WEAKENED HURRICANE IRENE BLASTS NEW YORK
AFP ©Enlarge photo
A weakened Hurricane Irene has torn into New York, hammering Manhattan's skyscrapers with fierce winds and threatening to flood the financial district after killing at least nine people along the US east coast.
The first hurricane to hit the Big Apple for a generation swept in overnight, accompanied by lightning, reports of tornados and deafening rainfall.
As Irene approached the New Jersey shore, its wind strength diminished substantially, dropping to just 75km/h, at the threshold of hurricane status. But it still remained a tremendous storm.
The hurricane made its second landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, just before sunrise on Sunday.
Meanwhile, New York City resembled a ghost town after 370,000 people were told to evacuate flood-prone areas, including near Wall Street and at Coney Island, and mass transport was shut down.
Trains, buses and the Staten Island ferry all shut down on Saturday, as did all nearby airports, paralysing the city.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a media conference that running from the storm was no longer possible.
"At this point, if you haven't evacuated, our suggestion is you stay where you are," he said. "Nature is a lot stronger than the rest of us."
Irene made US its first landfall at 8am (2200 AEST) on Saturday at Cape Lookout, North Carolina, near a chain of barrier islands and quickly proved deadly.
At least nine people died on Saturday - in car accidents, from heart attack and by falling trees - in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida. The youngest victim, an 11-year-old boy, died when a tree crashed through his apartment building in Newport News, Virginia.
The storm then re-entered the ocean off the coasts of Virginia and Maryland.
On its passage up the coast, Irene knocked out power supplies for well over a million people, triggered the cancellation of more than 8000 flights, and forced nearly two million people to evacuate, half of them in New Jersey.
Officials in New York said the biggest danger was from flooding caused not just because of tropical-style rainfall but a surge of wind-driven seawater pushing up from the Atlantic, especially at high tide early on Sunday.
City areas at risk of being swamped included parts of the financial district in Manhattan and low-lying beach resorts in Brooklyn and Queens and on nearby Long Island. Boat owners scrambled to get their craft ashore and officials across New Jersey and New York pleaded with residents to keep off beaches.
Officials say Manhattan's skyscrapers are not at risk of serious damage but warn that power outages might strand residents without light, water or lifts.
The disruption took on an international character after the area's three big airports - John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia and Newark - were ordered to stop all flights at 10pm (1200 AEST) .
The flightaware.com website, which tracks airport arrivals and departures, estimated 8337 flights would be cancelled during the weekend, mainly US domestic trips. It warned the figure would rise.
President Barack Obama, who cut short his summer holiday, visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency's operations centre in Washington, where he said the east coast was in for a "long 72 hours".
Obama chaired a meeting at the National Response Co-ordination Centre, set up to marshall federal and local hurricane-relief efforts.
"This is going to be a tough slog getting through this thing," Obama said during a video teleconference including senior federal officials and local government agencies.
About 65 million people live in the urban corridor from Washington north to Boston, and experts have said the damage could cost anything up to $US12 billion ($A11.5 billion) to restore.
"This is going to be a very serious storm, no matter what the track is, no matter how much it weakens. This is a life-threatening storm to people here," Bloomberg said.
Irene's approach stirred painful memories of Hurricane Katrina, which smashed into the southern Gulf Coast in 2005, stranding thousands of people in New Orleans and overwhelming poorly prepared local and federal authorities.
Hurricanes are rare in the northeastern US - the last big one to hit New York was Gloria in 1985 - but this time authorities say they are ready.
The military said up to 101,000 National Guard soldiers were available if needed and designated military bases in three states as staging areas.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar