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UPDATE 1-Blackout leaves New Yorkers sleeping in streets

(Updates with details)

By Dan Burns

NEW YORK, Aug 15 (Reuters) - On New York City's darkest night in more than a quarter century, thousands of residents, stranded suburban commuters and tourists set up camp wherever they could early Friday in a desperate attempt to catch some shut-eye.

After the biggest power outage in U.S. history struck late Thursday afternoon, many people were stranded without lodging and forced to make beds of newspaper, cardboard or clothing and camp out on sidewalks, office building foyers, parking garages and church pews amid the clawing humidity.

As dawn approached, circumstances in the city had not improved dramatically.

In midtown Manhattan, ordinarily as bright and garish as a carnival, streets remained dark and eerily quiet.

Power grid officials called the multi-city blackout the biggest outage in North American history, dwarfing previous blackouts in 1977 and 1965.

By early Friday, power had been restored to some New York suburbs and some neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island boroughs, according to power company officials and the mayor's office.

"We are continuing to restore power to our customers in a gradual manner," said D. Joy Faber, a spokeswoman for power company Con Edison.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg predicted Friday would be a "normal day," but government and business officials could not say when most power would be restored or whether Wall Street -- the nation's financial heart -- would open as scheduled.

SUBWAY UNCERTAINTY TO DIM WALL STREET?

With no promise of power, New York's fabled subway system was not expected to be back in operation for the start of the day, a City Hall spokesman said.

Transit officials said the system, which carries 7 million passengers a day, would need six or eight hours after the restoration of power to resume service.

All three airports were open, but no flights were reported arriving overnight. Some rail lines were functional. Buses and ferries, the only systems consistently operating throughout the crisis, were expected to be the reliable form of transportation. They were also expected to be mobbed.

Late Thursday afternoon, the New York Stock Exchange said it would operate as usual on Friday, but not everyone was convinced the day would open without a hitch.

"The NYSE has its own power generation system so getting that up and running isn't a problem, but getting people there will be," said Steve Previs, a dealer in U.S. shares at Jefferies International in London. "Somebody is going to have to make a decision whether trading will go ahead or not."

SEEKING SANCTUARY

For thousands, though, the question Friday was not how to get to work, but how to get home after being stranded in the city overnight.

Osvaldo Trigl, who lives in Tarrytown north of the city, had been walking around since early Thursday evening. In the vicinity of Grand Central Terminal after midnight, he said: "What's most frustrating is that you can't reach your family."

At St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, most pews were filled with stranded people -- a few snoring -- lying head to toe in the candlelight.

Thousands more had no luck finding shelter indoors.

At the Marriott Marquis on Times Square, hundreds of people were sprawled on its driveway outside locked doors, and on sidewalks, curbs and patches of grass everywhere, exhausted men, women and children rested their heads wherever they could.

A block from Grand Central, commuters lay on sidewalks with their heads on briefcases. A man walking by said: "Everybody is homeless tonight. Now you get a taste of what homelessness is like."

The city was mostly calm overnight, but sporadic incidents of looting were reported in Brooklyn, with 20 people arrested after breaking into a shoe store, five arrested for looting an equipment rental center and one for breaking into a phone store, police said.

Temperatures, which barely left the 80s F (high 20s C) overnight, were expected to soar back into the 90s F (30s C) after daybreak.