They streamed out of low-lying New York apartments and grand Connecticut shore homes, a steady, often reluctant parade of evacuees with rolling suitcases and duffel bags; birds and cats in cages; Fruit Roll-Ups and stacks of magazines.

Hundreds of thousands of residents from East Haven, Conn., to Cape May, N.J., were ordered to leave their homes on Sunday as Hurricane Sandy bore down on the Eastern Seaboard. Many complied, departing by car or ferry, school bus or subway train, though not without stress or anger, as people in Lower Manhattan jostled tensely for taxis and yelled at others for jumping ahead of them. The exodus out of Connecticut was so large that some gas stations ran out of fuel.

“Everyone is panicky — oh my God, they bring in any kind of container they can think of and fill it up with gas!” said Ann Persaud, owner of the South 7 Citgo station in New Milford.

Some evacuations were more complicated: Some 60 patients and 180 nursing home residents were moved by ambulance and bus from Long Beach Medical Center to higher ground in Nassau County and elsewhere.