‘Irene’ hits US cities; damage in billions

HURRICANE “Irene” did not discourage tourists from visiting Manhattan’s Times Square in New York on Sunday. AP

NEW YORK—Hurricane “Irene” battered New York with ferocious winds and driving rain on Sunday, shutting down the US financial capital and most populous city, halting mass transit and causing massive power blackouts as it churned slowly northward along the eastern seaboard.

New York City’s normally bustling streets were eerily quiet after authorities ordered tens of thousands of residents to evacuate low-lying areas and shut down its subways, airports and buses.

Those who had to travel were left trying to flag down yellow taxis that patrolled largely deserted streets.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Sunday said he expected the damage from the hurricane to run into billions of dollars along the state’s Atlantic coast and from inland river flooding.

“I’ve got to imagine that the damage estimates are going to be in the billions of dollars, if not in the tens of billions of dollars,” Christie said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.

Irene, still a menacing 780-kilometer-wide hurricane, was enveloping towns and cities in the northeast, hugging the Atlantic coast and threatening floods and surging tides.

At least nine deaths were reported in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. Several million people were under evacuation orders on the US East Coast.

In total, more than 2 million utility customers were without power as of early Sunday morning due to Irene, including more than 20,000 in New York City.

Utility company Consolidated Edison warned that downtown Manhattan, including Wall Street, could face more blackouts as low-lying areas flooded.

The hurricane first came ashore Saturday morning near Cape Lookout, North Carolina, slipped back over water farther north near Virginia and Maryland, before hitting land again in New Jersey.

New York was the next major city in the hurricane’s path affecting tens of millions of people. For much of the night, the metropolitan area was pounded with heavy rain and wind, causing power failures and flooding.

“The edge of the hurricane has finally got upon us,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the more than 8 million people who live in New York as he warned that tropical storm-force winds would hit the city.

Times Square, often called the crossroads of the world, was sparsely populated, mostly with visitors, as Irene rolled into the city with full force.

Broadway shows were canceled, coffee was hard to come by with Starbucks stores closed and burgers and fries were in short supply as McDonald’s outlets were shut.

“We just came to see how few people are in Times Square and then we’re going back,” said Cheryl Gibson, who was vacationing in the city.

Bloomberg warned New Yorkers that Irene was a life-threatening storm and urged them to stay indoors to avoid flying debris, flooding or the risk of being electrocuted by downed power lines.

“It is dangerous out there,” he said, but added later: “New York is the greatest city in the world and we will weather this storm.”

Tornado warning

In midtown Manhattan, there was a substantial police presence on the streets but most people heeded Bloomberg’s warning to stay inside.

New York City’s Office of Emergency Management said there was a tornado warning for the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, and urged people to seek shelter.

Television reports said local airports had already recorded winds of over 90 kph and they had not yet reached their expected full strength.

About 370,000 city residents were ordered to leave their homes in low-lying areas, many of them in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

Some were unwilling to go. Nicholas Vigliotti, 24, an auditor who lives in a high-rise building along the Brooklyn waterfront, said he saw no point. “Even if there was a flood, I live on the fifth floor,” he said.

Floodwaters forced officials in Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, to evacuate a storm shelter, the mayor of Hoboken, Dawn Zimmer, said on Twitter.

The Miami-based US National Hurricane Center forecast a storm surge of up to 2.5 meters for Long Island and metropolitan New York. That could top the flood walls protecting the south end of Manhattan if it comes at high tide around 8 a.m.

With winds of 130 km per hour, Irene was a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale. By 5 a.m., the storm center was 25 km south southeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and 190 km south southwest of New York City.

On its forecast track, “the center of Irene will move near or over the coast of New Jersey and over Western Long Island this morning and move inland over southern New England by this afternoon,” the center said.

Boston’s public transit authority, the MBTA, said on its website it will shut down all services as of 8 a.m. After that time, “all modes of transit will be shut down for the remainder of the day and night,” it said.

Summer vacationers fled beach towns and resort islands.

More than a million people left the New Jersey shore and glitzy Atlantic City casinos were dark and empty.

This year has been one of the most extreme for weather in US history, with $35 billion in losses so far from floods, tornadoes and heat waves.

President Barack Obama, who cut his vacation short on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard to return to the White House, was keeping a close eye on preparations for the hurricane.

After moving across North Carolina with less punch than expected but still threatening, the hurricane re-emerged over inshore waters on its route northward, hugging the coast.

When Irene hit the North Carolina coast on Saturday, winds howled through power lines, sheets of rain fell and streets were flooded or littered with tree branches.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Irene’s path evacuated their homes, many taking refuge in official shelters.

“Things can be replaced, but life can’t be,” said Robert Hudson, a 64-year-old military retiree, who sought refuge at a shelter in Milford High School in Delaware.

2 nuke plants shut down

Irene was the first hurricane to hit the US mainland since “Ike” pounded Texas in 2008. Emergency workers were mindful of Hurricane “Katrina,” which swamped New Orleans, killed up to 1,800 people and caused $80 billion in damage in 2005.

Two East Coast nuclear power plants shut to ensure safety.

Aluminum siding flew off a building in Maryland and slammed into a transformer at CENG’s Calvert Cliff reactor early Sunday, forcing it to shut. The plant declared an “unusual event,” or low-level emergency, but said the reactor was safe.

As a precaution against winds, Exelon Corp. took its Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey offline on Saturday. The plant normally supplies electricity to as many as 600,000 homes.

Several East Coast oil refineries throttled back operations and ConocoPhillips shut its Bayway plant in New Jersey.

In New York, authorities undertook the herculean job of bringing the city to a halt. The subway began shutting down at noon, the first time the system was closed because of a natural disaster.

On Wall Street, sandbags were placed around subway grates near the East River because of fear of flooding. Tarps were spread over other grates. Construction stopped throughout the city, and workers at the site of the World Trade Center dismantled a crane and secured equipment.

The New York area’s major airports—LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark—shut down at noon Saturday. Airlines canceled 9,000 flights, including 3,000 on Saturday. The number of passengers affected could easily be in the millions because so many flights make connections on the East Coast.

New York has seen only a few hurricanes in the past 200 years. The Northeast is much more used to snowstorms—including a blizzard last December, when Bloomberg was criticized for a slow response.

In Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter declared a state of emergency, the first for the city since 1986, when racial tensions were running high. “We are trying to save lives and don’t have time for silliness,” he said.