KIll Devil Hills, North Carolina, Aug 27, (AFP): At least three people, including an 11-year-old, have died in storm-related incidents since Hurricane Irene slammed into the US east coast on Saturday, officials said.
The child died midday Saturday when a tree fell on an apartment complex in Newport News, Virginia hours after the category one hurricane crashed ashore in neighboring North Carolina, a city emergency spokeswoman said.
“There was an 11-year-old boy pinned under the tree and he was pronounced dead at the scene,” Anita Walters told AFP, adding that the boy’s mother made it out of the apartment unharmed.
Another two people died in North Carolina, where the hurricane made landfall early Saturday morning with 85 mile (140 kilometer) per hour winds, driving rain and flood surges that caused a wide swath of power outages.
“One man in Onslow County died when he suffered a heart attack while putting plywood on his windows,” Tom Mather, a public affairs officer with the North Carolina emergency management office, told AFP.
“Another man died overnight when his car hydroplaned in Pitt County and hit a tree,” he said.
Local TV station WRAL cited the Nash County Sheriff as saying a man died when heavy winds caused a tree branch to fall on him as he was outside feeding his animals.
Police could not immediately be reached to comment on the report.
A man also went missing after he plunged into the Cape Fear River near Wilmington early on Saturday, according to Michelle Harrell, of the New Hanover County emergency management office.
“It’s unclear at this point whether he jumped in or was pushed,” she said, adding that a search was launched after the incident but then temporarily called off because of the weather.
Emergency management officials said up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain had fallen in some coastal areas and a six to 10-foot (1.8 to three-meter) storm surge caused flooding in several counties.
A number of people in New Bern had to be rescued from their homes, including at least one family with small children, a local TV station reported.
Phone service was down across much of the state’s northern coast, and power companies said some 300,000 people were without electricity, with outages reported as far west as Raleigh and Durham.
The coast is home to some 3.5 million people, but was largely deserted ahead of the storm as officials issued mandatory evacuation orders.
The hurricane is on track to careen up the east coast late Saturday and Sunday, passing over or near Washington, New York and Boston, a densely populated urban corridor home to some 65 million people.
US President Barack Obama Saturday personally led his government’s response to Hurricane Irene, marshalling top officials and visiting a disaster command center as the storm roared ashore.
Obama greeted officials at the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) set up at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, and then held a video conference with federal and state officials.
“You guys are doing a great job obviously,” Obama told a group in the command center. “This is obviously going to be a touch and go.”
Officials said the NRCC brings together multiple government agencies and departments to coordinate disaster response with federal, state and local groups around the clock.
The White House appears to have carefully considered the lesson of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when a botched response effort and confusion between state and federal agencies inflicted a heavy political price on president George W. Bush.
Obama returned home one night early on Friday from his island vacation on Martha’s Vineyard off Massachusetts and appeared keen to be visibly in charge as the response to Hurricane Irene unfolds.
Earlier on Saturday, Obama held a conference call with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, FEMA administrator Craig Fugate and other senior emergency management officials.
“The president reiterated that we know that this storm’s impacts will continue to be felt throughout the weekend and that we still have work ahead of us to support potentially impacted states and communities,” the White House said.
Sustained winds of 85 miles (140 kilometers) an hour lashed coastal areas as Irene made landfall near the southern end of a chain of barrier islands that ring the North Carolina coast, the National Hurricane Center said.
Cities along the east coast of the United States — from Washington to New York to Boston — braced for the impact, with hundreds of thousands of people ordered to evacuate low-lying areas.
Travel
Hurricane Irene brought international travel chaos Saturday with hundreds of flights cancelled while New York shut down its transport system fearing widespread flooding.
Many airlines cancelled flights to New York, Washington and other eastern US airports as far south as Miami, Florida as Irene charged up the east coast.
British Airways, Air France, American Airlines, Continental and major Asian airlines cancelled scores of flights to and from Europe and Asia, while hundreds of domestic flights fell victim to the killer storm.
New York’s J.F. Kennedy airport cancelled all arrivals and departures were restricted before the arrival of the storm. The region’s Newark and La Guardia airports saw similar chaos.
An Air France spokesman in Paris said that the company’s flights to and from New York were not expected to resume before Monday.
Rail traffic across the eastern United States also came to a standstill and public transport in the New York region was halted. In New York City, it was the first shutdown ever caused by a weather disaster.
Subway rail stations were roped off after the final trains left. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was unable to say when trains and buses would start again.
The last bus rides were free and no tolls were charged on New York bridges Saturday to help those evacuating low-lying areas.
The hurricane is expected to hit New York City on Saturday night.
The New York metro is one of the world’s biggest with 468 stations served by some 6,380 subway cars. There are also about 5,900 buses.
The MTA has particular concerns about the 13 subway tunnels that go under the rivers that surround Manhattan. Authorities have also said bridges will close once wind speeds go over 60 miles (96 kilometers) an hour.
No particular traffic problems have been reported, city authorities said.
Sandbags
Residents scooped up sandbags in the US port city of Baltimore on Saturday as they braced for flooding as an ominous Hurricane Irene crept up the US eastern seaboard.
Known for its inner harbor, the city 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Washington lies near the path of the hurricane and could see a massive sea surge later on Saturday as the storm sweeps the mid-Atlantic.
In the harbor-side neighborhood of Fells Point around 50 people lined up to fill brown sacks at massive sand mounds that had been trucked in.
“I’m going to put the sand bags around my house. I got 20 of them,” said Lorenzo McCant, 27, who came with his mother so he could get twice the 10 bags per person limit.
“It’s a precaution. I’m not afraid, but still, I live close to the water level.”
Sandbags piled onto plastic tarps gave basement entrances to apartments and shops the appearance of war bunkers, with residents hoping to prevent flooding from the nearby harbor.
R.C. Benn, 51, said she was picking up sandbags to protect her finished basement, the preferred haunt of her 10-year-old cat, Patches.
“We’re going to have a big storm. I will put bags outside the house, around the house, to stop water coming into the basement,” she said. “Flooding can very well happen. Its a precaution.”
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Baltimore was not in the direct path of the hurricane but warned that “high winds, rain, and a storm surge can cause flooding and downed power lines throughout the city.”
“It is absolutely vital that every resident is prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws our way,” she added.
The category one storm slammed into the North Carolina coast and was approaching Washington, New York and Boston, a densely populated corridor home to some 65 million people.
Local authorities have ordered the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people, including 370,000 from low-lying areas across New York City.
Hurricanes are rare on the east coast, but many in Baltimore remember Isabel in 2003, which caused widespread flooding.
“It took weeks to put things back in place. It might be worse with Irene,” Charles Collier, 52, said.
Evacuated
More than a million people have been evacuated from New Jersey’s coastline ahead of Hurricane Irene’s expected arrival later Saturday, state Governor Chris Christie said.
“Over a million people” have obeyed an evacuation order and gone inland, including 98 percent of the population of Cape May, an isolated point in the path of the hurricane, Christie told a televised news conference.
He said the gambling resort of Atlantic City risked taking a serious pounding and that a last-ditch effort would be made to persuade some 600 elderly people still there to leave.
“We’re making one last run in Atlantic City to try to convince these folks that in fact they need to go,” Christie said, adding that no one would be arrested or otherwise forced.
In his trademark blunt style, Christie on Friday told holidaymakers on the popular coast to “get the the hell off the beach.”
Irene was expected to hit the urban New Jersey and New York area during the night, reaching full force Sunday, before moving north.