Irene Prompts Evacuations From U.S. East Coast

Colleen Horodnik is going “to run ahead of the storm” by leaving a Bogue Sound vacation home in North Carolina a day early, making way for Hurricane Irene.

“We’re going to close up the house, batten down the hatches and head home” to West Milford, New Jersey, said Horodnik, reading a book as the sun set and her husband, Walter, fished from a pier in the beach town of Emerald Isle. “It could be really bad.”

Not all coastal visitors are leaving by choice. Hyde and Dare counties have ordered tourists to evacuate.

Irene, a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles (193 kilometers) an hour, may be the first major hurricane to hit the U.S. East Coast since Wilma struck Florida in 2005. Irene may make landfall at Cape Hatteras on Aug. 27, then weaken, aides to Governor Beverly Perdue said yesterday in a statement. It may strengthen today to Category 4, with 135 mile-an-hour winds, the National Hurricane Center said.

“It’s a big storm,” Perdue told reporters at a briefing in Raleigh yesterday. “We must all prepare for the worst.”

That message was echoed along the length of the East Coast, where governors and public-safety officials advised shoreline residents to prepare for a blow. The governors of New York and Connecticut ordered agencies to make ready for the storm, which may reach the Northeast Aug. 28. In Rhode Island, officials plan to activate a 24-hour operations center, said Denis Riel, a spokesman for the Emergency Management Agency.
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