Hurricane Irene batters New York

NEW YORK – Hurricane Irene lashed New York yesterday, shutting down America’s largest city and flooding outlying communities after killing at least nine people along the US east coast.

The first hurricane to hit the Big Apple for a generation crashed into Manhattan’s skyscrapers overnight, accompanied by lightning, reports of tornados and near horizontal walls of rain.As Irene approached the New Jersey shore, its wind strength diminished to 120 kilometres an hour, at the threshold of hurricane status. But it still remained a massive storm.The hurricane made its second landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, just before sunrise yesterday and its eye was ‘nearing New York City,’ the National Hurricane Centre said.New York City resembled a ghost town after 370 000 people were told to evacuate flood-prone areas.Subway trains, buses and the famous Staten Island ferry all closed on Saturday, as did all nearby airports, paralysing the city. Part of the George Washington bridge, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey, was closed.The immediate fear was that torrential rain, a maximum high tide and more than 2.8 metres in wind-driven ocean surge would flood Battery Park in southern Manhattan and on into the narrow streets of the Wall Street district.But the seawalls appeared to be mostly holding, although water lapped over the edges into a park on Manhattan’s East River.There was also severe flooding in beach resorts on Long Island, to the east of the city, and along the famed Jersey shore to to the south.In Brooklyn, which has a long, low coastline, some streets suffered substantial flooding and the few cars about also had to negotiate a growing number of downed tree branches.The howling winds set off a number of car alarms and police patrolled the deserted streets and outside shuttered subway stations.In a dramatic press conference late on Saturday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the time for evacuations was ‘over.’’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 its first US landfall on Saturday at 08h00 at Cape Lookout, North Carolina, near a chain of barrier islands and quickly proved deadly.At least nine people died Saturday – in car accidents, by 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 on Virginia and Maryland.On its passage up the coast, Irene knocked out power supplies for well over a million people, triggered the cancelation of more than 8 000 flights, and forced nearly two million people to evacuate, half of them in New Jersey.Hurricanes are rare in the northeastern United States – the last major hurricane to hit New York was Gloria in 1985. – Nampa-AFP

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