It will take until November 11 to get power restored to all of New York City following the devastation wrought by superstorm Sandy, the Con Edison electricity company said yesterday.

The company said there had been 100,000 cases of falling trees tearing down power lines and these would take time to repair.

It also said that the vast majority of New Yorkers would get their power swtiched back on before November 11.

Yesterday, three days after the storm, some of New York’s subway lines were running, but neighbouring New Jersey was stunned by coastal devastation and the news of thousands of people in one city still stranded by increasingly fetid flood waters.

The decision to reopen undamaged parts of the United States’ largest transit system came as the death toll reached more than 70 in the US and left more than 4.6 million homes and businesses without power.

In New York, the three major airports resumed at least limited service, and the New York Stock Exchange was open again.

After suffering the worst disaster in its 108-year-old history, the subways rolled again – at least some of them, but none below Manhattan’s 34th Street, a line of demarcation in the city separating the hardest-hit residents from those who escaped the brunt.

Downtown Manhattan, which includes the city’s financial district, September 11 memorial and other tourist sites, was still mostly an urban landscape of shuttered bodegas and boarded-up restaurants, where people roamed in search of food, power and a hot shower.

In New Jersey, the once-pristine Atlantic coastline famous for the television show Jersey Shore was shattered.

Across the Hudson River from New York City, the floodwaters were slowly receding in the city of Hoboken, where an estimated 20,000 people had remained in their homes.

The National Guard was helping with evacuations, but residents were warned not to walk around in water that was tainted with sewage and chemicals from the heavily industrial region.