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QUEENS (AP) ― When the blackout hit Benny Marino's working-class block, he started to get nervous.

Soon the salmon, shrimp and skate he sold at his Marino & Sons Fish Market in Queens and food at neighboring stores would spoil.

Days later, it did, and the smell of rotting food and stale air began to permeate the neighborhood.

"We lost a lot of product," said Marino, whose grandfather opened the store in 1932.

Marino, like other business owners, was still reeling Monday from the blackout, which devastated the inventories of ice cream parlors, bodegas, groceries, butcher shops, fish mongers and restaurants.

City officials estimated that at least 750 businesses were affected and said that the losses could reach into the millions of dollars.

"Certainly it's a huge number," said Robert W. Walsh, commissioner of the city's Department of Small Business Services.

Across the powerless area of Northwest Queens, the scope of the disaster was coming into sharper focus as business owners surveyed the damage.

Marino, 58, said the power outage, which began July 17, coinciding with a heat wave, cost him $20,000. The butcher next door said the same. Mary Jo Mauro, the bookkeeper at Gian & Piero Bakery down the street, didn't have a tally yet.

She was still totaling the dairy carnage after throwing out the butter, milk and eggs -- a baker's lifeblood.

"I can't even begin to tell you," she said. "It's a week's worth of business and all the food."

Mauro also feared that the blackout might have residual effects, causing wholesale customers to migrate to another store to get their bread, cake and pastries.

In the case of Marino, there were other concerns.

"People are leery of going shopping," said Marino, who has worked around the clock to reopen after getting power Saturday. "They don't know what they are going to get."

Without the cushion of big corporate profits, small businesses face big losses. Rebounding won't be easy, experts said.

"A lot of them are small businesses, and they are the least able to sustain these kind of losses," said Bill Egan, executive vice president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. "The ones in the food industry are devastated."

Joyce Moy, director of the LaGuardia Office of Economic Development, said there were other repercussions. It's not just a matter of simply throwing out bad food.

"Some businesses will have to lay off or have already laid off staff," she said. "Some people will not recover their losses because business interruption insurance is extremely hard to get after 9/11."

Walsh said his agency was working hard to help the businesses. The more than 100 businesses selling perishable goods are eligible to receive up to $7,000 each after filing claims with the Consolidated Edison utility, he said.

Walsh also was attempting to establish emergency loans ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 that businesses can get in less than a week.

"I'm hustling like heck," he said. "The key thing obviously is to get them up and running."

By Monday night, about 2,000 Con Ed customers remained without electricity. On Marino's block, many shops still were closed. Open ones also dotted the street, but many ran on generators. Doctors' offices posted notes saying office hours were canceled.

Sam Arjariyawat manages the Thai Pavilion restaurant. Inside, tables were set with water glasses and silverware but the restaurant stood empty, and a musty smell lingered.

Around him, other stores and restaurants started to get power again.

But not him.

"I'm so jealous of the people who get to open," he said. "People will have to eat a lot of Thai food ... to help us out."

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)