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Cape Lookout North Carolina

August 27, 2011 by · Comments Off on Cape Lookout North Carolina 

Cape Lookout North CarolinaCape Lookout North Carolina, A little weak, but still fierce, Hurricane Irene struck the North Carolina coast Saturday morning, drenching the coast and make an ominous north up the Atlantic coast in March.

The huge category 1 hurricane made landfall near Cape Lookout around 7:30 am, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph beating sand and water in all directions. A nasty right hook Irene prepared Kitty Hawk.

Tens of thousands of people in North Carolina were without electricity as damage reports started filtering in.

About 190,000 Progress Energy customers were without power, said company spokesman Lauren Bradford. Gusts of wind will affect restoration efforts, including teams tripled, he said.

Ocracoke close in the extreme south of the Outer Banks, a couple hundred residents weather the storm was without power Saturday morning. Its power lines strung along poles mounted on the highest dunes.

“The power is gone forever around 5 am,” said Clayton Gaskill, who had been trying to keep the radio station of the small island, WOVV, running all night. “We will be back on the air until the storm passes because there is no refuge for portable generators,” he said in a text message to CNN.

In Atlantic Beach, did not feel the full force of the storm, a hotel and ripped off the face of a pier that goes into the raging sea. Walls of water welling came to earth, flooding roads oceanfront.

Hurricanes tend to weaken over land, but the first objective of U.S. Irene, splinters of the islands of North Carolina in the Atlantic, surrounded by water swamps and Irene is expected to continue beating with hurricane force.

The National Hurricane Center said the storm surge could push extremely dangerous water levels up to 9 meters in some parts of North Carolina. He also warned of the possibility of tornadoes touching down.

To the north in his career, Irene is expected to cause problems all the way to Boston this weekend. Parts of New York, including lower Manhattan sea level, prepared for a great flood.

From 8 am Saturday morning, Hurricane Irene was located about 5 miles north of Cape Lookout. It was moving northeast at 14 mph, National Hurricane Center.

A sea surge of up to 11 meters is possible in the North Carolina coast, tearing up beaches, and probably damaging homes, businesses and other structures before the storm slides up the east coast of New England, said Bill Read, director of the Hurricane Center.

A storm surge also raise water levels 4 to 8 feet above ground level in areas stretching from North Carolina and Virginia border to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“The increase will be accompanied by large waves, destructive and deadly,” said National Hurricane Center.

Irene could shed a total of 6 to 10 inches of rain in eastern North Carolina to western New England and up to 15 inches of rain in isolated areas, the meteorological agency said.

The storm could complicate the blowout heavy rainwater from the Atlantic to the ground.

Ernie Seneca, a spokesman for North Carolina, said authorities are concerned about the “entire eastern half of the state.”

“This hurricane could affect an area that includes 20 counties and 3.5 million,” he said.

Mandatory evacuation orders were in effect in 19 counties of North Carolina, said Julia Jarema, spokeswoman for the Center for North Carolina Emergency Management.

The governors of Delaware, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey declared states of emergency as Irene threatened to wreak havoc along the east coast. Emergency declarations allow states to free funds and develop resources that may be needed.

The last major hurricane to strike the United States was Wilma in 2005, which reached category three at landfall in southwest Florida.

City of New York issued an unprecedented mandatory evacuation, which covers the lower parts of the five boroughs. About 250,000 people are affected.

“The low-lying coastal areas that are most endangered by the storm surge include Coney Island and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn, Far Rockaway and Broad Channel in Queens, South Beach, Midland Beach, and other low lying areas in Staten Island, Battery Park City Manhattan, and some small sections of the Bronx, “said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“We’ve never done a mandatory evacuation before, and would not be doing this if I do not think the storm has the potential to be very serious.”

The order meant five hospitals in the city of New York had to evacuate patients.

Rashida Mungin, a nurse at NYU Langone Medical Center, and colleagues worked nonstop on Friday to help patients travel to hospitals outside the flood zone.

“(Intensive Care) and neonatal patients priority – were moved first,” he said.

Mungin said nurses recalled the terrible story of New Orleans, hospital patients get caught in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – and wanted to avoid a similar situation.

“Better to be prepared,” he said.

Irene current track could make the most destructive hurricane to strike New York since 1938.

Authorities warned of widespread power outages and prolonged floods and storms that could flood low-lying communities and possibly flood the subway system.

The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority will turn off your system at noon Saturday, and five airports in the metropolitan New York close to arriving flights at noon on Saturday.

New Jersey Transit will close at noon on Saturday and the Philadelphia transit system in the service stops at 12:30 am Sunday. Boston said the intention of maintaining its operating system.

Several airlines canceled flights to and from the region since Saturday, as American Airlines, AirTran Airways, JetBlue Airways, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines. U.S. Airways is planning “a significant reduction in flight schedule” in a number of airports.

The storm also forced the cancellation of concerts, sporting events, and in New York, all the shows this weekend on Broadway.

President Obama issued a statement from Friday morning, Martha’s Vineyard.

Good morning everyone. I want to say a few words about Hurricane Irene, urging Americans to take seriously, and provide an overview of current federal arrangements so is likely to be an extremely dangerous storm and costly.

I just hold a conference call with senior members of my team of emergency response and addressed to ensure that we are all federal resources to carry and deploy properly to deal not only with the storm, but also its consequences. I have also spoken this morning with the governors and mayors of major metropolitan areas along the Eastern Seaboard to know that this government is in support of their efforts to prepare for the storm and am ready to fully support the response efforts. We will continue to stay in close contact with them.

I cannot emphasize this enough: If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now. Do not wait. Do not delay. All hope for the best, but we must be prepared for the worst. We must all take seriously this storm. You have to listen to their state and local officials, and if given an evacuation order, please follow it. Just to underline this point: We ordered a carrier group at sea to avoid the storm yesterday. So if you’re in the path of this hurricane, you should prepare now.

If you are unsure of how to prepare your family or your home or business for a hurricane or other emergency, you can visit Ready.gov – that’s Ready.gov – or Listo.gov. That’s Listo.gov.

Now, since last week, FEMA has deployed its support teams Incident Management parking areas in communities up and down the coast. FEMA has millions of gallons of water, millions of meals, and tens of thousands of cots and blankets, along with other materials, pre-positioned along the east coast. And the American Red Cross has already begun preparing shelters in North Carolina and other states.

These resources are coordinated with state and local partners, and they are ready to be deployed if necessary. But again, if you are told to evacuate, do so. It will take time for rescuers to begin rescue operations and to obtain the resources that we have pre-positioned people in need. So the more you can do to prepare now – make a plan, make a kit, know your evacuation route, follow the instructions of local officials – the faster we can focus our resources after the storm to those who need help the most.

In summary, all indications are that this is a historic hurricane. Although we cannot predict with certainty the impact of Irene in the coming days, the federal government has spent most of last week working closely with officials from communities that could be affected by this storm to see what we are prepared. So now is the time for the residents of these communities – in the hour’s left – to do the same. And FEMA and Craig Fugate, director of FEMA, will keep people posted about the next 24, 48 hours.

Thank you very much.

President Obama and his family left the Martha’s Vineyard Friday night, ahead of the fury of Hurricane Irene, and returned to Washington.

Barack Obama President signed emergency declarations in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local effort.

The Federal Emergency Management “is authorized to identify, mobilize and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impact of the emergency,” the White House said in a statement.

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