As Sandy barreled down on Atlantic City, N.J., the owner of the Ducktown Tavern defiantly stayed open, just like he did a year ago during Hurricane Irene.

NPR's Margot Adler has been covering the storms aftermath. On Saturday, she walked into Central Park, opened for the first time since before the storm. She then went to examine the "border areas," those blocks where there was power and normalcy on one side, and on the other, no lights and just the noise of a few generators pumping power.

As New York City's first responders begin to show fatigue, and in many cases deal with losses of their own homes, replacement crews of firefighters are getting ready to roll into Manhattan and Long Island. Among them are a group of firefighters from a small rural fire station in the mountains of upstate New York.

Sandy is just the latest in a series of powerful storms to wallop the East Coast in recent years. The toll may cause insurance companies to consider how they will assess future risks.