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around gas stations for many blocks all over the stricken region, including northern New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie imposed rationing that recalled the worst days of fuel shortages of the 1970s.
• Perhaps nowhere was the scene more confused than at a refueling station in Brooklyn, where the National Guard gave out free gas -- an effort to alleviate the situation. There, a mass of honking cars, desperate drivers and people on foot, carrying containers from empty bleach bottles to five-gallon Poland Spring water jugs, was just the latest testament to the misery unleashed by Sandy.
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• NEW YORK (AP) -- Tragedy has too often visited one Queens community, but residents drew a line in the sand with Superstorm Sandy, rallying with a surfboard and kayaks at the storm's peak to rescue themselves as a fire engulfed 14 homes and flaming embers came at them like a torch.
• "We heard screaming and crying in the dark," 55-year-old Thomas Buell recalled as he explained the midnight march through 4-foot-high flood waters in Belle Harbor by dozens of residents to reach a yacht club on higher ground. "It was a nightmare."
• People here know disaster. On these few blocks of beach community, the Sept. 11 attacks hit hard, followed weeks later by a plane crash that killed 265 people and now Superstorm Sandy, which took lives and touched off fires that destroyed about two dozen homes. But the rescues are the talk of the community, even as residents continue their cleanup, stacking destroyed belongings up to 20 feet high outside their ruined homes.
• The heroism included Tommy Woods, who put his 82-year-old mother on a surfboard and ferried her several blocks to his brother's home through the chilly waters.
• "He did a good job," Charlie Moran said, speaking quietly and reverently of his nephew, as he stood near the charred wood and concrete that was all that remained of the mostly two-story homes. A blackened firefighter statuette stood guard in front of one home's skeletal remains.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans vigorously pursued their last, longshot

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