New Yorkers faced a hellish commute on Monday and millions of Americans throughout the northeastern U.S. were left in the dark and flooded
after Hurricane Irene battered the region before moving into Canada.
Downgraded to a tropical and then a post-tropical storm, Irene pelted eastern Canada with rain and 80-kph winds after killing 20 people in the United States. It cut power to 5 mln homes and businesses and choked towns with floodwaters.
New York subways and air travel at major airports were due to slowly regain service starting at 6 a.m. (1000 GMT) but there were expected to be delays and overcrowding. Most of the commuter rail services feeding the city from the north were out indefinitely.
Wall Street was largely unaffected as was Ground Zero, where the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is soon to be observed. Financial markets would be open for normal trading, but volume is expected to be low.
The National Tennis Center in Queens escaped serious damage and the U.S. Open was due to start on Monday as scheduled. A football game between the New York Giants and New York Jets was also due to go ahead on Monday evening at the Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey, despite forecasts that flooding in the state could get worse in the coming days.
Suburban New Jersey and rural Vermont were hit particularly hard. Both states were inundated with rain after an unusually wet summer season left the ground soaked and rivers swelled even before the storm rumbled through.
Many waterways were overflowing, prompting hundreds of evacuations, and some 40,000 to 50,000 people were without power. New Jersey Transit said most rail service would remain suspended until further notice, though some bus service would resume on a limited basis.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie urged people to stay home from work as the state recovered and pieced together its battered transit system.
Parts of upstate New York were still experiencing severe flooding and Governor Andrew Cuomo urged residents of affected areas to follow the directions of emergency officials.
It was not immediately clear how much Irene would cost, but in New Jersey alone the damage was expected in "the billions of dollars," Christie told NBC's "Meet the Press."
With thousands of homeowners enduring flooding there will be questions over whether insurance policies offer cover and whether the federal government's flood program can handle the claims. All this came at a time of austerity in Washington and in cash-strapped states.
New York City's 8.5 mln people are not used to hurricanes, but authorities took unprecedented steps to prepare, including ordering mandatory evacuations and a total shutdown of mass transit systems. That will have had a major economic impact.
FINANCIAL MARKETS
Many people who normally commute into Manhattan will find it extremely difficult to get to work on Monday, though financial markets were expected to open as normal, albeit with reduced volume.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there were no reports of deaths or injuries in the city, though there were some close calls. On Staten Island, firefighters with boats rescued more than 60 people including three babies from 21 homes flooded with 1.5 metres of water.
While it weakened before it hit New York, the swirling storm still packed a wallop, especially in districts such as the Rockaways peninsula, a low-lying strip of land exposed to the Atlantic Ocean on the southeastern flank of the city.
Four people were killed in Pennsylvania due to the hurricane, including two men killed by falling trees, a state official said. That brought to 20 the total number of people killed by the storm in addition to three killed in the Dominican Republic and one in Puerto Rico.
In North Carolina, where authorities confirmed at least six storm-related deaths, Governor Bev Perdue was expected to request a federal disaster declaration.
The storm dumped up to 20 cm of rain on the Washington region, but the capital avoided major damage.
After Irene, weather watchers were keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Jose, which formed near Bermuda.
This year has been one of the most extreme for weather in U.S. history, with $35 bln in losses so far from floods, tornadoes and heat waves.
