IRENE Leaves Behind Massive Flooding; Claims 23 Lives

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From Coastline to Mountains, Water Fast and Lethal

In southern New Jersey, a 20-year-old woman called her boyfriend early Sunday to tell him that she was trapped in her car with water that was up to her neck. Then she called the police. Her body was found about eight hours later, still inside her car, which had been swept away during a flash flood on Route 40 in Salem County.

Farther north in the state, a postal inspector waded through a flooded road as he tried to get to the building in Kearny where he worked. He apparently stepped into an unseen drainage ditch and was sucked into 10 to 12 feet of flowing water, the Kearny police said. His body was found 100 yards from the entrance to the building.

Small towns across the Catskills, including Windham, Margaretville, Tannersville, Prattsville and many others suffered devastating floods with many downtowns underwater.

“We’ve been crushed up here,” said Shaun S. Groden, the administrator for Greene County, which includes some of the flooded towns. “We have major flash floods. We have bridges that have been blown out. We have people stranded, people who have gone up to the second floor of their homes.”

In New York City, Tropical Storm Irene’s winds did not come close to meeting expectations, which meant that there was no sea of shattered glass from Manhattan’s forest of high-rise buildings and no waves of water cascading across low-lying neighborhoods.

But the storm’s legacy — touching towns including Fairfield, Conn., and Fairfield, N.J., and rural hamlets in the mountains of upstate New York and as far north as Vermont — is likely to be an extraordinary onslaught of flooding that is still playing out as some rivers continue to rise in an already waterlogged region.

In Vermont, Gov. Peter Shumlin said the state had “a full-blown flooding catastrophe on our hands,” and the state police were urging residents in some particularly hard-hit communities to climb as high as they could in their homes.

While New York City was largely spared, another major urban area, Philadelphia, was not. The Schuylkill River, which runs through the city, reached 13.56 feet on Sunday, the level of moderate flooding. The record, 17 feet, was set in 1869. Floodwaters steadily crept up the main thoroughfare of the Manayunk neighborhood along the Schuylkill. “This is the highest we have ever seen it,” said one resident, Christiane Wuerzinger, 48, who has lived in the area for seven years. “My daughter said, ‘How will we get to CVS? Will we have to take a boat?’ It’s like Venice.”

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said that the state escaped major damage along the coast from the storm, but residents in low-lying areas near rivers and streams faced ominous threats in the coming days from serious inland flooding conditions, particularly along three major rivers, the Delaware, Ramapo and Passaic. The Ramapo, in particular, was expected to reach record levels.

“This storm is transitioning into a flooding event,” Mr. Christie said. “Some rivers have not crested yet.” And, as is often the case, long after the drama of wind-lashed shorelines has passed, residents far from the coast will be dealing with the effects of catastrophic flooding from the storm.

In Hoboken, N.J., people took to the streets to photograph their widely submerged city, including one group paddling a makeshift plywood raft past the brick row houses on Jefferson Street.

For some the flooding proved deadly.

Celena Sylvestri, 20, of Quinton, N.J., was driving to her boyfriend’s house early on Sunday on Route 40 in Salem County when she was caught in floodwaters. The car, with her body inside, was found about 50 feet into the woods off the road, the police said.

The drowning victim in Kearny, who apparently was also trying to escape from a submerged car, was identified as Ronald Dawkins, 47, a Postal Service supervisor.

For some people, flooding was a risk they had come to expect.

In Lindenhurst, Long Island, South Ninth Street is a short block bounded by a canal that leads to the Great South Bay on the south side.

Herb Otten, 73, a retired airline mechanic, said he had lived there for 33 years but was stunned by just how much flooding the storm caused.

“I never saw anything like this in my life,” Mr. Otten said. “White-capped water driving down the block starting from 6:30 to 7 a.m. this morning.”

For others, the flooding came as a total shock.

Mr. Groden, the Greene County, N.Y., administrator, said the National Guard was needed to rescue 21 people who had moved to the second floor of a hotel in Prattsville. After conditions were found to be too windy for a helicopter, the Guard used Humvees and other military vehicles.

“This was a flood of historic volume,” he said. “No one remembers anything like it before.”

Even in New York City, flooding led to moments of tension.

Mousa Tadrose, 44, who lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saybrook Street on Staten Island with his wife and two young sons, is a new immigrant from Egypt.

When he looked out his front door at about 7 a.m., it was raining and there was about a foot of water in the street. Within an hour, the water was up to his stomach.

“I suddenly saw a lot, a lot, a lot — the water is increasing, increasing, increasing,” Mr. Tadrose recalled. “So I go out to my neighbor’s near to me and I carry my two kids and my wife is walking through the water.”

From a neighbor’s house, they notified authorities and were evacuated by raft, Mr. Tadrose said.

For many people living in flood-prone areas, the worst is still to come, officials said.

Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said virtually all of the state’s rivers and streams were expected to reach record or near-record levels because of the combination of the storm and an unusually rainy August. Particularly worrisome spots, Mr. Ragonese said, included the Passaic Basin in areas including Pompton Lakes, Lincoln Park, Little Falls, Wayne and Paterson; the Delaware River at New Hope, Pa., Trenton and Lambertville; and the Raritan River Basin around Bound Brook.

“This is one of those cases where the storm is over,” he said, “but there’s still a lot more water coming.”


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IRENE Vs. Katrina & Obama Vs. G.W. Bush: Fewer Deaths Under Obama's Watch

Yesterday Pres. Obama Announced That His Administration Continues To Stand By Those Whose Lives Were Personally Impacted By IRENE's Wrath.

Whether The Mainstream Media Cares To Give Pres. Obama Proper Credit For How Well He Handled This Hurricane IRENE Crisis Doesn't Matter. The Entire World Took Notice Of How Well Pres. Obama Handled This Natural Disaster. Only 22 Lives Lost Versus 1,500+ Lives Lost Under G.W. Bush's Administration When Hurricane Katrina Hit. Excellent Work President Obama! God Bless!





Obama on Irene Invites Bush, Katrina Comparisons

“All indications point to this being a historic hurricane,” President Obama said in remarks about Hurricane Irene on Friday morning from his Martha’s Vineyard vacation.

He emphasized that coordination with local agencies has already begun. “Although we can’t predict with perfect certainty the impact of Irene over the next few days, the federal government has spent the better part of last week working closely with communities that could be affected by this storm to see to it that we are prepared.”

That’s what President Obama said publicly, and for a window into what the private briefings might look today and tomorrow, it’s worth looking back at video of President George W. Bush’s briefing with FEMA and National Hurricane Center officials less than a day before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. The Associated Press obtained video of that briefing six months after Katrina.

It was a Sunday morning, and President Bush tapped in via video conference from his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Then-FEMA Director Michael Brown was there, as was National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield.

"My gut was this was a bad one and a big one," Brown told the assembled group. "This is, to put it mildly, the big one I think."

Brown went on to express concerns about worst-case scenario plans to shelter residents at the SuperDome, questioning the soundness of its roof and noted the public health challenges of assembling so many people there.

National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield did his best to emphasize the massive scale of the potential devastation.

“I don’t think anyone can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield warned the group, the latest in a string of warnings he issued as Katrina neared the coast. The night before this briefing with the president, Mayfield had called the governors of Mississippi and Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans to emphasize his serious concerns. "I just wanted to be able to go to sleep that night knowing that I did all I could do," Mayfield later told the St. Petersburg Times.

The differences between Katrina and Irene are notable, of course. Katrina was a massive Category 5 hurricane, while Irene is currently a Category 2 and the National Hurricane Center does not expect it to grow in strength before it reaches the North Carolina coast Friday night. At this point, however, the hurricane’s pathway is predicted to follow along the entire northern east coast, with warnings stretching up the mid-Atlantic to New York City and Boston.

President Bush did not ask any questions during this Katrina briefing, but he told the group the federal government was "fully prepared."

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources assets we have at our disposal after the storm to help you deal with the loss of property, and we pray, for no loss of life of course.

What President Bush knew about Katrina’s potential impact, and when he knew it, later became a major political problem for President Bush.

“There is frustration,” President Bush told ABC News days later, when the full impact of Katrina’s devastation was becoming clear. “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

The AP later reported that it wasn’t until the day that Katrina was hitting that then-FEMA director Brown said that Bush had asked about reports of breaches, but Bush did not participate in that briefing.


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Northeast Better Prepared For Hurricane Irene Than South: Focused On People NOT Race!

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New York Wakes to Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene made its second landfall, this one early Sunday in southern New Jersey, as the storm continued its relentless push toward New York City.

Though the storm weakened as it moved up the Eastern Seaboard, it continued to funnel storm surge and floodwater to the Jersey Shore overnight, where the National Hurricane Center said the center of the storm crossed over land near Little Egg Inlet, north of Atlantic City, around 5:35 a.m. The storm’s maximum sustained winds are estimated to be 75 miles per hour, making it a weak category one hurricane.

The hurricane first came ashore Saturday morning near Cape Lookout, N.C., then slipped back over water farther north near Virginia and Maryland before hitting land again in New Jersey.

New York was the next major city in the hurricane’s path, and for much of the night, the metropolitian area was pounded with heavy rain and wind, causing power failures and flooding.

While New York had all but closed down in anticipation of what forecasters warned could be violent winds with the force to drive a wall of water over the beaches in the Rockaways and between the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, as of early Sunday morning, all bridges and tunnels remained open, with the exception of the lower level of the George Washington Bridge because of high winds, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Forecasters said the relentless rain from the slow-moving storm made it very dangerous.

“Even though they are saying that the storm is quote-unquote weakening, hurricane winds are hurricane winds,” John Searing, the deputy commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services, said before daybreak Sunday as he prepared to deal with the damage. “Whether they say it’s 80 miles or 75 miles an hour, what’s the physical difference in that?”

City officials warned that a big problem could be flooding at high tide, at about 8 a.m. Sunday — before the storm has moved on and the wind has slacked off. The storm is expected to pass through by Sunday afternoon, moving into southern New England.

“That is when you’ll see the water come over the side,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cautioned Saturday afternoon.

The National Hurricane Center warned that “water levels have been rising rapidly in advance of the center of Irene.” At 5 a.m., the center reported a storm surge of 3.1 feet at Cape May, N.J., 3.8 feet in Sandy Hook, N.J., and 3.9 feet in New York Harbor.

On the Jackie Robinson Parkway, three feet of water blocked all lanes, state and city officials reported. Floodwaters diverted traffic on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and shut the southbound F.D.R. drive at 116th Street. The Union Turnpike ramp on the Grand Central Parkway was shut, and on the Cross Bronx Expressway, the rising waters blocked the exit at White Plains Road.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the New York area had lost electricity by early Sunday morning — 150,338 on Long Island, according to the Long Island Power Authority, which shut power to Fire Island, Captree Island, Robert Moses, and Oak Island; 166,000 in New Jersey, according to Public Service Electric and Gas; and about 57,992 in the city and in Westchester County, according to Consolidated Edison. Of those, more than 8,400 were on Staten Island, according to utility’s Web site, and about 5,000 in Queens and Brooklyn.

Utilities in Connecticut reported about 70,000 customers are without power, according to The Associated Press. The Connecticut Light and Power Company reported nearly 60,000 customers were without power early Sunday, and United Illuminating, which serves the Bridgeport and New Haven area, reported 10,000 customers.

“The number of outages continues to climb as Hurricane Irene moves north,” the New Jersey utility said in a statement on its Web site.

Since Friday, the city had done more than issue warnings. The subway system, one of the city’s trademarks, had shut down in the middle of the day on Saturday, and firefighters and social service workers had spent much of Saturday trying to complete the evacuation of about 370,000 residents in low-lying areas where officials expected flooding to follow the storm. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said that more than a million people had been evacuated, mainly from four counties in the southern part of the state.

The storm, a wide and relentless mass that had had lurched onto the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the early daylight hours of Saturday, heaved clumsily but implacably north, leaving in its wake at least nine deaths. After crawling slowly from North Carolina into Virginia, the storm weaved out to sea and onto a path that forecasters said would take it to Long Island and New York City.

The storm was a spinning kaleidoscope of weather, sometimes pounding windows with rain, sometimes flashing the sky with lightning, sometimes blacking out the horizon with ominous, low-riding clouds. As the hurricane moved up the East Coast, tornado watches had moved right along with it, and that lockstep continued as the storm closed in on the New York area: early Sunday, the National Weather Service announced a tornado watch for the city, along with Westchester, Suffolk, Nassau and Rockland Counties. “It’s actually common when we have these tropical systems,” said Brian Ceimnecki, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.

The Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, said that “thousands” of people were spending the night in county facilities, including Nassau County Community College. He asked people in areas that were in danger to stay with friends or relatives, if possible.

The city opened 78 emergency shelters that could take in 70,000 people. But officials said that only 8,700 had arrived by 11 p.m. on Saturday. The only other statistics available pointed to the difficulty of getting people to abide by the mayor’s mandatory evacuation order in what the city calls Zone A low-lying areas: The mayor had said several hours earlier that 80 percent of the residents in some city-run buildings — but only 50 percent in others — had left.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops called up. Mr. Cuomo saw the first of them off from the 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, after saying they would assist the police, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He also said that some would be sent to Long Island, which could face heavy damage in the storm.

Mr. Christie said 1,500 National Guard troops had been deployed in New Jersey.

The mayor attributed one casualty to the storm, a 66-year-old man who fell from a ladder while trying to board up windows at his house in Jamaica, Queens, early in the day. A Fire Department spokesman said the man, who was not immediately identified, was in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

The mayor said police rescuers had pulled two kayakers from the water off Staten Island after their boats capsized. “When they were out there in spite of all the warnings, I don’t know,” the mayor said at his late-evening briefing, adding that they had been “kept afloat by lifejackets” they were wearing. He said they had been given summonses.

He also said that going out in the water as the storm approached was a “reckless” move that had “diverted badly-needed N.Y.P.D. resources.”

Mr. Bloomberg said the transit system was “unlikely to be back” in service on Monday. He said crews would have to pump water from tunnels if they flooded and restore the signal system before they could move the parked trains out. That would mean “the equipment’s not where you would want it” for the morning rush, he said. “Plan on a commute without mass transit on Monday morning.”

Mr. Bloomberg also said electricity could be knocked out in Lower Manhattan if Consolidated Edison shut off the power to pre-empt the problems that flooding could cause for its cables. (A Con Ed spokesman said later that the company, while prepared, had no immediate plans for that kind of shutdown.)


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New York Outsmarts/ Beats Irene! Bloomberg's Great Planning! 18 Deaths Thus Far

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Irene fails to wow New Yorkers

Tropical Storm Irene's swipe at the Big Apple proved Sunday that New Yorkers can be a tough crowd to impress.

"I slept through the whole thing," said James Trager, a writer who watched nature's display of fury as it took place outside the windows of his apartment in Midtown and gave a tepid review: "Nothing. It's exaggerated."

"I think we're all surprised how relatively quickly the storm blew through here and the rain stopped," said Steve Kastenbaum, a national correspondent for CNN radio, who watched the storm from the comfort of his apartment in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn.

He said he saw lots of local street flooding and branches in the streets, but few uprooted trees; during the height of the storm, people were walking on the street. "I even saw one or two folks taking a jog," he said. "I kid you not. Pretty typical for Brooklyn. They're not going to let anybody get in their way."

While the initial effects of the storm were less harsh than anticipated, officials said they were still concerned about flooding from heavy rains that could affect electrical systems and other infrastructure that is largely underground in New York.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was not yet clear when subways, Metro North trains and Long Island Railroad lines would reopen. "The conditions are still too dangerous. We can't put people on bridges; we can't put people in tunnels," he told CNN affiliate WCBS. "Once we get a full assessment, we will give people an idea of when the system will come online."

He praised New Yorkers for taking the storm in stride. "When we have our darkest hours, New Yorkers shine their brightest, and I think this is one of those times."

But the possibility of worse occurring away from the shore was weighing on National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read. "The biggest concern, now that (Irene's) gone inland, is heavy rain, flash floods" and wind damage, he told CNN. Once inland, hurricanes "start falling apart pretty fast," he said. "Eventually, it will exit out into Canada."

"Overall, I think we've gotten through this," Joseph Bruno, commissioner of emergency management for the city, told reporters in Brooklyn, where the skies were bright. He said the hardest-hit areas were from Coney Island in Brooklyn to the Rockaway area of Queens. "We have 50,000 people without power. That's pretty good in a city of this size. So, we did well, but we prepared well, also."

"Nothing really that bad happened," said Sarah Sargenti, who spent Saturday night in a friend's walkup apartment in Soho rather than risk getting stuck without elevator service in her 23rd-floor apartment near the financial district. "A lot of wind and rain."

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, a CNN contributor who was involved in a leadership role in the recovery efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, described Sunday's hurricane as a six out of 10, with 10 representing Katrina.

About 30 miles north of the city, in Westchester County's Sleepy Hollow, near the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson, Tom Sobolik was out early Sunday at the Philipse Manor Beach Club.

Though the bridge was shut to traffic, "the boats here are all fine," the photographer said. "Nobody had any problem."

On Saturday night, he attended a hurricane party in his neighborhood to discuss the brewing storm. "Everybody just went over how they prepared and how it was going to be a waste," he said. "It turned out to be largely true. The media blew this all out of proportion."

It did not flood the 9/11 memorial site in Manhattan, as many had worried it might.

Still, the storm left quite a wake -- sending water from the East River and the Hudson River over their banks for a brief period on Sunday morning and into New York City.

The water also led officials to close for a brief time the north tube of the Holland Tunnel, from Lower Manhattan to New Jersey.

Earlier, authorities had halted public transportation, closed bridges and tunnels and buttoned up ports, essentially locking down the city of more than 8 million people as Hurricane Irene began to lash the city with wind and rain.

And New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged some 370,000 people to evacuate their residences in low-lying areas.

In the Long Island community of Long Beach, massive berms were breached by 8 a.m., with water pushing northward into town. The water yanked a lifeguard building from its foundation on the beach and streets were flooded.

Bloomberg ordered evacuations for Long Beach Island, including Atlantic Beach, Lido Beach and Point Lookout.

The mandatory evacuations, which also affected parts of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island, were a first in the city's history, he said.

CNN iReporter and Queens resident Anne Egan, who was watching events unfold from her house three doors down from the beach wall, said she disregarded the evacuation order because she was afraid of looters. "You can see the waves breaking on (the beach wall)," she said. "I was a little panicked approaching high tide, which was about 7:30 a.m. But now that the peak of high tide has passed us, I'm not as nervous. The waves are just huge out there."

More than 905,334 people were without power in New York early Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

In Brooklyn, Seunh Hong watched in despair as the water in his shop's basement rose to his knees.

"Way worse than I'd expected," he said. "It is absolutely horrible. Afterwards we have to spend lot of time and money, (and) energy for fixing them up."

Many in New York began preparing days ago for the arrival of Irene, stocking up on essentials.

By late Saturday, most stores, restaurants and bars were closed.

The bread shelves were bare early Sunday at the Associated Supermarket on Manhattan's Upper West Side, according to Aaron Herman, who said more than 1,000 people had stopped in Saturday to buy the "essentials."

By then, the streets were largely deserted. "For a city that never sleeps, it's clearly taking a nap," Herman said.




Irene charges into New England, NYC escapes worst



Irene charged into New England on Sunday as it weakened to a tropical storm after racing across a shuttered New York City and leaving behind a stunned U.S. East coast where at least 18 people died, severe flooding was widespread and 4 million homes and businesses lost power.

As waves continued pounding the Connecticut shore east of America's biggest city, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lifted the evacuation order for residents in low-lying areas.

New England residents were now feeling the brunt of the diminished but still-dangerous storm, which will cause flooding and winds that could topple many towering trees anchored in soil already saturated by earlier heavy rains. The storm was centered about 65 miles south of Rutland, Vermont at about 5 p.m. EDT, and it was moving north-northeast at about 26 mph.

Forecasters expect it to reach Canada later Sunday or early Monday. Irene, while diminished in strength, was still massive and powerful, carrying sustained winds of 50 mph after its long journey up the East Coast, where it dropped a foot of rain on North Carolina and Virginia. The National Hurricane Center downgraded the storm after its winds fell below 74 mph, the threshold for a hurricane.

As the eye of the sprawling storm blew through America's largest city and Long Island to the east, it pushed an 8-foot Atlantic storm surge toward New York and sent salty floodwater flowing into lower Manhattan.

As of 10:30 a.m., more than 900,000 homes and businesses in New York state were without power, authorities said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said President Barack Obama was briefed Sunday morning and instructed administration officials to continue to be aggressive in their efforts to deal with the storm and its aftermath. Napolitano said the worst of the storm has passed for most areas, but she cautioned communities still in Irene's path should continue to be vigilant even though the storm had weakened.

She told a news conference that pre-storm preparations dramatically reduced the loss of life but warned that river flooding across the eastern seaboard continued to pose hazards for the public.

65 million people affected

Forecasters said early Sunday that Irene was moving to the north-northeast at 26 mph as it pushed into New England. Officials also warned that isolated tornadoes were possible in the northeast.

The huge storm had threatened 65 million people up and down the Atlantic coast, estimated as the largest number of Americans ever affected by a single storm.

The 18 deaths related to Irene included two children, an 11-year-old boy in Virginia killed when a tree crashed into his home and a North Carolina child who died in a car crash at an intersection where traffic lights were out. Four other people were killed by falling trees or tree limbs — two in separate Virginia incidents, one in North Carolina and one in Maryland. A surfer and another beach-goer in Florida were killed in heavy waves.

The latest fatalities were reported in Pennsylvania.

In Vermont a woman was swept away by the Deerfield River, and is presumed dead, though no body has been found, according to the Burlington Free Press.

A New Jersey firefighter was in critical condition after injuries sustained when he was attempting a water rescue. New Jersey's Gov. Christie stated at a press briefing that the first responder had died. His office said later that the governor had received erroneous information.

Recovery mode

New York City was eerily quiet. In a city where many people don't own cars, the population stayed indoors. The entire transit system was shut down because of weather for the first time ever. All of the city's airports were closed. Broadway shows, baseball games and other events were all canceled or postponed.

But in a briefing Sunday afternoon, Mayor Michael Bloomberg indicated that the city was moving into recovery mode.

He said there were no known deaths or injuries caused by Irene in New York City.

"The good news is the worst is over," Bloomberg said.

"As we anticipated, the storm surge has caused serious flooding across the five boroughs, including here in Lower Manhattan, where the East and Hudson Rivers are flowing over their banks and into the parks and low-lying streets at the water's edge," said Bloomberg. "We did have substantial erosion at the Staten Island beaches and in the Rockaways, where the waves breached 94th Street between 127th and 132nd Streets."

He said the city government would reopen on Monday, despite some damage to city government buildings. The stock exchange and other financial institutions are slated to reopen on time Monday morning as well.

For many people, however, getting to work would remain a problem until the subway and other transit systems were back up and running.

Bloomberg praised the residents of New York for their cooperation in the face of the hurricane. Despite dire predictions, he said there were just 45 arrests overnight, compared to an average of 345 on a normal Saturday night in the city.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the storm covered half of the state and 250 roads were closed due to flooding and downed trees.

Christie said he expects damages from Irene to be costly along the Atlantic coast and from inland river flooding.

"I've got to imagine that the damage estimates are going to be in the billions of dollars, if not in the tens of billions of dollars," Christie said.

Newspaper stands float down NYC streets

Briny water from New York Harbor submerged parts of a promenade at the base of 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.

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

As the center of the storm passed over Central Park at midmorning, floodwater reached the wheel wells of some stranded cars in Manhattan, and more streamed into the streets of Queens.

Still, the storm didn't come close to inflicting the kind of catastrophic damage that had been feared in the city. 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.

Forecasters had said there was a chance a storm surge on the fringes of Lower Manhattan along New York Harbor could send sea water streaming into the maze of underground vaults that hold the city's cables and pipes, knocking out power to thousands and crippling the city. Officials' feared water would slosh into Wall Street, the ground zero location of the former Twin Towers and the luxury high-rise apartments of Battery Park City.

Battery Park City in the extreme south of Manhattan island was virtually deserted as rain and gusty winds pummeled streets and whipped trees. Officials were bracing for a storm surge of several feet that could flood or submerge the Promenade along the Hudson River. On Wall Street, sandbags were placed around subway grates near the East River because of fear of flooding.

In Times Square, shops boarded up windows and sandbags were stacked outside of stores. Construction at the World Trade Center site came to a standstill.

Some cabs still on streets

While public transit was shut down, some taxi cabs could be found.

"I have to work. I would lose too much money," said cabbie Dwane Imame, who worked through the night. "There have been many people, I have been surprised. They are crazy to be out in this weather."

In New York City, 370,000 people had been ordered to move to safer ground, although they appeared in great numbers to have stayed put.

"It's nasty out there and wet," Cindy Darcy said from a 36-floor building facing the harbor. "We unplugged the drains, and we fastened anything loose or removed it." She was up early making bagels for the nine workers and 24 inhabitants who stayed in the building, which is in the evacuation zone.

New York has seen only a few hurricanes in the past 200 years. The Northeast is much more accustomed to snowstorms — including a blizzard last December, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg was criticized for a slow city response.

Irene made landfall just after dawn Saturday near Cape Lookout, North Carolina, at the southern end of the Outer Banks. Shorefront hotels and houses were lashed with waves, two piers were destroyed and at least one hospital was forced to run on generator power.

More than 10,000 flights have been canceled through Monday, according to FlightAware. That includes some 6,600 on Sunday alone. The number of airline passengers affected by the storm could easily be in the millions because so many flights make connections on the East Coast.

Amtrak, the nation's only long haul passenger rail service, canceled all Northeast trains for Sunday.

Irene caused flooding from North Carolina to Delaware, both from the 7-foot waves it pushed into the coast and from heavy rain.

More than one million of the homes and businesses without power were in Virginia and North Carolina, which bore the brunt of Irene's initial fury. Then the storm knocked out power overnight to hundreds of thousands in Washington, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the New York City area and Connecticut.
Readers capture Hurricane Irene's approach

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 and the Gulf Coast.

In New Jersey, the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, just a few miles from the coast, shut down as a precaution as Irene closed in. And Boston's transit authority said all bus, subway and commuter rail service were suspended Sunday.

NBC News reports that two homes had collapsed in Fairfield, Conn., according to Fairfield Police Dept. spokeswoman Suzanne Lussier.

There was an evacuation order put in place for this part of Connecticut but not all people heeded the orders and left, she said. Rescue teams were checking the homes for people.

In addition, there are currently 12,000 people without power in Fairfield alone and 70 people are in shelters

Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Craig Fugate told NBC's "Meet the Press" and other news shows on Sunday that people shouldn't underestimate the danger once Hurricane Irene passes.

Flooding, weakened trees and downed power lines pose a danger even after the storm moves north up the Atlantic Coast, Fugate said.

He urged not to drive around and sight see after the storm had passed through their areas. His advice: Stay inside, stay off the roads, and let the power crews do their job.


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Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Meet The Press, NY Daily News, Google Maps

Obama's 2012 Re-election Team Helping Him To Lose? Horrible At Organizing! New Blood Needed!

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Obama’s Team Is Blowing It

We were told, as I recall, that Barack Obama had to seek a debt deal with the Republicans to please independent voters. Well, the independent voters are speaking, and they don’t appear to be especially appeased. There’s a new Gallup poll just out showing that independent voters hate the deal. Their views on it are far more similar to the GOP’s than to the Democratic Party’s. Combine these data with the president’s approval numbers, which are swiftly heading south, and we have little choice but to conclude that this brilliant stratagem backfired. Isn’t it time for someone to say: this new White House political team is worse than the previous one?

First let me run you through the numbers. Americans disapprove of the deal by 46 to 39 percent. Democrats support it 58-28. Republicans oppose it 26-64. Independents oppose it 33-50. A second question asked of respondents: Was the deal a step forward or backward or neither with respect to “addressing the federal debt situation?” Democrats lined up 30-14-50. Republicans, 15-28-52. Independents, 16-25-50. Finally, independents also align more closely with Republicans on the question of whether the deal will have a good or bad effect on the economy. Whereas 29 percent of Democrats think the effect will be good, just 12 percent of independents and 8 percent of Republicans believe that.

The White House strategy failed, and it failed pretty spectacularly. It reminds me that I’m hard pressed to think of a White House strategy that hasn’t failed in the last several months. The springtime budget negotiation, the one where a government shutdown was narrowly averted and Obama bragged about overseeing the biggest single-year domestic spending cut in history, was a failure too; a success, one supposes, in the sense that the government did not shut down, but another situation in which Obama’s back was pressed to the wall by congressional Republicans.

Let’s see, what else? The immigration speech from May? What, you don’t even remember it? If it was at least partly intended as a sop to Latino voters before the campaign really revs up, it seems to have left them largely unmoved—Obama is below 50 percent with Latinos in some surveys. OK, how about the more recent Midwestern jobs swing? Probably did no damage, but certainly did no good. The Vineyard vacation? I don’t begrudge the man a little R and R, and maybe it’s a small thing, but that destination—a bad symbol, Martha’s Vineyard. He might as well have gone to California wine country. Last I checked, there are golf courses aplenty to be found in North Carolina, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

When David Axelrod left to go to the campaign office in Chicago, and Rahm Emanuel left to become mayor, the spin was that David Plouffe and Bill Daley, their respective replacements, would, if nothing else, bring fresh and unwearied perspectives to these admittedly grueling and thankless jobs. But they appear to have given Obama bad advice at nearly every turn. Plouffe, from what I can see, just looks to be in over his head in this job. He was a whiz at organizing a campaign field network. But this is a different game.

The fundamental problem appears to be the excessive fixation on Obama’s (forgive me for even using this word) “brand”—this “adult in the room” nonsense. Whenever I see those words in print anymore, usually in a background quote from a White House aide or a Democratic source trying gamely to be on-message, I hear strong and unsettling echoes of the 2008-vintage messianism. Does anyone buy this anymore, outside of what appears to be an increasingly bubble-ized White House? Those beloved independents certainly aren’t thinking of the president that way these days, and one doubts that even most of his supporters are.

Obama’s brand is and has by now long been determined by events and facts, not by White House spin and set pieces, or by vestigial remnants of the Days of Hope. Those events and facts are almost uniformly grim (except Libya, whose political gains will be fleeting or perhaps nonexistent). Adults get credit when the household is running smoothly and the kids are well behaved and pulling good grades. With none of those things happening, the adult in the room is precisely the last thing to want to be. But they refuse to change gears.

Watching this White House over these last several weeks has been like watching a time-lapse video of an apple rotting. We’re supposed to believe now that the jobs plan to be announced next month will change everything. Maybe. But what needs to change is the way the White House approaches politics. To what? To a simple, blunt, and deeply real-world truth: He’s not nearly as bad as the other guys, who are crazy. That’s all he’s got. That’s his “brand” now. If his people keep insisting on trying to package him the way they did three years ago, he won’t have even that.


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Sources: Daily Beast, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Vs. 2012 Tea Party Selected GOP Candidate: Obama Wins!

Obama in Close Race Against Romney, Perry, Bachmann, Paul

President Barack Obama is closely matched against each of four possible Republican opponents when registered voters are asked whom they would support if the 2012 presidential election were held today. Mitt Romney leads Obama by two percentage points, 48% to 46%, Rick Perry and Obama are tied at 47%, and Obama edges out Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann by two and four points, respectively.

These prospective election ballots -- measured Aug. 17-18, well over a year before the Nov. 6, 2012, election -- indicate that the race for president at this point is generally competitive, with voters fairly evenly divided in their preference for giving Obama a second term or electing a Republican candidate. Even though the four Republican candidates tested have varying degrees of name recognition, they all fare roughly the same.

Gallup's generic presidential ballot -- measured six times this year -- shows a close race between Obama and a generic "Republican presidential candidate," although there have been survey-to-survey variations on this measure, with the Republican candidate leading in June and July.



President Obama's job approval rating is hovering around the 40% mark. This is below the rating that any of the six incumbent presidents re-elected since Eisenhower has had at the time of the presidential election.

However, in August of the year before they were re-elected, Ronald Reagan (43%) and Bill Clinton (46%) were both below 50%. Obama's position of rough parity against leading GOP candidates shows that more Americans at the moment say they would vote for Obama than approve of the job he is doing -- perhaps a reflection of the continuing lack of a strong front-runner on the Republican side.

With the first official votes for the Republican nomination more than five months away, and with the very real possibility that GOP candidates such as Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and George Pataki may jump into the race, much could still change as the election process unfolds. A look at presidential election trial heats conducted in the late summer of the year before previous elections reveals that such change is quite common:

In August 1999, Texas Gov. George W. Bush led Vice President Al Gore by 55% to 41% in a Gallup trial heat poll. That race ended up in a virtual dead heat, with Gore ultimately winning slightly more of the national popular vote than Bush.

In August 1995, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole was slightly ahead of President Bill Clinton in a Gallup poll, 48% to 46%. On Election Day 1996, Clinton beat Dole by eight points.
In August 1983, President Ronald Reagan was ahead of Democrat Walter Mondale by only one point, 44% to 43%. Reagan went on to beat Mondale in a 59% to 41% landslide in the November 1984 election.

In August 1979, incumbent President Jimmy Carter was tied with former California Gov. Reagan -- each getting 45% of the vote. Reagan ultimately defeated Carter by 10 points.

Voters Favor Their Party, but Republicans Lend Less Support to Bachmann, Paul

Democratic and Republican registered voters display strong allegiance for their party's candidate across these election match-ups. Democrats are the most consistent, voting for Obama to about the same degree regardless of who the GOP candidate is.

Republicans exhibit a little more variation, giving their strongest support to Perry (92% would vote for him) and Romney (91%), weaker support to Bachmann (86%), and the weakest support to Paul (82%). Independents tilt at least slightly toward voting for Romney, Perry, and Paul against Obama, while tilting slightly toward Obama when he is pitted against Bachmannn.


Bottom Line

President Obama is at the moment in a rough parity position when registered voters are asked whether they would vote for him in election matchups against four potential Republican candidates. Romney fares slightly better than the other GOP candidates, and Bachmann slightly worse, but these are not large differences. Gallup research shows that these types of election measures at this stage in the campaign are not highly stable, and one can expect changes in the relative positioning of Obama and various GOP candidates in the months ahead.




The Tea Party Will Select the GOP's 2012 Nominee

The tea party movement is the driving force in American politics.

In every aspect of our politics — both in campaigns, in state Houses and up on Capitol Hill — the tea party movement is reshaping the debate on debt and the role and scope of government.

This grass-roots, bottom-up movement completely dominated the 2010 GOP senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial primaries — and won almost every contested GOP race. Even long-time conservative senators were defeated in GOP conventions and primaries because, in the eyes of the tea party, they were “too liberal” on fiscal issues.

But not every tea party GOP nominee won their general election races. The two most notable losers of races that a better GOP candidate would probably have won were Delaware (Christine O’Donnell) and Nevada (Sharron Angle).

With the power of the tea party movement in mind, the best way to analyze the 2012 GOP presidential field is through a tea party prism. No candidate is going to be the 2012 GOP nominee unless the tea party embraces him or her.

Thus, we can begin to eliminate candidates who are unacceptable to the tea party movement:
Mitt Romney has gone out of his way to distance himself from tea partyers; his Romneycare health bill dooms him.

Haley Barbour was a two-decade long inside-the-Beltway lobbyist; the tea party abhors lobbyists, insiders, and those who have lived off the political system.
Jon Huntsman — who, you ask? — can forget it. Known in Utah as a “liberal” Republican who then served as Obama’s ambassador to China cannot win the support of the tea party.

Newt Gingrich? Too self-promoting, too many marriages, too mouthy, and he has no credibility.

Donald Trump? While many agree with his China rhetoric, he is un-electable. He cannot survive serious scrutiny. But, before that happens, he does excite tea partyers with his “outsider” image — it is indeed just an image. Trump has played footsie with long-time Democrat incumbents and funded their campaigns. The tea party doesn’t know that yet, but they will. And they will not embrace him.

Forget the other also-rans, too, like Rick Santorum and Rudy Giuliani. No one digs them at all. They are yesterday’s news.

OK, so who can be the darling of the tea party movement, but not necessarily someone who can win the general election?

Today, they are focusing on Michelle Bachmann, who senses that there is no one else right now who excites the tea party. They have loved Sarah Palin — and still might if she runs. But her recent absence from the scene has opened up the way for others. Bachmann is just Palin 2.0.

Tim Pawlenty is trying to be all things to all people. He’s trying to have one foot in the GOP establishment camp and the other foot in the tea party camp. The problem is that when you try to be all things to all people, you often end up being nothing to anybody. Pawlenty is also boring, which is a fatal problem in the era of TV in politics.

Gov. Mitch Daniels is dithering about running. He has a tea party-friendly economic story to tell, but he appears to lack the fire in the belly for this 2012 race.
Huckabee is still very much alive as a candidate — although rumors abound that he is not going to run because he’s making a ton of dough on TV — and he appeals to Evangelicals and to some tea partyers, but not all. He is the front-runner right now, but a weak one.

Ron Paul is more of a libertarian than a tea partyer, but he does have strong, devoted supporters. He is a good man, but he will not be the GOP nominee or the tea party candidate.

Conclusion: the tea party will select the 2012 GOP nominee. That is not to say that candidate will win the White House. For example, Michele Bachmann could be the Christine O’Donnell/Sharron Angle of the 2012 GOP presidential race: she might win the support of the tea party movement, but she is un-electable in the general election because independent voters will not vote for her.

We on the right have a big problem: we have no one running (yet) who can win both the support of the tea party and can then win over the crucial independent voters in the fall of 2012.

Obama can be beaten, but only if the exact right kind of candidate runs against him.

So we have to keep looking for just such a candidate.


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Sources: Gallup.com, MSNBC, NewsMax, Youtube, Google Maps

Gadhafi Surrounded In Tripoli Claims Minister! Countdown To His Capture & Trial! Loyalists Too!

Libyan Minister: Gaddafi Surrounded

A minister in Libya's National Transitional Council said on Friday rebel forces were surrounding an area of Tripoli where Muammar Gaddafi and his entourage were hiding and were monitoring their presence before attempting to capture them.

"The area where he is now is under siege," Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi told Reuters. "The rebels are monitoring the area and they are dealing with it."

Alagi, a lawyer who said he had come to Tripoli to establish the new "legal authority" declined to specify where Gaddafi was.

Other rebel officials have said they believe the fallen strongman has taken refuge in the Abu Salim area in the south of the capital -- an area that saw clashes in recent days.
Rebel fighters have said earlier this week that they thought they had Gaddafi cornered but these reports have turned out to be inaccurate, or at least premature.






Rebels in Libya work to rub out loyalist pockets

Opposition and NATO forces took aim at the Gadhafi regime in Tripoli and Sirte on Friday as rebels worked to consolidate their power across strife-torn Libya.

British warplanes pounded a "large headquarters bunker" overnight in Moammar Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte, the UK Defence Ministry said on Friday. Tornado aircraft fired a salvo of precision-guided missiles into the city, east of Tripoli on the central coast.

The opposition says its forces made late gains on Thursday as it closed in on Sirte, and clashes flared on Friday in that region, considered by fighters as a hot war zone.

Tornado aircraft destroyed one of Gadhafi's "few remaining long range surface to air missile systems, near Al Watiyah, close to the Tunisian border on Thursday, the ministry said.

The ministry said Tornados and Typhoons destroyed a loyalist-held command and control site in the Tripoli area, also on Thursday. Britain is part of NATO's mission to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the protection of Libyan people against Gadhafi regime forces.

As for the airport, rebels said they controlled the facility, but were struggling to secure an area east of it controlled by Gadhafi loyalists.

They claim Gadhafi loyalists have been indiscriminately shelling the airport from a civilian village east of the facility in an effort to repel the advance of rebel forces. Rebels say they are cautious in their response to the incoming fire because of the civilian casualties.

One aircraft burned as loyalists resumed mortar and Grad rocket shelling of the airport, according to a CNN team that witnessed the attack.

This comes amid world concerns over revenge killings by rebels and loyalists.

Amnesty International has gathered accounts from survivors of abuse in Zawiya by pro-Gadhafi soldiers and rebel forces. It also issued a report on Friday about the killings of detainees in Tripoli by Gadhafi loyalists.

Evidence emerged of executions in the battle for Tripoli.

A dozen bodies, with their hands bound behind them, were discovered near Gadhafi's compound in Tripoli where fierce fighting erupted Thursday.

Rebels at the scene told CNN they had been executed by Gadhafi's men, but it was not immediately clear. The victims were black Africans, who composed a large part of Gadhafi's army.

The discovery of the bodies came a day after a doctor at a Tripoli hospital told CNN that he had examined a number of dead rebels who appeared to have been executed with a bullet to the head.

On the political front, the opposition National Transitional Council has announced it is moving its political base to Tripoli from its strong in Benghazi in eastern Libya.

Libya's rebel leadership on Friday pleaded urgently with the United States and other countries to unfreeze billions of dollars, saying the funds are vital to establish peace and stability in the nation.

"Our friends throughout the world are talking about the procedures needed to bring back peace and stability," Mahmoud Jibril, a senior NTC leader, told reporters at an international conference in Turkey. But we cannot do that unless we can fulfill our duties."

His call for funds came a day after the U.N. Security Council's sanctions committee approved a U.S. request to free up $1.5 billion of the at least $100 billion in Libyan assets frozen at the start of the war.

The National Transitional Council has been recognized by nations and alliances across the globe. The Peace and Security Council of the African Union failed to do so at a Friday meeting.

Neverthless, the council issued a communique that urged the "formation of an inclusive transitional government."

It called for the "establishment of a constitutional and legislative framework for the democratic transformation of Libya, as well as for support towards the organization of elections and the national reconciliation process."

It encouraged "the Libyan stakeholders to accelerate the process leading to the formation of an all-inclusive transitional government that would be welcome to occupy the seat of Libya in the AU, which represents countries across Africa.


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Sources: Al Jazeera News, CNN, Daily Beast, PBS News, Youtube, Google Maps