Big Apple left battered but worst is over

IRENE charged into New England yesterday as it weakened to a tropical storm after racing across New York city leaving the East Coast stunned, with at least 16 dead, widespread flooding and power outages for four million homes and businesses.

As waves continued pounding the Connecticut shore east of America’s biggest city, New York city mayor Michael Bloomberg lifted the evacuation order for the 400,000 residents in low-lying areas, mainly Lower Manhattan Queens and Brooklyn.

New England residents were now feeling the brunt of the diminished but still-dangerous storm. It was expected to move over eastern Canada last night.

Forecasters said that Irene, while diminished in strength, was still massive and powerful, with powerful winds extending more than 300 miles from the centre.

Before Irene hit New York, its winds weakened to 65mph after its journey up the East Coast, where it dropped a foot of rain on North Carolina and Virginia. The National Hurricane Centre downgraded the storm after its winds fell below 74mph, the threshold for a hurricane.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said President Barack Obama was briefed this morning and instructed administration officials to continue to be aggressive in their efforts to deal with the storm and its aftermath.

Napolitano said the worst of the storm has passed for most areas, but cautioned that communities in Irene’s path should continue to be vigilant even though the storm had weakened.

As the eye of the storm blew through America’s largest city and Long Island to the east, it pushed an Atlantic storm surge toward New York. Briny water from New York Harbour submerged parts of a promenade at the base of the island of Manhattan. A foot of water rushed over the wall of a marina in front of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where gold and oil are traded.

The huge storm had threatened 65 million people on the Atlantic coast, estimated as the largest number of Americans ever affected by a single storm.

New York was eerily quiet as the storm hit. In a city where many don’t own cars, the population stayed indoors. The entire transit system was shut down because of weather for the first time ever. The city’s airports were closed, with more than 9,000 flights cancelled. Broadway shows, baseball games and other events were all cancelled or postponed.

As the centre of the storm passed over Central Park at midmorning, floodwater reached the wheel wells of some cars in Manhattan, and more streamed into the streets of Queens.

Still, the storm didn’t come close to inflicting the kind of catastrophic damage that had been feared in the city. The September 11 museum, a centrepiece of the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site, said on Twitter that none of its memorial trees were lost.

Irene made landfall just after dawn yesterday near Cape Lookout, North Carolina, at the southern end of the Outer Banks. Shorefront hotels and houses were lashed with waves, two piers were destroyed and at least one hospital was forced to run on generator power.

But as day broke today, surprisingly light damage was reported in many places, mostly consisting of downed trees and power lines.

Officials warned of the possibility of severe flooding over the next few days as excess water makes its way into creeks and rivers. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett cautioned: “The rivers may not crest until Tuesday or Wednesday. This isn’t just a 24-hour event.”

Irene caused flooding from North Carolina to Delaware, both from the 7ft waves it pushed into the coast and from heavy rain.

In New Jersey, the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, just a few miles from the coast, shut down as a precaution as Irene closed in.

The deaths blamed on Irene included two children. Four other people were killed by falling trees — two in separate Virginia incidents, one in North Carolina and one in Maryland. A surfer and another beach-goer in Florida were killed as heavy waves battered the coast.