furniture, his wallet and clothing were soaking wet, Mirlas said.

While the National Guard was assisting local crews with rescue efforts, residents tried to keep from going stir-crazy.

Craig Ruttle / AP

A dog named Shaggy is handed from a National Guard truck to National Guard personnel after the dog and his owner left a flooded building in Hoboken, N.J., on Wednesday.

Amid the darkness that encased nearly all of Hoboken, there was one bright spot: One neighborhood had power, and its inhabitants were happy to share.

“Re-charge your morning!” read signs posted around 11^th Street. “Free coffee and power outlets!”

In other parts of Hoboken,  loud sump pumps reverberated down streets where fake cobwebs and other Halloween trimmings decorated darkened, flooded storefronts and homes. But on and around 11^th Street, residents seemed  to be having a block party rather than making a post-hurricane clamor for electricity.

John Makely / NBC News

Rey Erney, right, plugs his phone in on a neighbor's front steps along Eleventh street.

John and Jeanne-Marie Scura, who live on Garden Street near 11^th, have four children  – but by Wednesday morning, a group of about 15 kids had settled in comfortably into their home, happy to take advantage of their TV and computer.

Related story: Amid storm, a desperate search for power

“We never lost power,” John Scura said. “People were asking us if they could charge their stuff because they saw our lights on. People brought food [in exchange].”

Their electricity luck didn’t extend to their local pharmacy, however, where the Scuras were trying to get antibiotics for one of their kids, who had strep throat.

Dale Shulmistra, his girlfriend, and their dog came to hang out and recharge their cell phones from a few blocks away. “The generosity –   the thoughtfulness of these people is fantastic. I’ve seen a couple of them before, talked to a couple before. It’s nice to hear other people’s stories [from Sandy].”

The power party attracted dozens of people throughout the day on both sides of the street, where power strips hung from extension cords out of first-floor windows.

“Do you guys need some coffee?” Theresa Howard, 47, who put up the fliers  and organized the event yesterday, yelled to people as they walked down the street.

“Someone said this restores their faith in mankind. There’s just so much bad stuff going in , this is just such a simple thing, it was all we could do,” she told NBC News. “People are really thankful … Even a police officer said, ‘This is what makes Hoboken so great. This is what it used to be.’”

Meanwhile Wednesday, President Barack Obama toured New Jersey's battered coastline, saying the federal government was "going to be here for the long haul" for that state and 15 others dealing with destruction and power outages after Sandy, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ordered that Halloween trick-or-treating be postponed in his state until Monday due to unsafe conditions.

Sandy killed at least 47 people in the U.S. after having killed at least 71 in the Caribbean.

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

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• Flames rage anew in barrier island town ravaged by Sandy
• Sandy leaves trail of destruction, disbelief in its path
• Toppled tree exposes skeletal remains, cement box
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• New York's post-Sandy divide: Those with power and those without
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NYPD

Artur Kasrpzak, a six-year NYPD veteran, died Monday night while helping family members to safety inside his flooded Staten Island home, according to police.

Friends, family and colleagues are mourning an off-duty New York City police officer who died while helping seven family members to safety inside his flood-ravaged home on Staten Island during superstorm Sandy.

Officer Artur Kasprzak, 28,  died Monday night in the basement of his flooded home.

In a statement, the NYPD gave the following account:

As flood water surged into the house, Officer Kasprzak was able to get six adults and a 15-month-old boy into his attic to escape the rapidly rising water. Officer Kasprzak then told one of the women he was going to check the basement, but would be right back.

After he did not return, she called 911 to report Officer Kasprzak missing. NYPD Emergency Service and SCUBA units quickly responded, but could not access the home due to down, electrified power lines in the water. A search commenced as soon as the house was safe to enter.

At approximately 7 a.m. Tuesday, Officer Kasprzak's body was located, unconscious and unresponsive, in the basement. EMTs pronounced him dead at the scene.

Kasrpzak, a six-year NYPD veteran, was assigned to the 1st Precinct in Manhattan.

“We offer condolences and prayers for Police Officer Kasprzak's family and all those who are suffering losses as a result of the storm, and extended deep appreciation for those working selflessly to help others,” the NYPD said. “They and Artur will never be forgotten.”

"He was a brave guy," a friend, Tommy Krol, 29, told the New York Daily News. "He loved being a cop. He loved his job.”

At least 26 Sandy-related deaths have been reported in New York City as of Wednesday, according to NBCNewYork.com.

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

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• For some who stayed behind in New York, it wasn't too bad
• Flames rage anew in barrier island town ravaged by Sandy
• Sandy leaves trail of destruction, disbelief in its path
• Toppled tree exposes skeletal remains, cement box
• Your Sandy photos: Show us the heroes in your life
• New York's post-Sandy divide: Those with power and those without
• By the numbers: Superstorm Sandy

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NEW YORK -- Days after the country’s most densely populated region was brought to its knees by Superstorm Sandy, those without power were going to desperate lengths to find it.

For graphic designer Robert Romiti, that meant a three-mile march up Lower Manhattan in search of electricity to charge his iPhone. Romiti told NBC News he had walked from his apartment on South Street to the corner of 36th Street and Fifth Avenue, where a condominium tower had put out several surge protectors for passers-by. About 20 people were huddled around it.

Romiti said he’d found a similarly improvised power station six blocks to the south – but it was fully occupied.

Some people were searching for even more juice. Widespread power outages, combined with forecasts of falling temperatures and ongoing uncertainty about when power would be restored, sparked a surge in demand for home power generators. Online sites recorded most models as “out of stock” and home centers sold out shipments shortly after they arrived. Phone lines to dealers of permanent standby generators were jammed. Home center stores turned away customers looking for portable models.

A Home Depot in Port Chester, N.Y. sold 190 units within hours on Wednesday, according to a store employee. At another location in Nyack, N.Y., a cluster of customers gathered in the darkened store based on word that a truck was en route with more generators. A store employee created an impromptu waiting list by handing out slips of paper with hand-written numbers and explaining the rules: “You can’t leave and come back,” she told a new arrival. “You have to be here when your number is called.”

Across the region, more than 6 million people were without power, and many were driving miles and miles to find it.

At a Lukoil gas station in Bloomfield, N.J., about 40 cars lined up for gas Wednesday afternoon. Cesar Baez and a friend had tried five stations from Newark to Union before reaching the station, where they had already waited 90 minutes before nearing the entrance. In nearby Union, he had waited two hours before reaching the pump, only to be told the station was rationing. Baez wanted to fill his BMW to drive to Boston. “We’re trying to get out of town,” he said. Baez did not gas up before the storm. “That was an error,” he said.

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Also in line were Eileen and Michael Minogue, from Butler, N.J., about 20 miles northwest of Bloomfield. This was their first stop because none of the stations in Butler had gas. The Minogues had been waiting 40 minutes for gas for their SUV and a generator they were using to power their home. The Minogues had been without power since Monday and had been told it wouldn’t be back until at least Monday. They were going through about two gallons of gas a day to run their generator for about 4 or 5 hours a day, mostly for their refrigerator.

Jonathan Sanger / NBC News

New Yorkers charge their cell phones on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Wednesday.

For some, the scenes harken back to the fuel-shortages of the 1970s.

“Right now, there is a shortage of gas in the area because of the extraordinary demand of the few places that have electricity,” AAA Spokesperson Chris McBride told NBC News. “Without power, even if they do have reserve gas in their storage tanks, they can’t pump it out.”

On one side of an Exxon station in Belleville, N.J., cars stretched down the street, snarling traffic. On the other, people stood in line with gas cans in hand, grabbing as much fuel as they could for cars and generators. 

One man from Montclair, N.J., said his girlfriend's car ran out of fuel in line at another Exxon station. He offered money to people for their empty gas cans, hoping to carry away as much fuel as possible, but he didn't have any takers. 

The station's owner said the pumps would run out of fuel around 8 p.m. He said Exxon had a new shipment of gas on the way, but that it wouldn't be in time to help anyone tonight.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com 

John Makely / NBC News

Stephanie Sikaris, of Union, N.J., waits in line with others at an Exxon station on Route 22 to fill up her gas containers to feed the generator that she bought Monday from Home Depot.

Improvised charging stations
New York City's power company, Consolidated Edison Inc., said Wednesday that it had restored power to more than 160,000 of the 930,000 customers left in the dark by Hurricane Sandy. Con Ed estimated Tuesday that those served by underground electric equipment in Manhattan and Brooklyn should have their power restored within four days. 

Even without power, New Yorkers found creative ways to charge their phones and devices. 

At 10^th Street and Avenue C, where Bill DiPaola said he saw cars floating in flood waters just a day ago, some two dozen people were huddled around a two-person bike hooked up to a generator that was charging tens of phones. DiPaola, founder of the not-yet-open Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces, said he had used the bike earlier to power a pump to drain the basement. He hoped he’d still be able to open the museum as planned on Nov. 17. 

Outside, two women were pedaling furiously; they had volunteered to do so in exchange for getting to charge their phones. Audrey Conway, a fashion school student whose apartment is without power or running water, said pedaling this bike was harder than the one she rides every day.

“I’m happy I can do this,” Conway said, slightly out of breath. “Better than sitting in my apartment.” 

Jonathan Sanger / NBC News

New Yorkers found unique ways to work with limited electricity in New York on Wednesday.

At the main branch of the Montclair Public Library, where a line formed before its 10 a.m. opening, several hundred people were using every available outlet to charge computers and cellphones, with some sprawled on floors near electrical plugs. Library staffers opened an auditorium, additional conference rooms and arranged for a branch building to open Wednesday to accommodate townspeople without electricity.

“We’re trying our best to serve the public the best we can,” said library supervisor Dawn Quinn.

Jennifer Dwyer found a desk space at the library to work. “I was here earlier but the Wifi was overwhelmed so I had to buy my own hot spot,” a battery-powered Internet connection, for her computer. Dwyer had lost power Monday night. “I’m like everyone else here,” she said of her hunt for electrical power. “At least it’s not cold.”

Driving around in a mobile hotspot of their own creation, Daymion Mardel, 38, and Angel Hernandez, 36, were out in lower Manhattan to help people charge their phones out of their car. The two photographers, who live in Harlem, where they actually do have power, set up a solar panel where they could plug in about 40 phones.

“We’re just trying to help in the small ways we can,” Mardel told NBC News. “Some people donate money, we had the resources to do this. We know how important it is for people to have mobile phones to keep in touch.”  

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

People congregate in front of a building that still has wireless Internet access in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York on Tuesday.

NBC News' John Schoen, Jane Weaver, Becky Bratu, Rosa Golijan and Jason White contributed to this report. 

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Heersche family

Undated photo of Taylor Heersche

What was supposed to be a welcome-home parade instead turned into a somber candlelight vigil for a terminally ill 15-year-old Kansas girl who died hours before she was to return home.

Residents of the town of Mulvane had decorated Main Street with ribbons and signs in orange — the color of leukemia awareness — to welcome Taylor Heersche home Tuesday evening, The Wichita Eagle reported.

Taylor had been terminally ill with cancer and had told her family she wanted to be at home to die. Doctors at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City told the family she had only a few more days to live, so the plan was to release her to be with her family and friends.

But Taylor passed away Tuesday morning at the hospital, with her parents, DeAnne and Dan Heersche, at her side.

Instead of the parade, Mulvane residents gathered for a candlelight vigil late Tuesday to honor the Mulvane High School sophomore, the Eagle reported.

“I’ll bet every parent says that their kid was special. But she was a real people person. There were no strangers,” DeAnne Heersche said of her daughter, according to the Eagle.

“That kind of kid leaves a huge hole not only in our family, but in the community. We’re all going to miss her horribly.”

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

"It's still a homecoming in our eyes, it's just a different home that she's going to, a better home that she's going to, so it's more of a celebration than the grief,"  Maggie Keys, one of Taylor's classmates, was quoted as saying by KWCH-TV.

Taylor, a sophomore at Mulvane High School, was diagnosed with the leukemia in May 2008 when she was 10.

Taylor's leukemia had been in remission for several years following chemotherapy. But last winter the cancer returned aggressively.

Services are Sunday at Central Community Church in Wichita, with a private burial Monday.

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NEW YORK -- Faced with the prospect of days without power and swaths of the city plunged into darkness at night, police brought in banks of lights and boosted patrols to reassure victims of a monster storm that they won't be victims of crime.

Some prominent galleries in Chelsea hired private security and apartment building superintendents suddenly became guards. In Coney Island, where more than a dozen people were arrested for looting overnight, police officers stood on corners or cruised in cars to guard a strip of vandalized stores and a damaged bank, to the relief of shaken residents.

"We're feeling OK, but at first we felt worried," 12-year-old Oleg Kharitmov said Tuesday as he walked his dog with his parents by the bank. "I'm pretty happy that the cops are here."

The precautions came on a second powerless night after the city was battered by Sandy on Monday night and residents grappled with how long it would take to get back to normal — or at least New York's version of normal.

As night fell, nerves frayed.

Yvique Bastien waited outside an apartment complex with her two sons, her daughter, 4-month old grandchild and a pushcart full of supplies, hoping to get a ride to a relative's home from a member of her church. With the power out, it wasn't safe to stay, she said.

Also on NBCNewYork.com: Christie postpones Halloween until Monday

"We don't know what can happen to us," she said.

In Chelsea, residents strolled down darkening streets with no lights, while traffic police tried to manage major intersections.

Roberto Pineta stood in front of the apartment building where he works as superintendent, saying he took it upon himself to keep residents safe by sitting in a chair inside the front entrance, day and night, sleeping only a few hours at a time. Candles lit the entrance to a nearby apartment building where another superintendent and his staff were putting in extra hours while power is out.

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"It's a little disconcerting to be in the dark, but I feel safe — these guys are great," Stacey Vuolo said as she headed to her brother-in-law's nearby apartment, which at least had cold water for a shower.

On West 24th Street, generators lit up the Andrea Rosen gallery, which had hired private security.

Down the street, artist Arlene Rush said she didn't require extra security in her third-floor studio, because it required several keys to access from the street.

"I don't really need the cops," added neighbor Guy Kloppenburg, a teacher. "We knock on each other's door to make sure everyone is OK."

Bloomberg promised "a very heavy police presence" in the darkened neighborhoods, which include much of Manhattan south of the Empire State Building, from the East River to the Hudson River. Even outside the blackout areas, police deployed vans and patrol cars with their roof lights on, along with officers on the streets in a robust show of force.

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A section of Hurricane Sandy-ravaged Mantoloking, N.J., was ablaze again Wednesday morning, two days after 14 homes burned in the affluent barrier island enclave.

Video from NBCNewYork.com showed flames possibly fueled by broken natural gas lines raging in the town about 50 miles east of Trenton on Wednesday.

A large cluster of flames could be seen as smaller fires spread out from it, TODAY’s Natalie Morales reported.

Ocean County Emergency Management officials said they believed ruptured natural gas lines caused the flames to rekindle Wednesday.

Impassable roads hindered Bricktown firefighters’ efforts to reach the blazes, NBCNewYork.com reported.

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Morales, who observed the fires from a helicopter early Wednesday, described the area as devastated.

Obama to visit stricken NJ

“What was shoreline and beautiful, waterfront properties were completely pushed back, gone, and covered by sand,” Morales reported.

“This is part of a barrier island; it’s very much cut off,” she said.

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

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• Colorado teen charged as adult in killing of Jessica Ridgeway, 10

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Updated at 5:27 p.m. ET: Two children were found stabbed to death inside a Naperville, Ill., home, and the mother of one of them was taken into custody for questioning, authorities said.

Naperville police responding to a request for a welfare check on Tuesday night found the bodies of a boy and girl in a townhome. The children were believed to be her 8-year-old son and a 5-year-old girl she had been baby-sitting, law-enforcement sources said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Two dogs were also found dead inside the home, a source told the Naperville Sun.

“There is no reason to believe any additional subjects are at large at this time,” police said in a statement issued Wednesday morning.

A law-enforcement official told the Chicago Tribune the woman had been distraught for several days after the death of her father. 

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• Colorado teen charged as adult in killing of Jessica Ridgeway, 10

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NBCConnecticut.com

A giant oak tree that stood in a downtown park since 1909 tipped to the ground revealing human remains and what city officials believe to be some type of time capsule, tangled in its roots.

The winds that toppled trees, knocked out power and carved a path of devastation through Connecticut Monday night, also led to a strange discovery on the New Haven Green.

A giant oak tree that stood in the downtown park since 1909 lost its footing in the powerful storm and tipped to the ground revealing human remains and what city officials believe to be some type of time capsule, tangled in its roots.

“You think it’s the hurricane? I think it’s a dead man trying to tell a tale,” a passerby, Curtis T told the New Haven Independent.

Read the original report  |  More from NBCConnecticut.com

Though city officials were aware of the Green’s colonial past as a burial ground, they did not believe that any bodies remained until calls came in on Halloween eve, reporting the grisly discovery.

Katie Carbo told the Independent that around 3 p.m. Tuesday she called police, who confirmed her finding — an upside-down human skull, mouth agape, connected to a spine and rib cage.

City officials have also taken custody of cement box found among the bones, which they will decide what to do with at a later date, a city spokesperson said.

Even before she arrived, local artist Silas Finch said he had been digging around beneath the upended tree shortly after it fell Monday night. According to the Independent, he says he was searching for old coins but found what appeared to be a long bone instead.

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The Lincoln Oak, planted on the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth, is believed to have toppled at about 6 p.m. Monday, during the height of Hurricane Sandy, the Independent reported.

Police, who roped off the area about 24 hours later and are holding the scene until the state medical examiner’s office arrives to retrieve the bones, do not suspect foul play, according to the Independent.

“This is someone’s family remains,” Sgt. Anthony Zona told the paper. “It should be given a proper burial.”

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

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More content from NBCNews.com:

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• For some who stayed behind in New York, it wasn't too bad
• Flames rage anew in barrier island town ravaged by Sandy
• Sandy leaves trail of destruction, disbelief in its path
• Toppled tree exposes skeletal remains, cement box
• Your Sandy photos: Show us the heroes in your life
• New York's post-Sandy divide: Those with power and those without
• By the numbers: Superstorm Sandy

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Updated at 1:29 a.m. ET: Residents of the Northeast eager to get out and about after Superstorm Sandy's rampage discovered Wednesday that they couldn't get very far.

As sunshine spread over the area for the first time since Sandy hit the coast Monday, there were some signs of progress from authorities working round the clock to restore the region to its usual hustle and bustle:

• Wall Street reopened Wednesday.
• Three of seven flooded East River tunnels in New York City were cleared of water Wednesday. Full bus service was restored before being suspended overnight in southern parts of Manhattan. Some train service resumed.
• Very limited subway service was set to resume Thursday — none of it, however, south of 34th Street in Manhattan because of stubborn power failures.
• Two of the area's three major airports — Kennedy in New York and Newark Liberty in New Jersey — reopened with restricted service. New York's LaGuardia Airport was projected to reopen Thursday with limited flight schedules.
• The New York Marathon will go on as planned Sunday, race and city officials said. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said power should be restored to most of the city by then.

"We will get up and get this rebuilt," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said as he surveyed the state's battered coastline with President Barack Obama. And Bloomberg said, "We are on our way back to normal."

For some New Yorkers, it's back to business as usual

But residents who ventured out might not have noticed it.

New York City's beating heart, its 108-year-old subway system, remained largely crippled. Many tunnels connecting the city with its outer boroughs and New Jersey remained closed or restricted. The region's airports offered only minimal service. Packed buses sped past lines stretching around entire city blocks. Many intersections were closed because of accidents caused by inoperative traffic signals.

Subway-dependent businesses see traffic slow to halt

To ease the gridlock, Bloomberg ordered that only cars carrying three or more people would be allowed into the city across four East Side bridges Thursday. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, meanwhile, authorized transit officials to waive fares on all commuter railways, subways and buses through Friday night.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P Malloy announced that commuter rail service between Stamford and New York's Grand Central Terminal will resume Thursday morning, and that rail fares for Metro-North service would be waived Thursday and Friday.

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

Resident Anthony Sessions set out from Manhattan for Brooklyn to see for himself what Sandy had left behind.

"It took five buses to get to downtown Brooklyn," Sessions told NBC News. "I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge because of the work in Stuyvesant Town.

"I had no idea what had happened," he said.

Many people turned to rental car agencies for transportation, only to find that they had few cars to rent.

"It's people saying, 'I'm stuck; I've got to get out of here,'" Richard Broome, a spokesman for Hertz Rent-a-Car, told NBC News. "For this kind of activity, you only see it during truly catastrophic events — major natural disasters and, for example, 9/11."

In any event, gas was scarce at the few stations that were open, and lines to get it were backed up as long as an hour.

On one side of an Exxon station in Belleville, N.J., cars stretched down the street, snarling traffic. On the other, people stood in line with gas cans in hand, grabbing as much fuel as they could for cars and generators.

A man from Montclair said his girlfriend's car ran out of fuel in line at another Exxon station. He offered money to people for their empty gas cans, hoping to carry away as much fuel as possible, but he didn't have any takers.

The station's owner told NBC News that the pumps would run out of fuel about 8 p.m. ET. He said Exxon had a new shipment of gas on the way but that it wouldn't be in time to help anyone Wednesday night.

Price gouging was becoming a concern, especially in New Jersey, where about 100 people had called the attorney general's office to complain.

"Some gas stations have raised their prices by 20 to 30 percent in one day," Neal Buccino, a spokesman for the state's Division of Consumer Affairs, told NBC News. "Some hardware stores have doubled the price they charge for generators overnight."

Sandy likely to hit car buyers in the wallet

'We need more fuel'
News agency tallies indicated that Sandy killed at least 63 people in the U.S. after it came ashore Monday night. More than half — 34 — were in New York City, officials told NBC News.

Many of those were drownings on Staten Island, where rescuers going house to house were finding people floating inside their homes, NBC New York reported.

BreakingNews.com's coverage of Sandy

Sandy's effects were still vividly evident from the Atlantic coast to as far inland as Chicago:

• About 6 million homes and businesses — two-thirds in New Jersey and New York — were still without power. Ninety percent of Long Island was without power, and it could take as long as 10 days to restore all service, Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., told MSNBC TV.
• Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared a public health emergency for New York, helping to make sure Medicare, Medicaid and children's health beneficiaries continue to receive services.
• About 500 patients at New York City's Bellevue Hospital were evacuated to other hospitals after floodwaters crippled its equipment and power supply.
• New York City schools will be closed the rest of the week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
• Sewage was backing up into homes near a flooded sewage plant in Nassau County on Long Island. Authorities feared that it could spread to thousands of homes.
• The U.N. Security Council had to move because of water damage to parts of U.N. headquarters in Manhattan.
• More than 3 feet of snow had fallen in parts of West Virginia, where 220,000 homes and businesses were without power Wednesday afternoon. Red House, Md., got 30 inches of snow.
• In Chicago, forecasters warned that high waves and flooding were possible on the Lake Michigan shore Wednesday. Sandy caused waves up to two stories high on the Great Lakes, forcing cargo ships — some longer than three football fields — to seek shelter.
• In New Haven, Conn., Sandy blew down a tree that uprooted human remains and what appeared to be a time capsule.
• More than 70 percent of homes remained without power in Greenwich, Conn., where downed trees littered the landscape. In Westport, 85 percent of customers still had no power.

Much of New Jersey, where the storm made landfall, remained in dire straits. Aerial footage Wednesday showed fires raging among storm-damaged homes and sand pushed inland.

Christie ordered that Halloween trick-or-treating be moved to Monday because of the unsafe conditions. Many communities in Connecticut also delayed trick-or-treating.

Hoboken, just across from Manhattan, became a virtual island. At least 20,000 people — about 40 percent of the population — remained stranded Wednesday as 500 million gallons of water overwhelmed the town. Authorities said it would take at least two days to pump all the water out.

The National Guard showed up Wednesday to deliver equipment, food and supplies, but much more is needed, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said.

"We need more food," Zimmer told NBC News. "We need more resources, so anyone who's listening to this in the city of Hoboken or neighboring towns who can who can get to us, we ask you to come and deliver your supplies."

Particularly critical: "We truly need, we need more fuel," she said.

In Brigantine, Obama, Christie and Anthony Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, comforted residents and vowed that every possible resource would be made available.

"We are here for you, and we will not forget," Obama said. "We will follow up to make sure you get all the help you need to rebuild."

Obama praised Christie for putting "his heart and soul into making sure the people of New Jersey bounce back stronger than before."

Christie, in turn, said he and Obama had "a great working relationship." He thanked Obama "for his concern and his compassion for the people of our state," saying it was important to have the president "acknowledge all the suffering that's going on here in New Jersey."

That suffering is likely to stretch for months in New Jersey, where at least 2 million customers remained without electricity.

"All the houses on the oceanfront on the north end of my town — all their bottoms have been washed away," said Thomas Boyd, the police chief in Seaside Heights. "Their foundations are gone."

In Point Pleasant Beach, one of the hardest-hit areas, Lisa and Rich Morico carried away what they could as they left their home for what was likely to be a very long time — "I have no idea" how long, Rich Morico said.

Looking over the remains of their home, he admitted: "I don't want to say in front of my wife."

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• As National Guard comes to rescue, so do NJ residents — with power outlets
• For some New Yorkers, it's back to business as usual
• Devastated NY community built by firefighters burned beyond their reach
• For some who stayed behind in New York, it wasn't too bad
• New Jersey investigating reports of price gouging
• Subway-dependent businesses see traffic slow to halt
• Fed up with waiting, air travelers rush rental car counters
• NY's Bellevue Hospital evacuates patients as power stays cut
• Off-duty NYPD officer dies saving his family from Sandy
• Toppled tree exposes skeletal remains, cement box
• Your Sandy photos: Show us the heroes in your life

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NBCLosAngeles.com

Kent Easter, 38, and Jill Easter, 39, were indicted Thursday on charges of conspiracy to procure false arrest, false imprisonment and conspiracy to falsely report a crime.

A married couple accused of trying to frame an elementary school parent volunteer by planting marijuana and pills in her car have been indicted by an Orange County Grand Jury.

The couple, Kent Wycliffe Easter, 38, and Jill Bjorkholm Easter, 39, were indicted Thursday on charges of conspiracy to procure false arrest, false imprisonment and conspiracy to falsely report a crime, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say the case dates to 2010, while the unidentified parent volunteer was at the school in Irvine, where Jill and Kent Easter’s son was a student.

Read the original report  |  More from NBCLosAngeles.com

The couple hatched the plot to retaliate against the volunteer who they believe was not properly supervising their son, prosecutors said.

The couple is accused of planting a bag of Vicodin, Percocet, marijuana, and a used marijuana pipe behind the driver’s seat of the woman's unlocked vehicle and then calling police to report she was driving erratically and had drugs, the indictment said.

"(Kent Easter) is accused of telling the dispatcher that he was a concerned parent who had witnessed an erratic driver park at the elementary school," the Orange County District Attorney's Office said in a statement. "He is accused of claiming to have witnessed Jane Doe, whom he identified by name, hide a bag of drugs behind her driver’s seat in her car."

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The Easters maintained cellphone contact and exchanged text messages during their plot, authorities alleged.

Jill Easter has written a novel under the name Ava Bjork called "Holding House," about a mixed martial arts fighter hoping to strike it rich by undertaking a kidnapping, according to The Los Angeles Times.

If convicted, the defendants face a maximum sentence of three years in state prison.

Both are out of custody on $20,000 bail and are scheduled to be arraigned on Nov. 9.

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For some New York families who defied the mandatory order to evacuate for  Hurricane Sandy, staying behind posed few problems for them though one did get a front-row seat on the storm as it touched down in the city.

Two families profiled by NBC News ahead of Sandy’s arrival in New York on Monday night said they had power and water throughout the storm and afterward.

“If we hadn’t been looking out the windows or paying attention to news we never would have known anything had happened frankly,” said Nicholas Rennie, a 45-year-old literature professor who hunkered down with his wife, Claire Wladis, 34, and their 21-month-old-daughter, Iliana, in their 15th floor flat in lower Manhattan.

For others, the impact of the storm was without parallel in the densely populated tristate region of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with its destructive winds, heavy flooding and raging fires. Farther afield, powerful gusts felled trees and knocked out power for up to 8.2 million residents across the eastern United States, while heavy snow made travel treacherous at higher elevations. Nationwide, at least 46 were confirmed dead of storm-related causes.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had ordered some 375,000 people living in low-lying areas to evacuate, though it was clear that many residents, like the Rennie-Wladis family, decided to stay put and take their chances.

Miranda Leitsinger / NBC News

Claire Wladis, 34, and her husband Nicholas Rennie, 45, look across the Hudson River to New Jersey on Monday

The family watched the surge of water creep up to their building, but from the east not the nearby Hudson River just to their west. It “looked like a pretty fast river moving north,” Rennie said late Tuesday, adding that the water eventually receded.

They also saw the storm moving across New Jersey. The only major inconvenience was their building turning off the elevators pre-emptively.

“We never imagined it would be for us such a non-event. We thought it would be much more dramatic,” he said, noting they were saddened by the misfortune of others who were more impacted by the storm.

Warning from politicians
Some politicians had taken a harsh tone in criticizing those who stayed behind. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Monday called residents who did not follow evacuation orders in his state “both stupid and selfish.” Bloomberg took a milder tack on Sunday, asking city dwellers to leave if ordered to do so as not to endanger rescue workers.

“We thought hard about the risks and the various disadvantages” of staying, Rennie said. “But I think, you know, there are cases where you also have to evaluate the risks of the alternatives and … prepare and so we did try to do that.”

One other effect of the storm is the couple is now housing Wladis’ sister, who did lose power in her lower east side Manhattan neighborhood. “She’s here with us and everybody’s fine,” he said. “We’re all packed in here.”

For the other couple, Annie Chambliss and Laz Benitez, one of the few inconveniences they reported was losing phone connectivity. Getting a clear phone signal in some parts of the tristate has been difficult after the storm.

“We never lost power and are shocked we got away virtually unscathed,” Benitez, 41, who works in public relations, wrote in an email. “We took a walk today (Tuesday) to the east side and looks a lot worse there. But we lucked out with the whole power thing. Just amazing.”

Rennie said his family was “very lucky.”

“I don’t want to convey any sense of satisfaction about this except just relief on our own behalf,” he said, adding that their “hearts really go out to” the storm victims.

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More content from NBCNews.com:

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• Volunteers rush in to help devastated region recover
• 'There was no stopping it': Sandy's surge inundates northern NJ towns
• Breezy point: 'Whatever is not flooded is on fire'
• Sandy leaves NYC subway system, infrastructure licking its wounds
• New York's post-Sandy divide: Those with power and those without
• Stranded by Sandy, air travelers eager to change status
• Sandy hammers Jersey Shore, levels homes, shreds boardwalks
• By the numbers: Superstorm Sandy
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Breezy Point, in New York City's Queens borough, was built in part by New York City firefighters and their families in the early 1900s. A large section of it was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, in part because firefighters couldn't get there.

The idyllic community of around 3,800 homes – many wooden bungalows, packed tightly together – sits on an isolated spit of land, connected to mainland New York City by two bridges. It enjoys both bayside and ocean views, a luxury that makes it a target for both New Yorkers and every large storm that roars ashore from the Atlantic. But it wasn't rain or wind that did in Breezy Point – it was fire and logistics.

At the height of Sandy's fury late Monday, when a devastating blaze ignited in the heart of the community, firefighters were slowed by flooded roadways and other weather-related challenges, finally requiring help from the National Guard to get through. As they were working out an approach, flames fueled by massive winds jumped from home to home, consuming family histories along with the buildings holding them. By the time the blaze was contained, more than 100 homes – and St. Genevieve's Catholic Church – were destroyed, ripping the heart out of the community.

Breezy Point is sometimes called the Irish Riviera – or by its Gaelic name Cois Farraige, which means "By The Sea." Irish police and firefighters looking for affordable seaside homes rushed to build in the area when transportation to and from the city became readily available just over a century ago. It has remained one of the most Irish enclaves in America, with more than half the residents claiming Irish heritage, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Nicole Makridis, who lives in a ground-floor condominium in Breezy Point, across the street from Rockaway Beach, took this photo on Tuesday when she returned to assess the damage from Sandy. The dark band on the wall shows how high the floodwaters climbed in her unit.

"If you are interested in learning anything — the bagpipes or the tin whistle or Irish dancing," Breezy Point is the place, Dolores Mulholland told the Irish Echo, a New York-based newspaper aimed at Irish immigrants, in a feature story on the neighborhood last year.

Even Frank McCourt, the famed chronicler of Irish-American life who wrote "Angela's Ashes," once lived there, but few outsiders have the chance. Property rarely comes up for sale, and when it does, buyers must come up with a 50 percent down payment required by co-op rules. The Breezy Point Cooperative, which governs the area, pays for its own security force, and is one of the rare spots in New York City where the fire department is still run by volunteers. 

They were no match for the record-breaking storm and fire that gutted the place early Tuesday morning. The blaze did not discriminate. Rep. Robert Turner, R-N.Y., who won a special election to replace disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner last year, lost his home in the blaze. So did state Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long.

Breezy Point was under mandatory evacuation orders when Sandy rolled in, so many residents spent Monday night watching terrified on television, or scanning the Internet, looking at distant images showing their beloved beach community engulfed by water and flames. They hoped friends and family got out in time, and hoped their homes could dodge the triple threat of wind, flood and fire. Few did.

Mike Groll / AP

This aerial photo shows burned-out homes in the Breezy Point section of the Queens borough New York after a fire on Oct. 30. The tiny beachfront neighborhood told to evacuate before Sandy hit New York burned down as it was inundated by floodwaters, transforming a quaint corner of the Rockaways into a smoke-filled debris field.

'I can see a fire from my house'
Max Countryman got an alarming text from his mother, Paula, in the early morning hours on Tuesday asking if there was a fire on Breezy Point. Paula and her partner had decided to ride the storm out, as she and Max had ridden out Hurricane Irene with little trouble last year.

"I can see a fire from my house," the text said.

Max had left his mother at her Bedford Avenue home only a day earlier, after scoring a ticket on one of the last pre-storm flights out of New York. Back home in San Francisco, after Paula's electricity, phone and Internet service went out, he had to rely on her texts, news reports and, finally, the Web.

"I was just listening to the Fire Department scanner (online) all night," he said. "I listened to the progression of the fire, when it went from one alarm, to two, three, four, five, six alarms. ... It was horrible to listen to the traffic, hear another block is engulfed in flames, another block, and they just couldn't stop the progression."

He took to Twitter to ask for help, but soon learned there was no way for his mother to get off the island. At first, he was more concerned about flooding.

"I'm in contact with her. But there's probably not a lot to do but wait," he told one user. "There's a second floor and deck. And I suppose there's always the roof. But for now it's not that bad." 

But quickly, fire became the bigger worry.

"Breezy Point is in dire shape at the moment: between twelve and fifteen homes are on fire, a church is burning, and the FDNY is stuck," he wrote. A little later, he tweeted: "@FDNY what's the status on the 3-alarm in Breezy Point? My mom is stuck (on) Bedford Ave, fire is not too far away." Then, this, a moment later:  "@FDNY ... What should people stuck on the point do as the fire approaches their homes?"

About the same time, Chelsea Taylor was sweating out the storm and fire from her home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. For Taylor's family, Breezy Point has been like an extended family hotel for the past two decades. Her sister Nicole Makridis lives on Bayside Avenue; her aunt, uncle and their two kids live next door.

Courtesy Nicole Makridis

The boardwalk that used to grace Rockaway Beach washed across the street and ended up at the front door of Breezy Point resident Makridis and her neighbors.

"I was basically raised over in Breezy Point because of a beach club over there and it was absolutely beautiful," she said. "I've spent endless summers over there and a lot of my high school friends live over there."

Before Sandy’s landfall, Makridis had evacuated to Taylor's home, but the other family household stayed behind. Taylor found out during the night that parents and kids – a 3-year-old and a 9-year-old – were evacuated by boat, but she couldn't find out where. 

"(I) found out they were evacuated by boat to the clubhouse. I have no idea where that is though," she told NBCNews on Tuesday. "It was the 9-year-old's birthday on Saturday," she added.

The uncertainty and fear were felt by many others with roots in Breezy Point.

Chris Gavagan is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn who grew up on Breezy Point; his father and brother still live there. His father retreated to ride out Sandy in Brooklyn, but brother Rob stayed behind in Breezy Point. When Chris Gavagan discovered Max Countryman's tweets about this mother, the two shared notes and determined that Countryman's mother and Gavagan's brother were neighbors.

"My brother (we haven't heard from since 8p) lives about 100ft away. The Army is involved now," Gavagan said on Twitter, referring to the National Guard. 

Reading texts, monitoring fire scanner
Countryman never lost contact with his mother  through the frightful night. While she couldn't place calls, text messages continued to work and her cellphone battery held out. He knew when her first floor filled with 4 feet of water. As the night wore on, he heard on the FDNY scanner activity that wind had blown the fire the opposite direction, away from his mother's house. Then, after the high tide waters receded, he figured she was out of immediate danger.

He still had no idea how to help her, however – and his mother and her partner didn't know what to do next. 

"They were going to try to rent a car, or somehow get a car – my mom's partner hadn't heard from her mom, so they want to go into Brooklyn and check on her," he recalled. "But it's probably impossible for them to leave the house." 

He reflected on his mother's decision to stay, and said it was complicated. Their first option was to evacuate, but the nearest family member's home – in "Zone A" in Brooklyn – was also under a mandatory evacuation order. The couple has two dogs and a bird, making evacuation to anywhere else challenging. Such potentially life-threatening calculations were not unusual. The Wall Street Journal reported that perhaps 60 percent of Breezy Point residents tried to ride out the storm there.

Ramin Talaie / EPA

A firefighter garden gnome stands as a lonely sentinel if a swath of Breezy Point, N.Y., destroyed by fire on Monday as Hurricane Sandy battered the community.

PhotoBlog: Evacuations continue and residents take stock in destroyed Breezy Point

Nonetheless, as the weather began to clear on Tuesday, he wondered aloud why his mother wasn't getting more help leaving her badly damaged home.

"You'd think the National Guard would want to step in and evacuate, maybe make an attempt to get people out at dawn. But right now I don't know what they are going to do," he said.

Gavagan got good news, too, as he was able to make it to Breezy Point Tuesday to check on his brother in person. 

Chris Gavagan

Rob Gavagan and his father, Donald, assess the damage from superstorm Sandy in front of the elder Gavagan's Breezy Point home on Tuesday.

"(My brother) rode it out in a house where taking on water was the concern. He had a few feet (of water) in the house," he said.

Perhaps for the best, he said, brother Rob didn't know about the fire because he was too busy caring for their home. 

A picture Gavagan sent to NBC News shows his father and brother already cleaning up debris around the house, carrying away a sign that reads, "Beach Officially Closed." He was able to let Countryman know that he'd seen his mother's home.

"The sidewalks and areas around her house still have feet of water, but there is plenty of help now," he said. He also reported that the National Guard was on the scene, but didn't know if they were evacuating residents.

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

For others, relief was delayed and tempered by the loss of treasured memories. 

Chelsea Taylor was still waiting late Tuesday to hear where her uncle, aunt and their children ended up, assuming they were OK but worrying nonetheless. Her sister was able to make her way back to Breezy Point to get see the damage, but that did nothing to lighten her mood.

"Looking at the pictures my sister just showed me of her house is absolutely heartbreaking," she said. "Her whole house is completely flooded. "The flooding is unbearable. She lives on a floor level condo right across the street from the beach in Rockaway. … The boardwalk from the beach also washed up to right in front of her door."

Lauren Pallini's family lives in a home on Breezy Point that was also flood damaged. 

She spent Tuesday scheming how to get into the neighborhood so she could see the damage for herself. NBC News connected with her on Twitter as she started the trip over from Brooklyn. 

"To Breezy now," she said. Then, in Twitterspeak, "#Soscared."

An hour later, she'd seen the destruction.

"There's no hope for my house. Can't stop crying. I literally lost everything," she wrote. "Everything is flooded and literally everything got wet so everything is ruined."

Bob Sullivan writes The Red Tape Chronicles blog for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter at @RedTapeChron

Share your photos with us
We want to see the people that helped you during this time of crisis. Post pictures on Twitter or Instagram by tagging them #NBCNewsPics or upload photos using the form below. Use the caption or Tweet to explain why the person is a hero. Click here for more information

More content from NBCNews.com:

• Sandy leaves trail of destruction, disbelief in its path
• Volunteers rush in to help devastated region recover
• 'There was no stopping it': Sandy's surge inundates northern NJ towns
• Breezy point: 'Whatever is not flooded is on fire'
• Sandy leaves NYC subway system, infrastructure licking its wounds
• New York's post-Sandy divide: Those with power and those without
• Stranded by Sandy, air travelers eager to change status
• Sandy hammers Jersey Shore, levels homes, shreds boardwalks
• By the numbers: Superstorm Sandy
• Foot of snow: Sandy brings blizzard conditions to West Virginia
• News sites knocked out as NYC data center floods
• Storm seen as unlikely to delay election
• Your images of Sandy's fury

Follow US news from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Slideshow: Sandy slams into East Coast

Andrew Burton / Getty Images

Superstorm Sandy made landfall Monday evening on a destructive and deadly path across the Northeast.

Launch slideshow

NEW YORK -- Sandy split New York City in two. 

The massive storm left people damp, miserable and in the dark in the lower part of the city. Yet in much of the rest of Manhattan, life was almost normal, albeit without some of the usual urban comforts. 

Almost every street below Times Square in the city's Midtown district lost power on Monday night after an explosion at a Consolidated Edison power station, and it may not return for up to four days. A number of these areas had already been hit by flood waters. 

As a result, residents in Lower Manhattan emerged from their homes in search of the necessities of life on Tuesday. Ariel Ramos, 33, waited in the doorway of the Loisada Deli for ice to keep food in his refrigerator from spoiling. "What else you got?" he shouted into the darkened store. "Talk to me. I need stuff!" The clerk said he had no more bread, but he did have eggs. Ramos asked for eggs and a pack of cigarettes. "We have no electricity, no heat and no water," he said. 

Further north, restaurants and bars were open for business. With schools and the mass transit system closed, families strolled around taking pictures of felled trees. Burgers and Cupcakes on 35th Street and 9th Avenue was busy. A small crowd grabbed 99-cent slices of pizza on 41st Street, and a bakery called the Little Pie Company had a line 13 people long.

As the worst of the storm hit New York City late on Monday, water poured through streets and into buildings on Manhattan's southern tip, swamping parked cars and cascading through subway stations and tunnels. That was when the power transfer station on 14th street exploded and plunged the lower half of the island into darkness. 

Daylight on Tuesday coaxed residents, many of whom were spending a second day away from work, from their homes. Some were jogging or strolling with their dogs, picking their way over downed branches. Young people with cameras took pictures of flooded stores downtown. But for others, sightseeing was the last thing on their mind. 

Raymond Torres, who spent the night in his apartment in the Baruch Houses complex, located near the Williamsburg Bridge on Manhattan's Lower East Side, looked hopelessly at his soggy Honda, its interior full of leaves left behind when the water receded. His daughter, Diana, stood ready to take him to her apartment in the Bronx, where there was still power. 

Playground
For some, the FDR Drive, which runs along Manhattan's east side and which is normally jam-packed with traffic, was a giant park as they strolled among the downed trees and other detritus of the flood. The highway was closed to traffic in both directions, except for emergency vehicles. 

Chinatown, where the narrow streets are usually crowded with people and rich with smells of fish and spices, was mostly closed, its jumble of neon signs darkened. 

The boundary of the power outage, which varied from east to west, was noticeable not only by its working traffic lights but also by the sudden presence of cooking smells from buildings that still had power. The streets in Midtown Manhattan were drier compared with those farther south. 

In Herald Square, at 34th Street and 6th Avenue, a family from France stood in drizzling rain, trying to decide what to do for the day. The museums they wanted to visit were closed. 

Florence Buin, visiting from Rennes with her husband and two children, said the family stayed in their Times Square hotel, expecting to have to weather a severe onslaught from the storm, but what they experienced was very mild. 

"We were quite surprised," she said. "We were waiting all day long and we saw nothing." 

The Broadway musical for which they had tickets on Sunday night was canceled and so was their train trip to Washington on Monday. "In France we say 'a lot of noise for nothing,'" Buin said. 

Gouging
The Upper West Side, a wealthy enclave of Manhattan, did not lose power and only New York's mass transit standstill was keeping people home. Several grocery stores, restaurants and bars were open. Some people were taking pictures of each other in front of a car hit by a fallen tree. 

Further south, in front of the Archstone apartment building on 40th Street and 2nd Avenue, a group of 20-somethings with coffee in their hands sat in front of the building charging their iPhones. They said they lived just one block south on 39th Street, where power had been cut off. 

Lee Fleischer, a professor at Brooklyn College who lives in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, was canvassing the streets trying to find D batteries for his flashlight. The price of two batteries, which normally cost around $5, had been jacked up to as much as $15 in the few neighborhood bodegas that were open despite the loss of power. "They can get away with this very easily," he said. "They are exploiting their customers and the community, though." 

At La Delice Pastry Shop, in nearby Kips Bay, the price for a cup of coffee had been raised from $1 to $3. A store clerk said the reason was that they had to use bottled water to make the coffee. 

In Manhattan's Lower East Side, Thea Lucas, 87, who lives alone, said she had come down from her apartment to warm herself up with a walk and to feed seven cats in her street she feels responsible for. "Cats are survivors. They all waited for me at the usual spot even though I came out much later today than I usually do." 

"I'm lucky to have gas; I can make hot water. But there is no heating and I'm all cold inside." She said the night was difficult without electricity. "There is nothing to do at home. You cannot read with a flash light, I used to do that but I'm not 20 anymore." 

Oil slicks
Across the Brooklyn Bridge, it was a similar story, with low-lying areas still struggling on Tuesday while on the higher ground life was getting back to normal. 

Brooklyn's Gowanus canal, which was a pale green color on Monday, had turned black. Receding waters had left oil slicks on the streets and sidewalks. Wood and other debris marked the high water mark, more than a block away from the canal. 

A brick house located just west of the canal on Carroll Street had steam rising from its foundation. A man who said he was a resident but wouldn't provide his name said the basement had filled with water from the canal in the night, and now the electrical wiring was steaming. He said the fire department told him it would not come unless the structure was physically on fire. "I'll wait, and then it'll go up like a tinderbox," he said. 

The Brooklyn Navy Yard, which now houses small businesses as well as a dock, was covered in about a foot of water. At the peak of the storm, it was 5 feet high. "There were 17 of us trying to pump out the docks when the pump room flooded," said Nigel Friday, 36.

The pump room is on three levels about 50 feet underground and workers were on all three levels trying to keep the water from hitting electrical components with sandbags, Friday said. "Then water started gushing in through the entrance we took to enter the pump room," he said. "That's when we had to drop everything and run out the other way. It was like a movie." 

Higher up, Park Slope, a section of Brooklyn popular with young families, was largely saved from harm. A few branches had fallen on the street, and some store front awnings had been stripped off by heavy winds, but that was about the worst of it. 

People were strolling about, bars and restaurants were open, albeit with limited menus. Thistle Hill Tavern on 15th street in Brooklyn, was offering "Frankenstorm" drink specials. 

Nearby, in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, massive felled oak, maple and sycamore trees lay across walking and bicycle paths. A police vehicle driving the park's interior road announced over a loud speaker that the park was closed, yet area residents poured in. Children climbed on downed trees, and runners weaved through the many strollers and dog walkers. 

Additional reporting by Robin Respaut, Olivia Oran, Ilaina Jonas, Mirjam Donath, Jeanine Prezioso, Ed McAllister, Atossa Abrahamian; Editing by Eddie Evans, Martin Howell and Cynthia Osterman.

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A caption with this Facebook photo read "This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back."

A father accused of binding his toddler daughter with painter’s tape and then posting a picture on Facebook was acquitted Tuesday of unlawful restraint but still faces a pair of domestic battery charges, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Andre Curry, 22, has claimed the incident was a misunderstood joke, NBCChicago.com reported.

The photo on Curry's Facebook page showed his then-22-month-old daughter with her mouth taped shut and her hands bound by blue tape, NBCChicago.com reported.

The caption beneath the photo read, "This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back."

On Tuesday, during an hour-long bench trial before Cook County Judge Lawrence Flood, Curry’s relatives and Chicago police testified that Curry’s daughter was jovial and playful following the Dec. 13 stunt and did not have any visible injuries.

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Curry’s sister, Annastesia Curry, described the events at her South Side Chicago home last year as horsing around. The taping incident, she said, lasted just 30 seconds and the baby was laughing afterward, the Sun-Times reported.

Andre Curry texted the picture to the child’s mother, writing, “Mommy help me.” The mother, Yesmin Doss, 21, testified for the prosecution, the Sun-Times reported.

Detective Charles Hollendoner testified that he saw no bruises or marks on the baby when he checked up on her after Curry’s Facebook friends called officials about the posting, the Sun-Times reported. Hollendoner said Curry told him that he and his daughter continued to play after she slapped him, but that the taping was not retaliatory.

Flood said he would render his verdict on the domestic battery charges on Nov. 8, the Sun-Times reported.

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Curry was jailed until he posted $100,000 bond. He was ordered to stay off the Internet and away from all children under the age of 18, including his daughter, NBCChicago.com reported.

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Phil Masturzo / AP file

Brogan Rafferty, shown here heading into court on Oct. 25, was convicted on Tuesday of murder and other counts in the so-called Craigslist killings in Ohio.

A jury in Akron, Ohio, on Tuesday found a 17-year-old guilty of aggravated murder and other counts for his role in the slayings of three men who were lured to the state by phony Craigslist job ads.

Brogan Rafferty was convicted on all counts except Count 42, which was ID fraud, WKYC-TV reported.

Authorities say Rafferty, of Stow, helped Richard Beasley, of Akron, lure four victims at separate times with bogus Craigslist job offers to a nonexistent cattle farm in rural Noble County in southeast Ohio; they say the motive was robbery. Authorities say Beasley shot and killed three of the men; the fourth victim was shot in the arm and survived.

Rafferty told the court he went along with the plot because he feared Beasley would kill him too.

"Go with it or die," Rafferty said, when asked if he thought he had any choice in taking part in the murders, according to WKYC.

Beasley, 53, is scheduled for trial in January. He has pleaded not guilty and could face the death penalty if convicted. As a juvenile, Rafferty can't be sentenced to death; he faces life in prison without chance of parole.

In closing arguments last week, prosecutors portrayed Rafferty as someone who knew exactly what he was doing and ignored opportunities to go to police.

"Although Richard Beasley is a murderer and liar, he was brutally honest with one person. One person knew everything that he was doing. Just one. And that was Brogan Rafferty," assistant Summit County prosecutor John Baumoel told jurors. "Brogan Rafferty knew each and every one of his dark secrets."

Baumoel told jurors that the two were partners "in executing people out in the woods."

He pointed jurors to Internet searches Rafferty did after the first slaying for the term "first kill" and "Sopranos' first whack," referring to the TV show about a New Jersey mafia family. And he downplayed arguments the defense had made that Rafferty was the product of a tough childhood, his mother a drug addict on the streets, his father rarely around as he worked long hours to support the family.

"Having a difficult childhood is neither a legal excuse nor a moral excuse for being involved in deaths and murder of multiple people," Baumoel said.

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Rafferty's attorney said the suspect was a 16-year-old child at the time of the killings who was afraid Beasley would harm his mother and sister and didn't know how to escape.

"Did we see Brogan Rafferty, psychopath, or a 16-year-old child who found himself in a horrible situation and couldn't find his way out?" attorney John Alexander asked.

He added, "Does a 16-year-old child have the know-how how to handle these traumatic situations? Does he understand the options ahead of him?"

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.

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GOLDEN, Colo. -- A teen who allegedly confessed to the dismemberment killing of 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway also sexually assaulted the Colorado girl, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Police say they arrested Austin Reed Sigg in connection with Jessica Ridgeway's death.

Austin Sigg, 17, was charged Tuesday as an adult with 17 counts in the Ridgeway case and in an attack on a jogger. They include four murder charges, kidnapping and sexual assault on a child.

Sigg didn't speak during the brief court hearing in Golden, Colo., and didn't look at his six relatives in the courtroom, including his mother, Mindy Sigg. His relatives sat silently as the charges were read, unlike a hearing last week at which Sigg's mother sobbed audibly. She was the one who called police on her son.

Family members of the slain child also watched the proceedings. Each wore purple, the girl's favorite color.

Defense attorneys anticipate asking the judge to send the case to juvenile court. If convicted as an adult, Sigg faces up to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. If he is tried as a juvenile, Sigg faces a maximum of seven years on each conviction, which, if ordered to be served consecutively, would put him in prison for decades. 

AP file

Jessica Ridgeway, 10.

Prosecutors said Sigg acted alone in kidnapping, robbing and sexually assaulting Ridgeway. The robbery charge involved the girl's backpack and water bottle, which were found in another suburb three days after she disappeared while walking to school Oct. 5.

"Austin Reed Sigg unlawfully and feloniously, acting alone, committed sexual assault, and in the course of or in furtherance of that crime, caused the death of Jessica Ridgeway," according to court documents.

He is also charged in an attempted abduction of a 22-year-old woman near the girl's home months before the Ridgeway killing. Police said the jogger reported being grabbed from behind by a man who placed a rag with a chemical smell over her mouth. Police have not revealed whether the rag was soaked with a chemical meant to subdue the woman.

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Police arrested Sigg on Oct. 23. His mother told The Associated Press that she called police and her son turned himself in. 

Ridgeway lived on a quiet street about a mile from where Sigg lived with his mother. The subdivision features an elementary school, a high school, small parks, greenbelts, open space and a lake.

Sigg is being held without bond at a youth correctional facility. The charges filed were four counts of murder, two counts of kidnapping, sexual assault on a child and robbery in Jessica's abduction and slaying, as well as attempted murder, attempted sexual assault and attempted second-degree kidnapping in the attack on the runner. Prosecutors also charged Sigg with six counts of crime of violence.

"There's DNA evidence, and the evidence is overwhelming," prosecutor Hal Sargent said, arguing that Sigg should be held without bail despite having no criminal record.

Prosecutors say Colorado teen has confessed to Jessica Ridgeway slaying

Former high school classmates painted a picture of the 5-foot-6, 160-pound Sigg as an intelligent teen who often wore black and complained about school but who would stay late sometimes to work on computers. Sigg was interested in mortuary science and was taking forensics classes, according to classmates.

Sigg enrolled in August at Arapahoe Community College, which offers the state's only accredited mortuary science program. The school said Sigg didn't have enough credits yet to apply to that program.

Sigg had left Standley Lake High School in July after finishing the 11th grade and later earned a GED. School officials said they didn't know why he left. Former schoolmate Sarah Morevec said Sigg had been bullied for having a high voice.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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OAKLAND, Calif. — A Northern California jury has found Giselle Esteban guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of nursing student Michelle Le, who was missing for four months last year before her body was found dumped in a remote canyon east of San Francisco Bay.

The jury announced its decision Monday shortly after 2:15 p.m. at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland.

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After the verdict was read, Le's family hugged each other in the hallway. Her brother, Michael Le, said he felt like a "burden had been lifted." His family had sat in the front row holding hands during the announcement.

A handout photo shows 26-year-old nursing student Michelle Le before she disappeared.

As the jury read its findings, Esteban looked as if she knew the jury was going to come back with that verdict.

Le's body was found on Sept. 17, 2011, four months after the Oakland-based Samuel Merritt University nursing student disappeared from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward, where Le was doing a clinical rotation.

Prosecutors said Esteban stalked Le, 26, and attacked her in the Kaiser parking garage after becoming increasingly enraged at a friendship between Le and Scott Marasigan, who has a young daughter with Esteban.

Esteban, 29, attended high school with Le in San Diego. Based on DNA and cellphone records, Esteban was charged a few days before Le's body was found.

“I am very gratified with the jury's decision," Deputy District Attorney Butch Ford said. "I want to acknowledge the Hayward Police Department for their dedication and persistence in investigating and solving this horrible murder. The jury's considered evaluation of the evidence today led to a just verdict."

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After the verdict, District Attorney Nancy E. O’Malley stated, “I am pleased the perpetrator of this heinous, calculated crime has been brought to justice. I hope today’s verdict will help the family and friends of Ms. Le to continue the long process towards healing following this tragic and senseless crime.”

Esteban's attorney, Andrea Auer, has never disputed that her client killed Le, but argued in court that the evidence against Esteban was done in the "heat of passion" and her client should not be convicted of first-degree murder.

Esteban, who had pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 10.

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