Shutdown of Cities for fear of Irene charged, evening, closed, drive, could

雨落风残

今天继续飓风Irene ,山雨欲来风满楼啊，首先是NY Times:

New York City Shuts Down Amid Flooding Fears


Hurricane Irene charged toward New York on Saturday evening, with the city all but closed down in anticipation of what forecasters warned could be violent winds with the force to drive a wall of water over the beaches in the Rockaways and between the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan.

“Now the edge of the hurricane is finally upon us,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a briefing from the city’s emergency command center in Brooklyn at about 10:30 p.m.
“We’ve warned the public,” the mayor said, “and now we have to deal with Mother Nature.”
Since Friday, the city had done more than issue warnings. The subway system, one of the city’s trademarks, had shut down in the middle of the day, and firefighters and social service workers had spent much of Saturday trying to complete the evacuation of about 370,000 residents in low-lying areas where officials expected flooding to follow the storm. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said that more than a million people had been evacuated, mainly from four counties in the southern part of the state.
Officials warned that a big problem could be flooding at high tide, around 8 a.m. Sunday — before the storm has moved on and the wind has slacked off in and around the city, assuming Hurricane Irene more or less follows the path that forecasters expect it to follow.
“That is when you’ll see the water come over the side,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cautioned at a briefing on Saturday afternoon.
The storm, a wide and relentless mass that had had lurched onto the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the early daylight hours of Saturday, heaved clumsily but implacably north, leaving in its wake at least six deaths. After crawling slowly from North Carolina into Virginia, the storm weaved out to sea and onto a path that forecasters said would take it to Long Island and New York City.
The storm was a spinning kaleidoscope of weather, sometimes pounding windows with rain, sometimes flashing the sky with lightning, sometimes blacking out the horizon with ominous, low-riding clouds. As the hurricane moved up the East Coast, tornado watches had moved right along with it, and that lockstep continued as the storm closed in on the New York area: Around 8 p.m., the National Weather Service announced a tornado watch for the city, along with Westchester, Suffolk, Nassau and Rockland Counties. “It’s actually common when we have these tropical systems,” explained Brian Ceimnecki, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.
More than 10,000 people in the New York area had lost electricity by 10 p.m. — 5,576 on Long Island, according to the Long Island Power Authority; 4,700 in New Jersey, according to Public Service Electric and Gas; and about 400 in the city and in Westchester, according to Consolidated Edison.
The Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, said that “thousands” of people were spending the night in county facilities, including Nassau County Community College. He asked people in areas that were in danger to stay with friends or relatives, if possible.
The city opened 91 emergency centers that could take in 70,000 people. But officials said that only 5,500 had arrived by 8 p.m. The only other statistics available pointed to the difficulty of getting people to abide by the mayor’s mandatory evacuation order in what the city calls Zone A low-lying areas: The mayor had said several hours earlier that 80 percent of the residents in some city-run buildings — but only 50 percent in others — had left.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops called up. Mr. Cuomo saw the first of them off from the 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, after saying they would assist the police, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He also said that some would be sent to Long Island, which could face heavy damage in the storm.
Mr. Christie said 1,500 National Guard troops had been deployed in New Jersey.
The mayor attributed one casualty to the storm, a 66-year-old man who fell from a ladder while trying to board up windows at his house in Jamaica, Queens, early in the day. A Fire Department spokesman said the man, who was not immediately identified, was in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.
The mayor said police rescuers had pulled two kayakers from the water off Staten Island after their boats capsized. “When they were out there in spite of all the warnings, I don’t know,” the mayor said at his late-evening briefing, adding that they had been “kept afloat by lifejackets” they were wearing. He said they had been given summonses.
He also said that going out in the water as the storm approached was a “reckless” move that had “diverted badly-needed N.Y.P.D. resources.”

The city’s beachers were closed, and at midday, as the transit system prepared to shut down, police officers sounded the warning, strolling along subway platforms and telling people that the next train would be the last. The conductor of a No. 4 train that pulled into the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn at 12:14 p.m. had the same message.

“This is it,” he said, smiling. “You’re just in time.”
Soon subway employees were stretching yellow tape across the entrances to stations to keep people from going down the steps and into a subterranean world that was suddenly off limits, but not deserted. Transit workers were charged with executing a huge, mostly underground ballet, moving 200 subway trains away from outdoor yards that could flood if the storm delivered the 6 to 12 inches of rain that forecasts called for. The trains were to be parked in tunnels across the city, making regular runs impossible.
Mr. Bloomberg said the transit system was “unlikely to be back” in service on Monday. He said crews would have to pump water from tunnels if they flooded and restore the signal system before they could move the parked trains out. That would mean “the equipment’s not where you would want it” for the morning rush, he said. “Plan on a commute without mass transit on Monday morning.”
Mr. Bloomberg also said electricity could be knocked out in Lower Manhattan if Consolidated Edison shut off the power to pre-empt the problems that flooding could cause for its cables. (A Con Ed spokesman said later that the company, while prepared, had no immediate plans for that kind of shutdown.)
Other officials, including Mr. Christie, repeated what they had said on Friday: Evacuate.
Mr. Christie said that 90 percent to 98 percent of residents in parts of four counties in South Jersey had left — Cape May, Atlantic, Ocean and Monmouth. About 1,200 people who were evacuated from Atlantic County on Friday had spent the night without cots at the Sun Center arena in Trenton, where many people ended up sleeping in seats, he said. They were taken to the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, which Mr. Christie visited after a news conference.
In Hoboken, N.J., Mayor Dawn Zimmer ordered the evacuation of all ground-floor residential units and ordered bars to close at 8 p.m.
But up until last call, about 7:45, the scene on Saturday night looked fairly normal, with young people packed into several establishments.
“What else are we going to do?” said Scotty Alpaugh, 30, who wore rainproof overalls to Black Bear Bar and Grill. “Everything else is shut down.”
In New York, Mr. Bloomberg said the evacuation and the transit shutdown, actions that he said had not been ordered before, had gone as well as could be expected. Officials went door to door in high-rise housing projects and firefighters drove school buses to help get homebound residents out of low-lying neighborhoods.
Phyllis Rhodie, 48, boarded such a bus outside the Redfern Houses in the slender peninsula of the Rockaways. She took along her boyfriend, three children, water, food, some medical supplies — and a case of nerves.
“I’m staying wherever they can put me up,” she said.
But, for all the evacuation, some people had to stay put. The city did not evacuate inmates on Rikers Island because, a city spokesman explained, “It’s not in Zone A.”
The storm caused major disruptions long before the first bands of rain swirled by. The three major airports in the New York region stopped clearing flights for landing at noon. Officials said they would remain open for planes that wanted to take off, but most flights had been canceled on Friday, according to Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority.
Amtrak canceled most trains after 11 a.m., although there was some confusion at Pennsylvania Station. A northbound train that left at 10:15 a.m. was, the conductor said, the last one going in that direction and was sold out.
The storm’s potential path reminded weather historians of the devastating hurricane of 1938. That storm devastated the Connecticut coast and rearranged Long Island’s geography, carving an inlet through what had been a thin but solid stretch of land on the way to the Hamptons.
On Saturday, New York awoke to an odd, greenish-gray sky, overheated air that felt heavy with moisture and only a light, summery breeze. It was not just another sleepy Saturday in August — too many people were on alert too early. In Battery Park City, long lines of taxis waited to take evacuees who carried their possessions to the curb. Uptown, some were dismayed when they found that stores like the new Fairway on East 86th Street had closed.
“It fits into the whole alarmist nature of the city,” said Mike Ortenau, 44, who lives in the neighborhood.

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Hope everyone can safely through

雨落风残

Irene closes on New York after battering East Coast

MOREHEAD CITY, North Carolina (Reuters) - Hurricane Irene closed in on New York on Saturday, shutting down the city, and millions of Americans on the East Coast hunkered down as the giant storm halted transport and caused massive power blackouts.

Before midnight, Irene, still a menacing 480-mile-wide hurricane, was enveloping major population centers in the U.S. northeast with drenching rain and driving winds, threatening dangerous floods and surging tides.

"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 the United States' most populous city that includes Wall Street, a major world financial center.

He warned that tropical storm-force winds were expected to start hitting the city.

From the Carolinas to Maine, tens of millions of people were in the path of Irene which howled ashore in North Carolina at daybreak, dumping torrential rain, felling trees and knocking out power.

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.

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

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which connects Virginia's Eastern Shore with the mainland and is regarded as a modern engineering wonder, was closed because of the winds and rain.

This year has been one of the most extreme for weather in U.S. 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.

New York City's normally bustling streets were eerily quiet after authorities ordered unprecedented major evacuations and shut down its airports and subways.

Commuters were left to flag down yellow taxis and livery cabs that patrolled largely deserted streets.

Irene caused transport chaos as airline, rail and transit systems in New York and other eastern cities started sweeping weekend shutdowns.

The Coast Guard closed the port of Philadelphia, while New York Harbor remained open with some restrictions.

"DANGEROUS OUT THERE"

"We're just stuck here ... "We didn't think they would shut down everything," said Rachel Karten at New York's nearly empty Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Irene left several million people without power in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware and New York prepared for possible widespread blackouts.

With winds of 8O miles per hour, Irene was a Category 1 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.

As it moved into New York, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said it was expected to remain a hurricane and weaken only after making its second landfall in New England.

Irene came ashore near North Carolina's Cape Lookout around 7:30 a.m. EDT, and then churned up the coast on a north-northeast track. By 11 p.m., the center was 70 miles south southwest of Ocean City, Maryland, and 255 miles south southwest of New York City.

Bloomberg repeatedly told New Yorkers 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".

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

But many were unwilling to evacuate. 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.

The hurricane center said that Irene's winds could impact more strongly on the higher floors of skyscrapers.

STORM SURGE FEARS

The Miami-based hurricane center forecast a storm surge of up to 8 feet for Long Island and metropolitan New York when Irene passes on Sunday. That could top the flood walls protecting the south end of Manhattan if it comes at high tide around 8 a.m. (noon GMT).

When Irene hit the North Carolina coast at daybreak, winds howled through the power lines, rain fell in sheets and streets were flooded or littered with signs and 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.

Two people were killed by falling trees in Virginia, one a young boy. Irene caused four deaths in North Carolina.

In New Smyrna Beach, Florida, a surfer riding large waves kicked up by Irene was killed, local media reported.

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue said there could be "a major hit" to tobacco crops, poultry and livestock in her state.

Summer vacationers fled beach towns and resort islands. More than one million people left the New Jersey shore and glitzy Atlantic City casinos were dark and empty.

Shoppers stripped supermarkets and hardware stores of food, water, flashlights, batteries and generators.

Torrential rain hit downtown Washington but expected high winds had still not reached the city after nightfall and restaurants remained open, some of them almost full.

Irene was the first hurricane to hit the U.S. 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.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the military stood ready to help. In Washington, Irene forced the postponement of a ceremony on Sunday to dedicate a new memorial to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Tens of thousands of people, including Obama, had been expected to attend.

雨落风残

Hurricane Irene churns up East Coast; Virginia boy, 11, is killed by fallen tree

The most powerful hurricane to threaten the Eastern Seaboard in almost two decades hit the Washington region Saturday, bringing heavy rains and high winds that plunged homes into darkness, turned trees into projectiles and caused at least five deaths.

After making landfall in North Carolina, with gusts up to 115 mph, Hurricane Irene continued its fierce and relentless march north toward New York City and New England. Governors and mayors spent much of Saturday pleading with people to get out of the
storm’s way.

The storm arrived at day’s first light, at a point appropriately named Cape Lookout. As the hurricane spread beyond North Carolina, the most densely populated stretch in the country all but ground to a halt.

Airlines canceled 9,000 flights along the East Coast, Amtrak canceled all trains from Boston south and Greyhound suspended bus service between Richmond and Boston for the rest of the weekend. Capital Bikeshare suspended all bike rentals in the District.

The subway stopped running in New York City. The three airports serving the Washington area remained open Saturday evening, but most flights had been scratched. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge was closed at 7:35 p.m. because of severe winds and unsafe driving conditions.

Nearly 800,000 homes and businesses in Virginia, Maryland and the District lost power as winds toppled trees and power lines. The Richmond area and southeastern Virginia were hardest hit. But outages were expected to increase exponentially as the storm grew in ferocity through the night.

At least five deaths were linked to the storm. The full extent of the damage won’t be known until after the hurricane peters out, sometime late Sunday.

In Norfolk, as Irene heralded itself with sheets of rain and howling gusts of wind that peaked around 60 mph, a massive water main break on a city street erupted about 4 p.m. and sprayed water like a geyser at least 30 feet in the air. WAVY Channel 10 news reported that some residents had no water, particularly in low-lying areas of the city.

Even before Irene made landfall, President Obama signed emergency declarations for nine states, allowing the federal government to pay some costs and assist in cleanup.

Cities up and down the East Coast were particularly vulnerable to its fury.

Houses in Virginia Beach were sliced open, and empty homes were looted. An 11-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on a house in Newport News.

And in New York City, where 370,000 people were ordered to evacuate, the city girded for the storm’s crippling impact. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg warned that high-rise buildings were likely to stop elevator service so that no one would be trapped during a power outage. A storm surge is likely to send water streaming through the streets of Lower Manhattan and Wall Street, and electricity would be cut before that happens.

Officials had been making increasingly dire predictions about Irene for days, and even veterans of other hurricanes scrambled to get out of the storm’s path.

More than 2 million people were ordered to evacuate along the coast, and some shelters were overwhelmed.

In the Washington region, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties each opened two shelters for displaced residents. In the District, three shelters openedand recreation centers and schools were on standby to be turned into shelters if needed.

Hampton Roads served as an early warning of the storm’s strength, even though it had been downgraded a notch to a Category 1 hurricane.

Huge waves surged close to the dunes at Sandbridge Beach, a low-lying peninsular-like area south of the city.

Five homes were severely damaged in the Sandbridge area — with the roofs blown off two and collapsed walls in others — in what fire officials suspect was a small tornado or strong microburst, said Battalion Chief Tim Riley of the Virginia Beach Fire Department. The homes were empty because occupants had heeded the mandatory evacuation order, he said.

Police vehicles swarmed into the area after several people reported looters in the damaged homes. Two people were arrested, accused of looting in the area, said city spokeswoman Mary Hancock. More details were not available.

Dave Smith, 58, a retired salesman, said he was not evacuating because he feared looting.

“I’m not leaving my stuff. And that’s the reason I stayed — people are breaking into houses,” Smith said.

As the storm crept north, 500 miles wide at its core, it seemed to grow more menacing.

In Rehoboth Beach, where streets began to flood by 4:30 p.m., it was difficult to see more than 150 yards on the beach by late afternoon. A stinging rain fell as winds blew foam and sand onto the boardwalk.

Many residents awoke to warnings at 7:15 a.m., when a storm siren echoed through the streets. It was followed by an announcement that the city was under mandatory evacuation, calling for residents to leave the coastal area as soon as possible.

“It scared the hell out of me,” said Al Morris, who has been coming to Rehoboth for 40 years.

The alarm, spread by loudspeakers positioned around town, sounded two more times before nightfall as winds blew a thick layer of sand onto the boardwalk. Large sections of roadways were covered in standing water.

Due to the worsening conditions, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) announced a driving ban in Sussex, Kent and New Castle counties.

With beach communities in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware largely evacuated, people living inland in Eastern Shore communities began to receive the same message.

“We are supposed to evacuate in a few hours now,” Sabine Boggs said. “Salisbury City police drove down our street with lights flashing and a PA system announcement that a shelter has been set up at the civic center. All the garden furniture is stuffed in our sunroom, and the treadmill has become a good plant stand.”

Even as the winds toppled stop signs and pushed slender trees nearly horizontal, authorities had to coax thrill-seekers away from the beaches. They issued dire warnings to residents stubbornly staying behind that they would not be rescued.

A team of city police, beach patrol officers and Maryland state troopers took the names of next of kin from about 300 Ocean City residents who refused to budge. They would be on their own, they were told.

Lifeguards ordered daredevil surfers to get out of the water as winds reached gale force.

Even as winds began to break branches and bend street signs, some people ventured out to experience the leading edge of the hurricane. Ocean City police officer Freddie Howard, five hours into what he expected to be a 48-hour shift, was patrolling near 45th Street when he saw two figures careening unsteadily on bicycles.

Catching up to them in the breezeway of a condominium tower, Howard flipped his police lights on and forced his cruiser door open against the gale.

“What are you doing out here?” he shouted over the roar. The two men, in their early 20s, could barely hold their bikes upright, although one of them never stopped filming Howard and his flashing patrol car.

“We’re just looking around,” one man shouted back.

“That’s not a good idea,” the officer said. “We’re evacuating the town. You should go for your own safety.”

But the two insisted that they would be fine in their condo, so Howard let them go. They struggled to remain upright in the crosswinds.

Willie Long, a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier in Virginia Beach, went about his usual rounds, though wetter than usual, somewhat to the surprise of residents.

“They have two views: One is, ‘You’re crazy.’ The other is, ‘Kudos,’ ” Long said.

And near Annapolis, Michael Marvin, who moved from the District to within 100 feet of the Chesapeake Bay just days before Hurricane Isabel hit in 2003, hunkered down as the day’s grayness turned to dusk Saturday.

“Fill the tubs, replace the batteries, clear the outside drains, charge the phones and wait,” Marvin said at his home just north of Annapolis.

The scenarios officials had been warning about for days seemed to be coming true. By 6 p.m., winds exceeded 50 miles an hour in Ocean City. Officials pulled police patrols off the streets and ordered officers into safe staging areas around town.

“We’ll assess calls on a case-by-case basis,” said Ocean City communications director Donna Abbott. “Otherwise, we’ll keep them in until the winds die down and it’s safer to be out.”

The lower, southernmost blocks of the island were beginning to flood, Abbott said. They city also shut down its waste water treatment facilities.




Staff writers Carol Morello, Ashley Halsey III, Miranda S. Spivack, Nikita Stewart, Brian Rosenthal, Anita Kumar, John Wagner, Robert Samuels and Mary Pat Flaherty contributed to this report.