Northeast mops up as Irene water recedes

WALLINGTON, N.J.?? As the flood waters receded, weary residents across the Northeast began pulling soggy furniture and ruined possessions onto their front lawns as they surveyed the damage wrought by Hurricane Irene.

The mess of destroyed furniture on Paul Postma's front lawn looked like a yard sale gone wrong. Over the weekend, Postma had watched as more than two feet of rain filled the bottom level of his home in Lincoln Park, N.J. On Wednesday, he was using bleach to wipe down the house's mud-soaked walls.

"None of this has value," he said. "At least not anymore."

On Sunday, President Barack Obama will visit Paterson, N.J., where currents of the Passaic River swept through the city of 150,000, flooding part of downtown and forcing the emergency evacuations of hundreds of people who likely underestimated the storm's ferocity.

National Guard helicopters continued to ferry supplies on Wednesday to mountain communities in Vermont that had no electricity, no telephone service and limited transportation in or out. Elsewhere, the massive cleanup effort was already well underway at homes, farms and businesses across the flood-scarred landscape.

Video: Floodwaters inundate parts of N.J.

At least $7.2 billion in estimated damage
Repair estimates indicated that the storm would almost certainly rank among the nation's costliest natural disasters, despite packing a lighter punch than initially feared. Even as rivers finally stopped rising in Vermont, New Jersey, and Connecticut, many communities and farm areas remained flooded, and officials said complete damage estimates were nowhere in sight.

An estimate released immediately after Irene by the Kinetic Analysis Corp., a Maryland-based consulting firm that uses computer models to estimate storm losses, put the damage at $7.2 billion in eight states and Washington, D.C. Eqecat, a catastrophe modeling company, estimated the economic losses at more than $10 billion.

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That would eclipse damage from Hurricane Bob, which caused $1 billion in damage in New England in 1991 or the equivalent of about $1.7 billion today, and Hurricane Gloria, which swept through the region in 1985 and left $900 million in damage, the equivalent of $1.9 billion today, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Dozens dead
Irene has led to the deaths of at least 45 people in 13 states. If that death toll stands, it would be comparable to 1999's Hurricane Floyd, which also struck North Carolina and charged up the East Coast into New England, causing most of its 57 deaths by inland drowning. At the time, it was the deadliest U.S. hurricane in nearly 40 years but was later dwarfed by the 1,800 deaths caused by Katrina in 2005.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo estimated the damage to his state alone at $1 billion during a visit to Prattsville, a Catskills community where 600 homes were damaged by heavy rains and floods that also shredded roads and washed out bridges.

"Upstate New York paid a terrible, terrible price for this storm," Cuomo said.

In North Carolina, where Irene blew ashore along the Outer Banks on Saturday before heading for New York and New England, Gov. Beverly Perdue said the hurricane destroyed more than 1,100 homes and caused at least $70 million in damage.

Agricultural losses were still being tallied but one county alone, Martin, was reporting more than $37 million in crop damage, Perdue said in a statement.

1. 1. Get the latest river forecasts and observations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Downstream from Vermont's devastating floods, the Connecticut River hit levels not seen in 24 years, but Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said the situation was not much worse than annual spring floods caused by snowmelt.

In Simsbury, Conn., several farm fields were flooded along the Farmington River. Pumpkins and other produce could be seen floating away.

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"Farmers lost a good amount of crops," said First Selectwoman Mary Glassman.

After floods in 1955, New England states installed flood-control dams and basins that helped prevent a catastrophe along the lower Connecticut River, said Denise Ruzicka, director of inland water resources for Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Impact on holiday weekend
The after-effects of Irene could also affect some residents' Labor Day weekend plans.

According to the Miami Herald, the AAA Carolinas auto club has predicted that around 870,000 North Carolinians will be on the road for the holiday weekend. That is about the same as last year, the auto club said.

But in North Carolina, visitors are still barred from Hatteras Island and its ferry-dependent neighbor Ocracoke Island, the Herald reported. Both islands are popular tourist destinations.

Meanwhile, it was decided in an emergency meeting Wednesday night that the Patriots-Giants preseason finale in Foxborough, Mass., on Thursday night would go ahead as planned, despite the effects of Irene. Gillette Stadium got power back Monday evening before many other parts of the area, the Boston Herald reported.

Lights out
Power outages persisted across the region, with some of the largest in Connecticut, where more than 284,000 homes and businesses were still in the dark Wednesday, and Virginia, where 232,500 customers had no lights.

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In the ski resort town of Killington, Vt., residents were volunteering to use their lawn tractors to help remove mud and debris. People with electricity were letting neighbors without water use their showers. One question was whether the camaraderie would wear thin before things returned to normal.

Karen Dalury, who did not have power at her home, said she had been eating vegetables from her garden and storing some in a neighbor's freezer.

"For now it's fine," she said, "but who knows how long this is going to continue."

Vermont does not yet have cost estimates for damages. Some 260 roads in the state were damaged or washed away entirely. Tourism is the state's second largest industry after agriculture.

"We're still gathering that information and assessing it," said Vicky Parra Tebbetts, senior vice president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. "I don't anticipate whole towns are going to be stranded and cut off from the rest of the world for months on end, but the long-term repair of roads is another issue."

With Irene gone, scientists turned their attention to the open Atlantic Ocean, where Tropical Storm Katia was gaining strength and forecast to become a hurricane by early next week. Meteorologists said it was too soon to determine where it might go.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44353376/ns/weather/

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