Hurricane Irene battered the North Carolina coast early Saturday, wreaking havoc as it began a potentially catastrophic run up the U.S. East Coast. More than 2 million people were told to flee and New York City ordered the nation’s biggest subway system shut down for the first time because of a natural disaster.
The National Hurricane Centre in Miami said the enormous storm had weakened somewhat, but winds topping 130 kmph began lashing the shoreline near Jacksonville, North Carolina, around dawn. Gusts as high as 151 kmph were recorded.
Irene could be packing top sustained winds of 150 kmph when it officially makes landfall. The winds had weakened from 160 kmph overnight, but forecasters warned Irene would remain a hurricane as it moves up the Atlantic coast, and then toward the New York City area and New England.
“The hazards are still the same,” NHC hurricane specialist Mike Brennan said. “The emphasis for this storm is on its size and duration, not necessarily how strong the strongest winds are.”
As the storm’s outer bands of wind and rain lashed the North Carolina coast, knocking out power in places, authorities farther north begged people to get out of harm’s way.
“Don’t wait. Don’t delay,” said President Barack Obama, who cut short his summer vacation and return to Washington. “I cannot stress this highly enough- If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now.”
The storm’s centre was about 60 km south of Cape Lookout on North Carolina’s Outer Banks early Saturday and lumbering north-northeastward at 22 kmph.
Wind and rain knocked out power to more than 91,000 customers along the North Carolina coast, including a hospital in Morehead City. A woman who answered the phone there said the hospital was running on generators.
A coastal town official in North Carolina said witnesses believed a tornado spawned by Irene lifted the roof off a car dealership warehouse in Belhaven on Friday night.
Forecasters said the core of Irene would make landfall in the next few hours, roll up the mid-Atlantic coast on Saturday night and over southern New England on Sunday.
Hurricane warnings were issued from North Carolina to New York and farther north to the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard off Massachusetts. Evacuation orders covered at least 2.3 million people, including 1 million in New Jersey, 315,000 in Maryland, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia and 100,000 in Delaware.
“This is probably the largest number of people that have been threatened by a single hurricane in the United States,” said Jay Baker, a geography professor at Florida State University.
U.S. airlines cancelled at least 6,100 flights through Monday, grounding hundreds of thousands of passengers as the storm could strike major airports from Washington to Boston.
New York City ordered more than 300,000 people who live in flood-prone areas to leave, including Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan, Coney Island and the beachfront Rockaways. But most New Yorkers don’t have a car, and city was shutting down public transportation at noon on Saturday.
The New York City transit system carries about 5 million people on an average weekday, fewer on weekends. It has been shut down before, including during a 2005 transit workers’ strike and after the Sept. 11 attacks a decade ago, but never for weather.
Aviation officials said they would close the five main New York City-area airports to arriving domestic and international flights beginning at noon on Saturday. Many departures also were cancelled.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was little authorities could do to force people to leave and warned: “But if you don’t follow this, people may die.”
Shelters in New York opened on Friday afternoon, and the city was placed under its first hurricane warning since 1985.
Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down, and Washington declared a state of emergency.
Some hardy holdouts in North Carolina put plywood on windows, gathered last-minute supplies and tied down boats. More than half the people who live on two remote islands, Hatteras and Ocracoke, had ignored orders to leave.
“I anticipate we’re going to have people floating on the streets,” said Richard Marlin, fire chief for one of the seven villages on Hatteras. “The Coast Guard will either be pulling people off their roofs like in Katrina or we’ll be scraping them out of their yards.”
Some took to shelters for protection. Susan Kinchen, her daughter and 5-month-old granddaughter came to West Carteret High School with about 50 others. She said they didn’t feel safe in their trailer. The Louisiana native said her old trailer lost its roof to Hurricane Katrina almost six years ago to the day, on August 29, 2005.
“I’m not taking any chances,” she said.
After the Outer Banks, the next target for Irene was the Hampton Roads region of southeast Virginia, a jagged network of inlets and rivers that floods easily. Emergency officials have said the region is threatened by storm surge.
In Delaware, Gov. Jack Markell ordered an evacuation of coastal areas on the peninsula his state shares with Maryland and Virginia.
Kenneth Roe was filling up three 5-gallon gas cans at an Exxon station in Salisbury, Maryland. A manager at a Home Depot in Lewes, Delaware, the 34-year-old had worked 18 hours straight on Thursday and another five hours on Friday, his day off. He said the store was staying open 24 hours to help people protect their property.
In Baltimore’s Fells Point neighbourhood, one of the city’s oldest waterfronts, people filled sandbags and packed them at the entrances to buildings. A few kilometres away at the Port of Baltimore, vehicles and cranes rushed to unload huge cargo ships that were hurrying to get away from the storm.
And in Atlantic City, New Jersey, all 11 casinos announced plans to shut down on Friday, only the third time that has happened in New Jersey’s 33-year history of legalised gambling.
“I like gambling, but you don’t play with this,” Pearson Callender said as he waited for a Greyhound bus out of town. “People are saying this is an act of God.”
