Evacuations begin on tiny US island ahead of Irene

Hatteras (US): Evacuations began on a tiny barrier island off North Carolina early today in a test of whether people in the crosshairs of Hurricane Irene, the first serious hurricane along the East Coast in years, will heed orders to get out of the way. The first ferry to leave Ocracoke Island arrived just before 5:30 a.m. (local time) in nearby Hatteras with around a dozen cars on board. [caption id=“attachment_68823” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The island is part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Ana Martinez/Reuters”]  [/caption] Federal officials have warned Irene could cause flooding, power outages or worse all along the East Coast as far north as Maine, even if it stays offshore. The projected path has gradually shifted to the east, though Irene is still expected to make landfall as a major hurricane in North Carolina sometime over the weekend. It is then expected to continue trudging northward. The island is part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a roughly 325-kilometre stretch of fragile barrier islands off the state’s coast. Pristine beaches and wild mustangs attract thousands of tourists each year. Aside from Ocracoke, the other islands are accessible by bridges to the mainland and ferries. The limited access can make the evacuation particularly tense. All the barrier islands have the geographic weakness of jutting out into the Atlantic like the side-view mirror of a car, a location that’s frequently been in the path of destructive storms over the decades. Many remember 1999’s Hurricane Floyd, which made landfall as a Category 2 and caused a storm surge that wiped out scores of houses and other properties on the Outer Banks. As of early morning, shortly before the first ferry was to leave, Irene was still more than 1,400 kilometres south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The Category 2 storm was starting to intensify again with maximum sustained winds that increased to about 175 kph just below Category 3 strength. It had already wrought destruction across the Caribbean, giving a glimpse of what the storm might bring to the Eastern Seaboard. In Puerto Rico, more than a million people were without power, and one woman died after trying to cross a swollen river in her car. At least hundreds were displaced by flooding in the Dominican Republic, forced to take refuge in schools and churches. PTI