Hunt for Wi-Fi crowds East Coast bookstores

New York area commuters stranded by Hurricane Irene flocked to their local bookstores, cafes and restaurants this morning in search of Internet access after power outages prevented them from working at home.

Fallen trees and flooding blocked rails and damaged power lines in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, leaving thousands of employees hunting for Wi-Fi service to plug into corporate networks and send emails. A Panera Bread Co. cafe in Newington, Connecticut, was about 50 percent busier than normal as most customers used the wireless access and charged phones.

“Everywhere you look you see computers,” said Shane McBreen, 35, a manager of the store, which never lost power. “We can keep up with the wireless, we just can't keep up with the food.”

New York's stock-exchange operators opened as usual this morning, causing many in the financial industry to seek Web access near home to participate in the trading day. About 95,000 Consolidated Edison Inc. homes and businesses were still without power at 11:30 a.m. in New York City and Westchester County, to the north of the city, according to the company's website.

Commuters in New Jersey, Westchester and Connecticut dealt with canceled service from most of the region's commuter rail service, including a full shutdown of Metro-North trains. New Jersey Transit's rail system remained shut “until further notice” except for the Atlantic City line.

A Starbucks Corp. coffee shop in Stamford, Connecticut, had a line out the door at 8 a.m. and was limiting Internet-usage time to 30 minutes to accommodate more customers. Outside a nearby Barnes & Noble Inc. bookstore, about 50 people were carrying laptops to tap into the shop's free Wi-Fi before doors officially opened at 10 a.m. Some customers were using laptops in cars parked outside the mall.

The Starbucks in South Orange, New Jersey, is located directly under the train tracks that local residents use to commute to New York City. Today, the shop was converted into a makeshift office as commuters stood by and waited for seats and power plugs to become available. The free Wi-Fi and the electricity were the main draws, and the line for coffee was often more than 30 people deep.

“I'm trying to make the best of things here,” said John Lauder, an investment management executive at ING Groep NV in New York City, as he shared a small round table with three other people — their mobile phones and computers sitting on top, as a power strip accommodated the spaghetti pile of electrical cords underneath. “I'm finding that being a financial-services firm, you have a very strict firewall. It's not easy from here.”

For some stranded workers, a local cafe with power and Internet access wasn't enough to solve their problems.

“Even if I could have gotten to the office on a bus, it might not have mattered,” said Marc Bromfield, director of marketing at spirits company Remy Cointreau SA, who was using the Web connection at the South Orange Starbucks. Bromfield's midtown Manhattan office has had computer-service problems since the storm caused a fire in the building yesterday. “I have power at home, but my email server at work is out.”