Another wintry storm Friday

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By SAMANTHA GROSS and MITCH WEISS, Associated Press
      

NEW YORK (AP) - Tropical Storm Irene unleashed furious wind and
rain on New York on Sunday and sent seawater surging into the
Manhattan streets. But the city appeared to escape the worst fears
of urban disaster - vast power outages, hurricane-shattered
skyscraper windows and severe flooding.
     

 Across the East Coast, there was a collective sigh of relief.
Cleanup crews began clearing roads and restoring electricity to
some of the millions of people without power. Early damage
estimates were in the billions of dollars. At least 18 people died
in the storm.
     

 In Manhattan, 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. As the storm marched into New England, though, authorities in
its wake cautiously expressed relief.
     

 "All in all, we are in pretty good shape," New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg said. He lifted the city's evacuation orders for
370,000 people effective later Sunday afternoon. There was no
immediate indication when New York might start its subways again,
but the New York Stock Exchange was ready to open for trading
Monday.
   

   New York 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 50 mph as it neared northern New
England, 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.
     


 The storm left 4 million homes and businesses without power.
Insured damage from Irene will range between $2 billion and $3
billion, and the total losses will likely be about $7 billion,
according to preliminary estimates by Kinetic Analysis Corp., a
consulting firm. Both figures are less than feared and will likely
have little impact on the nation's $14 trillion economy.
    

  Irene unloaded more than a foot of water on North Carolina and
spun off tornadoes in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.
   

   And even after the storm passes in the Northeast, the danger
will persist. Rivers could crest after the skies the clear, and the
ground in most of the region is saturated from a summer of
persistent rain. In Rhode Island, thick with bays, inlets and
coastline, authorities were worried about coastal flooding at
Sunday evening's high tide.
  


    In upstate New York, rising waters at a dam on a creek sounded
sirens and officials urged residents to seek higher ground. They
did not believe the dam was in danger of imminent failure.
     

 But from North Carolina to New Jersey, the storm appeared to
have fallen well short of the doomsday predictions. Across the
Eastern Seaboard, at least 2.3 million people were given orders to
evacuate, though it was not clear how many obeyed them.
   

   Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center,
said the storm wasn't just a lot of hype with little fury. He
praised authorities, from meteorologists to emergency managers at
all levels, for taking the threat seriously.
    


  "They knew they had to get people out early," Mayfield said.
"I think absolutely lives were saved."
   

   In Virginia Beach, the city posted on Twitter late Saturday that
initial reports were promising, with the resort area suffering
minimal damage. Ocean City, Md., Mayor Rick Meehan posted wind
readings and reported: "Scattered power outages. No reports of
major damage!"
  


    Charlie Koetzle was up at 4 a.m. on Ocean City's boardwalk.
Asked about damage, he mentioned a sign that blew down.
      "The beach is still here, and there is lots of it," he said.
"I don't think it was as bad as they said it was going to be."
   

   Under its first hurricane warning in a quarter-century, the
nation's largest city had taken extensive precautions. There were
sandbags on Wall Street, tarps over subway grates and plywood on
storefront windows. The subway stopped rolling. Broadway and
baseball were canceled.
   

   John F. Kennedy International Airport recorded a tropical
storm-force wind gust of 58 mph. Kennedy, where on a normal day
tens of thousands of passengers would be arriving from points
around the world, was quiet. So were LaGuardia and Newark airports.
So was Grand Central Terminal, where the great hall was cleared out
entirely. Part of the Holland Tunnel was closed.
     

 A storm surge of at least 3 1/2 feet was recorded in New York
Harbor, and water pressed into Manhattan from three sides - the
harbor, the Hudson River and the East River.
  


    "You could see newspaper stands floating down the street,"
said Scott Baxter, a hotel doorman in the SoHo neighborhood.
    

  New York firefighters made dozens of water rescues, including
three babies, and said they were searching bungalows that had
floated down the street in parts of Queens. The wind and rain were
expected to diminish by afternoon.
   


   The National Hurricane Center said the center of the huge storm
reached land near Little Egg Inlet, N.J., at 5:35 a.m. The eye
previously reached land Saturday in North Carolina before returning
to the Atlantic, tracing the East Coast shoreline.
  


    Irene caused flooding from North Carolina to Delaware, both from
the 7-foot waves it pushed into the coast and from heavy rain.
Eastern North Carolina got 10 to 14 inches of rain. Virginia's
Hampton Roads area was drenched with at least 9 inches, 16 in some
spots.
 


     More than 1 million homes and businesses lost power in Virginia
alone. Emergency crews around the region prepared to head out at
daybreak to assess the damage, though with some roads impassable
and rivers still rising, it could take days.
   


   Some held out optimism that their communities had suffered less
damage than they had feared.
      In North Carolina, where at least five people were killed and TV
footage showed downed trees and power lines, Gov. Beverly Perdue
said some areas were unreachable.
 


     "Folks are cut off in parts of North Carolina, and obviously
we're not going to get anybody to do an assessment until it's
safe," she said.
 


     A falling tree also killed one person in Maryland. A surfer and
another beachgoer in Florida were killed in heavy waves caused by
the storm.
   

   A nuclear reactor at Maryland's Calvert Cliffs went offline
automatically when a large piece of aluminum siding blew off and
hit the facility's main transformer late Saturday night. An
"unusual event" was declared, the lowest of four emergency
classifications by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but
Constellation Energy Nuclear Group spokesman Mark Sullivan said the
facility and all employees were safe.
  

    Near Callway, Md., about 30 families were warned that a dam
could spill over, causing significant flooding, and that they
should either leave their homes or stay upstairs. St. Mary's County
spokeswoman Sue Sabo said the dam was not in danger of breaching.
      Irene raked the Caribbean last week and made its first landfall
Saturday near Cape Lookout, N.C., at the southern end of the Outer
Banks.
   


   Of the 15 deaths, at least 10 were caused by falling trees or
car crashes into trees. The victims included five in North
Carolina, four in Virginia, two in rough surf in Florida, and one
each in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
 


     Irene was the first hurricane to make landfall in the
continental United States since 2008, and came almost six years to
the day after Katrina ravaged New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005. Experts
said that probably no other hurricane in American history had
threatened as many people.
     


 Airlines said 9,000 flights were canceled, including 3,000 on
Saturday. The number of passengers affected could easily be
millions because so many flights make connections on the East
Coast.
    


  The storm arrived in Washington just days after an earthquake
damaged some of the capital's most famous structures, including the
Washington Monument. Irene could test Washington's ability to
protect its national treasures and its poor.
   


   Near the epicenter of the quake, in Mineral, Va., trees were
down, but the power stayed on.
 

     "I was telling people, `All I can say is we all better go to
church on Sunday,"' Mayor Pam Harlowe said. "But unfortunately a
bunch of them are closed."
  

    At the East Coast cleans up, it can't afford to get too
comfortable. Off the coast of Africa is a batch of clouds that
computer models say will probably threaten the East Coast 10 days
from now, Mayfield said. The hurricane center gave it a 40 percent
chance of becoming a named storm over the next two days.
  

    "Folks on the East Coast are going to get very nervous again,"
Mayfield said.
   
   ---
  

    Weiss reported from Nags Head, N.C. Associated Press writers
Christine Armario in Miami; Jessica Gresko in Ocean City, Md.;
Brock Vergakis in Virginia Beach, Va.; Marc Levy in Chester, Pa.;
Seth Borenstein in Washington; and Samantha Bomkamp, Verena Dobnik,
Jonathan Fahey, Beth Fouhy, Tom Hays, Colleen Long and Larry
Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.

Gallery

Doomsday hurricane forecasts fall short in N.C.

Weather and Climate News

Across the East Coast, there was a collective sigh of relief as Irene blew through. Cleanup crews began clearing roads and restoring electricity to
some of the millions of people without power. Early damage
estimates were in the billions of dollars. At least 18 people died
in the storm.

New York City ducks urban disaster as Irene blows through

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