Mamaroneck, N.Y. ? As the floodwaters receded Tuesday homeowners picked through ruined belongings and priceless keepsakes trying to determine what they’d lost.

A street cleaner scrubs a partially flooded street in Bound Brook, N.J. Much of the town remained flooded and without electricity Tuesday, even as floodwaters were beginning to recede in other parts of the Northeast.

Hundreds of thousands were still without power from Maine to North Carolina and nearly as many residents of Bound Brook, N.J., were still barred from their homes Tuesday as flooding persisted from the spring nor’easter that has claimed at least 17 lives.

In Mamaroneck, described by Gov. Eliot Spitzer as the “the epicenter of the damage done here in the state,” discarded belongings damaged by the flooded Sheldrake River lined an avenue.

Trash in the middle-class neighborhood included refrigerators, stoves, mattresses, dressers, a karaoke machine, even a 30-gallon aquarium somehow ruined by water.

An upright piano, its veneer peeling, made only off-key noises when its warped keys were pounded.

“I’ve been collecting this stuff since I was 14,” said Robert Jackson, 39, a disc jockey, as he poked through his trove of old record albums, including some 78 rpm platters and many disco-era albums. Like his DJ equipment, the records had been submerged when the water reached 5 feet high in his basement.

In New Jersey, electricity had been shut off to the low-lying central community of Bound Brook – which received 9 inches of rain – and the stench of heating oil from flooded basements hung in the air.

Nearly 1,000 residents were still barred from their homes until crews could determine whether structures were safe, said Hal Dietrich, Bound Brook’s emergency management coordinator.

“If they go in too soon and turn something on that’s not right, they could kill themselves,” Dietrich said. “We lost four houses during the flood that caught fire and burned to the ground because we couldn’t get the fire trucks to them through the water.”

More than a quarter-million customers were without power Tuesday afternoon in North Carolina, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont. A spokeswoman for Central Vermont Public Service warned that some homes could be in the dark through Saturday.

“This is one of the most devastating storms the company has seen in our 77-year history,” spokeswoman Christine Rivers said. “It’s hurricanelike damage.”