Blackout strands gamblers in AC

John Curran

Friday, Aug. 15, 2003 | 9:07 a.m.

ATLANTIC CITY -- The slot machines beeped and clanged. The blackjack dealers dealt their cards. The air conditioning was on.

But that was little consolation to hundreds of gamblers stranded at casinos Thursday after their New York City-bound buses were delayed or canceled due to blackouts across the Northeast.

"Due to power outage in New York, all Academy and Greyhound service to New York suspended," read a sign on the window at the Trump Plaza bus center. Limited bus service started after 9 p.m., but the trip to New York City remained difficult.

"How am I going to get home? I'm stranded!" said Louise Brown, 53, of New York, appealing to a bus center clerk at Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino.

After spending the day gambling, Brown had a ticket for her return trip on an Academy Bus Lines bus. But it was worthless since the buses weren't running. And she didn't have a dime in her pocket.

"I asked another driver to take me, but he wanted $30. And I don't have any money!" she said, her voice cracking.

So it went, up and down the casino strip, after the power outage gripped New York and other cities.

New Yorkers weren't the only ones affected.

"My bus goes to New York after I get off at Cheesequake (a Garden State Parkway rest stop), but it's not even going now," said Walter Kurdly, 70, of Carteret, sitting in a waiting area at Trump Plaza. "I don't want to go back to the casino because what if they start again and I miss my bus?"'

Nearby, Felix LaTorre, 55, of New York, told a similar tale.

"I don't want to be here overnight," he said, looking out the window at an empty bus."

Dianne Smith, 53, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., sat with three other friends in the Bally's Atlantic City transportation center, waiting and waiting.

"You can't even get a room. You'd think they'd try to accommodate us since we gamble here, but they said they're booked up. What can we do? Sit here or sit at the (Atlantic City) bus station. Here smells better," she said.

Drive-in customers had troubles, too.

Tania Bernard, 22, of Daytona Beach, Fla., who had been in Brooklyn visiting her sister and decided to drive south to Atlantic City to gamble, sat outside Trump Plaza waiting for a valet to bring her car around, a worried look on her face.

"I've got to get back," she said. "We can't find my father. He's MIA," she said.