Floods, blackouts as Hurricane Irene lashes New York
Floods, blackouts as Hurricane Irene lashes New York
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However, the city appeared to escape the worst fears of urban disasteru00a0-- vast power outages, hurricane-shattered skyscraper windows and severe flooding.
A foot of water rushed over the wall of a marina in front of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where gold and oil are traded, and floodwater lapped at the wheel wells of yellow cabs.
But the city's biggest power company, Consolidated Edison, said it was optimistic it would not have to cut electricity to save its equipment. The Sept. 11 museum, a centerpiece of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, said on Twitter that none of its memorial trees were lost.
And Irene made landfall as a tropical storm with 65 mph winds, not the 100-mph hurricane that had churned up the East Coast and dumped a foot of water or more on less populated areas in the South.
"Just another storm," said Scott Beller, who was at a Lowe's store in the Long Island hamlet of Centereach, looking for a generator because his power was out. Irene weakened to winds of 60 mph, well below the 74 mph dividing line between a hurricane and tropical storm. The system was still massive and powerful, forming a figure six that covered the Northeast. It was moving twice as fast as the day before.
As a hurricane, Irene had already killed 14 people and left 4 million homes and businesses without power. It unloaded more than a foot of water on North Carolina and spun off tornadoes in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
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