Thaindian News

New York/Washington, Aug 28 (IANS) Hurricane Irene weakened to a tropical storm that swept through the New York City area Sunday without the much feared impact, but still leaving more than a million homes in the Big Apple without power.

Several trees toppled and some parts of the city were flooded but there were no reports of major damage to skyscrapers and officials said the flooding appeared to be limited.

Among those who lost power as New Yorkers awoke to downpours and whipping winds Sunday were nearly 21,000 homes in Queens with the largest concentration of Indian Americans in the US.

Streets flooded Sunday morning as Irene lashed some of the biggest cities in the northeast with wind gusts and torrential rains knocking out power to more than 3 million people and leaving at least 13 dead in five states.

In New York City’s lower Manhattan, the Hudson River overflowed, sending massive amounts of water spilling over jogging paths and pouring into at least one nearby apartment building.

Water also lapped over the banks of the city’s East River early Sunday, but later receded, CNN reported.

Outside Philadelphia, waters had already climbed to street-sign levels in Darby, sending “couches, furniture, all kinds of stuff floating down the street,” Mayor Michael Nutter was quoted as saying.

Waves pounded the shoreline in Long Beach, New York, as water poured underneath the boardwalk and into the city’s downtown area.

The storm is now moving inland over southeastern New York state and heading northeast toward New England. Even as winds decreased, the hurricane centre warned that an “extremely dangerous storm surge” was expected in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and parts of Long Island, New York.

A nuclear power reactor in Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, automatically went offline late Saturday after a piece of aluminium siding from a building struck a transformer amid strong winds, CNN said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)