'A loss for everybody': Communities start cleanup after Sandy

(CNN) -- They've lost their homes, their businesses and many are still stranded, but residents in the battered Northeast are overcoming the aftereffects of Superstorm Sandy with a gritty resolve.

"It's sort of like the transit strike a few years ago," said Elizabeth Gorman, 40, a Queens resident, who walked across the Queensboro Bridge on Wednesday.

Gorman was part of a steady stream of commuters forced to walk or bike into Manhattan after Sandy roared ashore barely two days ago, wiping out roads, bridges and mass transit systems across the region.

Commuters, homeowners and businesses struggled with the loss of power and waterlogged or burned homes.

Superstorm Sandy was no freak, say experts, but rather a hint of a coming era when millions of Americans will struggle to survive killer weather. They're telling us we shouldn't be surprised that this 900-mile-wide monster marched up the East Coast this week paralyzing cities and claiming scores of lives. "It's a foretaste of things to come," Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer told CNN. "Bigger storms and higher sea levels" will pile on to create a "growing threat" in the coming decades.

And New York, he warned, "is highly vulnerable."