Sebastian Smith, AAP
August 29, 2011, 3:30 am
•New York City shut down
Tropical Storm Irene has lashed New York, shutting down America's largest city but sparing it from serious damage.
Tropical storm Irene lashed New York on Sunday, shutting down America's largest city but sparing it serious damage after killing 14 people on the US east coast and flooding many parts of the region.
The eye of the storm - downgraded from a hurricane, but still blasting up to 105 km/h winds and near horizontal rain - passed over the Big Apple mid-morning, as millions went without power further down the coast.
Localised flooding occurred in the south and east of Manhattan, with more serious incidents in Brooklyn, where the famed Coney Island amusement park took a battering and outlying beaches were swamped.
There was particularly heavy flooding along the low-lying south shore of Long Island, where TV footage showed the high tide, rain and ocean surge drive waves right up against expensive beach houses.
At least 14 deaths have been blamed on Hurricane Irene, which slammed into North Carolina on Saturday with 140km/h winds and began tracking up the coast.
The youngest victim, an 11-year-old boy, died when a tree crashed through his apartment building in Newport News, Virginia. The latest were a woman motorist trapped in a New Jersey flash flood and a firefighter fatally injured during a rescue attempt.
Strong winds were expected in New York until nightfall Sunday as the weakening storm continued up towards Boston.
But the first hurricane to hit the Big Apple for a generation so far appeared to have generated more sound and fury than real damage.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, still smarting from criticism over the city's slow response last winter to a big snowstorm, had ordered extreme precautions, including shutting down the entire mass transport system on Saturday and ordering 370,000 people to evacuate their homes.
In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie ordered the evacuation of more than a million residents from beach communities.
New York subway trains, buses and the Staten Island ferry closed, as did all nearby airports, paralysing the area. The Holland Tunnel and part of the George Washington Bridge, connecting New York City to New Jersey, briefly closed on Sunday.
Aviation officials said New York's international airports would start to reopen on Monday afternoon.
American airlines, British Airways, Air France and other carriers have already called off many flights to and from Europe and Asia on Monday.
The New York Stock Exchange said it was set to reopen as normal on Monday morning, but city officials warned that commuting into New York could be a nightmare, with no immediate indication of when public transport will be back on track.
"The skies are looking up," top New York emergency official Joseph Bruno told CNN.
There were "a number of areas of the city that are inundated by some surge, some rain, but overall I think we've got through this."
Bruno said the precautions had been wise even if they may have turned out to be unnecessary.
"This storm is a historic storm, extremely dangerous, coming directly up at New York City... I'm the pessimist. That's my job."
"We have a lot of damage in the city. We have thousands of trees down, or limbs down. We have lots of debris. We have flooding."
The worst fear - of severe flooding in the financial district - turned out to be unfounded, but in addition to sea surge in beach communities, the torrential rain started floods far inland in rural areas.
In Brooklyn, which has a long, low coastline, some streets suffered substantial flooding and the few vehicles on the roads had to negotiate a growing number of downed tree branches.
The howling winds set off a number of car alarms and police patrolled the deserted streets.
While nearly all shops in the city of more than eight million people were closed, Sam Hamad decided to keep his corner store open. He reported brisk business selling New York bagels, coffee and basic groceries.
"This store is like my own home, so I decided to stay open, even though I had to drive half an hour from where I live to get here," he said.
In New York, more than 70,000 people woke without electricity, especially in the outer boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, power provider Con Edison said.
The worst outages were in the greater Washington area, where nearly two million people were without power.
Virginia's Governor Bob McDonnell told MSNBC his state had seen the second biggest power outage in its history. "It's going to be days, perhaps a week, before all the power's restored. We just ask people to be patient."
Some 65 million people live in the urban corridor from Washington north to Boston, and experts have said the damage could run into the tens of billions of dollars.
Hurricanes are rare in the northeastern United States - the last major hurricane to hit New York was Gloria in 1985.
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center reported that a new tropical storm, Jose, had formed and was approaching Bermuda.
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