Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Residents received clothing from volunteers in the Midland Beach neighborhood of Staten Island. More Photos »
The patchy recovery from Hurricane Sandy exposed a fractured region on Saturday. The lights flickered on in Manhattan neighborhoods that had been dark for days, and New York's subways rumbled and screeched through East River tunnels again.
But in shorefront stretches of Staten Island and Queens that were all but demolished, and in broad sections of New Jersey and Long Island, gasoline was still almost impossible to come by, electricity was still lacking, temperatures were dropping and worried homeowners wondered when help would finally arrive.
Drivers in New Jersey faced 1970s-style gasoline rationing imposed by Gov. Chris Christie, while in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the Defense Department would distribute free fuel from five mobile stations. But that effort backfired when too many people showed up.
It was a weekend of contrasts. Crowds streamed into city parks that reopened on a blindingly bright Saturday morning, while people who had been displaced by the storm said help was not coming fast enough and the desperation was growing.
David O'Connor, 44, had begun to use his living room chairs as firewood in Long Beach, N.Y., where the storm sent water surging down streets. A neighbor, Gina Braddish, a 27-year-old newlywed, was planning to siphon gas from a boat that washed into her front yard. Older people on darkened streets have been shouting for help from second-floor windows, at eye level with the buoys still trapped in trees.
"I'm looking around seeing people really down," said Joann Bush, a social worker who lives in Coney Island. "They don't know what tomorrow's going to bring."
There were other contrasts: The grandstands were still in place for the New York City Marathon, even though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had canceled the race on Friday for the first time in its 42-year history. But instead of promoting a race, Mr. Bloomberg visited the devastated neighborhoods in the Rockaway section of Queens, where he voiced concern about chilly temperatures and hypothermia. "It's cold, and it really is critical that people stay warm, especially the elderly," he said at a City Hall briefing, urging people to go to shelters if they did not have heat. He added, "We are committed to making sure that everybody can have a roof over their head and food in their stomachs and deal with the cold safely."
In many places that the storm pounded in its relentless push into the Northeast, there was a profound sense of isolation, with whole towns on Long Island still cut off from basic information, supplies and electricity. People in washed-out neighborhoods said they felt increasingly desperate. "Everything involving our lives is a matter of exhaustion," said Nancy Reardon, 45, who waited for gas for five hours on Saturday in Massapequa.
Vikki Quinn, standing amid ruined belongings in front of her flooded house in Long Beach, said she felt lost. "I just keep waiting for someone with a megaphone and a car to just tell us what to do," she said.
Hank Arkin, 60, a photographer in Merrick, wondered how much of the damage could have been avoided. "I am screaming mad because this is an inhumane way to live in the highest property-taxed area of the entire state," he said. "They had days of notice before the storm and nothing was done."
Officials said they were trying to get help where it was needed. "One of the problems is that when you have lots of different agencies, it takes a while for them to get coordinated," Mr. Bloomberg said at his briefing, adding that he understood how high the tensions were in the Rockaways. "Somebody this morning screamed at me that they could not get coffee," he said. "Someone else screamed at me that there is nothing there, but one block away, there was a service."
Hundreds of thousands of homes on Long Island were still without power Saturday, and frustration with the utilities, particularly Long Island Power Authority, continued to rise. "LIPA, get your act together," Edward P. Mangano, the Nassau County executive, wrote on his Facebook page Saturday. "This response and lack of communication with customers is shameful."
Reporting was contributed by Taylor Adams, Charles V. Bagli, Ruth Bashinsky, Matt Flegenheimer, Elizabeth A. Harris, Anemona Hartocollis, Angela Macropoulos, Colin Moynihan, Ray Rivera, Liz Robbins, Marc Santora, Nate Schweber, Stacey Stowe and Bernard Vaughan.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 3, 2012
An earlier version of this article included a misinterpretation of the New Jersey gas rationing policy. The policy says that the days on which drivers can get gas is based on the last number of their license plate, not the last letter, as a Bayonne, N.J., police summary of the policy suggested.
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