Hurricane Irene Slams East Coast

Analysis

Hurricane Irene Slams East Coast

Aileen Evans - September 22, 2011

The story of the warnings of Irene, to the damages Irene had on the east coast.

The Warnings—Hurricane Irene was formed on August 20th, 2011. When it was formed people were talking about how this was the storm of the century, they were worried about the size of Irene. Normal Hurricanes are about 300 miles wide, but Irene was almost twice that.

“You only have to look at the weather maps to understand how big this storm is and how unique it is,” said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news conference.

They also had to worry about the strength of Irene because she was growing quickly. At the strongest point of the storm Irene was a Category 3 storm but there was talk of Irene growing to a Category 4 hurricane by Thursday August 25. But the worst of the storm stayed at a Category 3.

Hurricanes warnings were issued from North Carolina to New York. 2.3 million people were advised to evacuate, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia, 100,000 in Delaware, 1 million in New Jersey, and 315,000 in Maryland.

Everyone tried to stress the importance of listening to the warnings and following them was. Like President Barack Obama warned, “Don’t wait. Don’t delay. I cannot stress this highly enough: If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now.”

It was hard for many New Yorkers to leave because most of them don’t own a car and the subway system was going to shut down for the first time ever due to a natural disaster. The same thing happened with their main airports.

On Friday the 23rd New York shut down their five main airports, The John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International, LaGuardia, Stewart International and The Teterboro airport. This made it difficult for the people to leave and once these main transportation systems shut down then they were basically stuck.

Officials learned a lot from Katrina and people were preparing and made it clear that they weren’t going to make the same mistakes twice. “I anticipate we’re going to have people floating on the streets, and I don’t want to leave them lying there. The Coast Guard will either be pulling people off their roofs like in Katrina or we’ll be scraping them out of their yards.” stated Richard Marlin, fire chief for one of the seven villages on Hatteras.

The Aftermath— Maryland: Only one person was killed, an 85-year old woman, she died when a tree fell on her house. Dorchester General Hospital located in Cambridge, Maryland was evacuated because of wind and water damage on the roof. Farmers had to handpick their crops after their fields became soaked, and some plants were destroyed.

Delaware: A tornado touched down in Lewes, Delaware at 6:38 p.m., damaging 50 homes and destroying one. In Hockessin, Delaware two 25-year-old men drowned when they tried to run home Saturday night.

Pennsylvania: Thousands of people were left without power and more that 400 trees fell in Philadelphia. Seven buildings collapsed and twenty roads were closed. In total five people were killed. Three by fallen trees, one in a car accident, and one was swept away by a flood.

Virginia: In Virginia Beach, Virginia a tornado touched down on August 27 and took roofs off of a house and damaged others. High winds knocked a tree into a house killing an 11-year-old boy who was lying in bed with his mother. Fallen trees killed three other people in Virginia.

North Carolina: On August 27th several tornadoes touched down and leveled houses. The hurricane left extensive damages. A tree killed three, a heart attack killed another, two others by car accidents, and one man drowned.

South Carolina: Irene damaged large parts of the coast, 4,000 people were left without power. No one died in South Carolina due to Irene.

Florida: Irene did not hit Florida but there were high waves and scattered power outages. While surfing eight were injured and two were killed, the waves got so high that they went over the sea walls.

New Jersey: Floods effected streets and highways; ten deaths were due to hurricane Irene. 1.46 million people lost power and two days after half a million still didn’t have power, by September 3rd power was restored to all but 750. On September 2, 37,000 JCPL customers still didn’t have power. In some parts flooding lasted for three days.

New York: On August 31, Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated the total damages to be roughly $1 billion dollars. Long Island experienced the strongest surface winds because or Irene’s counterclockwise wind flow.

On Long Island 350,000 people were left in the dark. Flooding had a lot to do with the New York damage, also a sinkhole formed in Monticello but no one noticed till three weeks after. This destroyed two roads and the estimated repair cost is about one million. Four men and one woman drowned, while one man got electrocuted. Farms lost $45 million in crops.

Connecticut: 20 homes were destroyed and flooding damaged five others and 754,000 people didn’t have power. In Ridgefield 90% of houses lost power but they had to turn off the other 10%. Three deaths were reported.

Massachusetts: Wind uprooted trees, The Westfield River rose almost twenty feet in only a few hours and Deerfield rose fifteen feet in the same time. One man died due to electrocution.

Rhode Island: 256,000 out of 480,000 customers were without power and it took till September 5, to restore it all. No one died from the hurricane.

Vermont: Almost every river and stream flooded, which killed three and one is still missing. Extensive road damage occurred which isolated dozens of towns only allowing helicopter transportation. Some were isolated for two weeks.