Hudson Valley News

   There are four gas stations in the Village of Chester, which is situated along Route 17M, paralleling Route 17. Being in southern Orange County, people from New Jersey have been driving up, filling their vehicles and extra gas cans.

There were many as 50 or 60 vehicles lined up at stations at one time and have been running out of gas until new shipments arrive.

That prompted Mayor Philip Valastro to impose a $50 limit on each motorist’s purchase.

The monumental effort to restore power and rail service to counties north of New York City continues, but as we hear in this report from Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Dave Lucas, communities are struggling with a variety of other challenges... Most of the electricity is back on, the MTA and CSX have crews working on railroad services, but there's still a lot of debris that needs clean-up and still a lot of problems with landline and cellular telephone service.

As the word spread Thursday of the difficulty that oil companies were having in delivering gasoline to service stations, panic set in from New Jersey to New York City and up into the Hudson Valley.

By late afternoon, vehicles were lined up for blocks in the region, waiting to buy the “liquid gold.” Compounding the problem was the continued major power outage with people buying generators in record numbers, adding to the demand at the pumps.

Many stations ran out of gas with people still waiting at the pumps.

Amtrak says it's still working on restoring train service to and from New York City and plans to run a test train through a tunnel that has been cleared of water. More from WAMC's Dave Lucas.