The problem with gas availability is power and movement. Power to run the pumps and movement to get the gas to stations.
Right now, its the ability to get gasoline to the stations because the refineries are still cleaning up the mess and some of the docks are under water.
A freeper merchant mariner posted a link to his blog with pictures of his ship tied up to a dock that is totally underwater.
Residential clean up is going to be a lot slower because of the loss of infrastructure. What gets me is that life is going on as usual in the parts of New York city that were not hit by the surge.
Giving away the gasoline is just a photo op for Obama, a way to get those Carter-like pictures off the front pages of the newspapers because, like someone else pointed out, a lot of the people in NY don’t own cars.