These include:
Moronic state laws in NJ preventing gas stations from selling gas that is refined out of state - even with this foolishness suspended, people who want to ship gas into NJ have no logistics, no existing credit relationships and there is no phone service in many areas to set it up.
Downed power lines and trees and residual flooding, as well as compromised bridges, make it much more difficult for trucks to negotiate their way into NJ. Anti-gouging laws prevent suppliers from charging higher prices to compensate for the lost time. So if you are an operator, you would prefer to send your trucks to places where they can make a quick round trip and charge a market price. Time is money.
(2) Where power is out, the pumps are not working. Few gas stations are equipped with emergency generators and no new generators are available anywhere in a hundreds-of-miles radius. The state government did not even have adequate generators stocked to run a sufficient number of shelters.
(3) The lack of power is definitely the central problem - but NJ union laws are preventing nonunion crews from joining in to work. And even if those laws were suspended, you can count on unions to sabotage.
(4) This whole situation has exposed a ton of structural rot that uninformed citizens have brought upon themselves.
Hopefully the vulnerabilities will be addressed before the country gets hit with an Iranian EMP attack, massive earthquake, etc.
Sounds like the free market would solve a lot of these problems if it was allowed to be in effect. It would allow for gas refined out of state, truckers and trucking companies who would be willing to do the extra work and time because they would be adequately compensated for it, and quick, efficient labor available to get the electricity back up.
In the meantime, it’s got to be frustrating. Are a lot of the power lines not buried? I suppose where it’s wall-to-wall people and buildings line burial isn’t even an option.
And even those who prepared by having a generator are dependent on their gas reserve holding out, if the gas stations can’t pump more gas.
As much as the green-energy people would like everybody to walk or bike to work, that just wouldn’t work with the distances people live from their workplace. And putting everybody’s egg in one basket, like subway or trains, makes the whole thing vulnerable in one fell swoop, either by “natural disasters” or sabotage.