Hurricane Irene hits US, tens of thousands forced out of homes

Packing strong winds of 80 mph Hurricane Irene hit America's North Carolina coast and was churning its way up the east coast, triggering an unprecedented exodus of tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Forecasters said that heavy winds and rains were lashing North Carolina coast. The Miami based National Hurricane centre said that Irene had already weakened and would lose force further on landfall.

Though the Hurricane's fury was lowered to Category 1 threat, it shut down airports, mass transit system and business in the entire eastern sea board as it headed towards Washington, New York and Boston.

The thickly populated corridor is home to 65 million people, who are now under a threat of storm surges, power outages and massive floodings.l New York mayor Michel Blooomberg ordered unprecedented evacuations of the sea facing areas of New York as President Barack Obama cut shot his vacation and returned to Washington to deal with any crisis.

Bloomberg told newsmen that he has ordered first ever evacuation from parts of low lying areas of New York with a population of 250,000 as Irene could prove to be a matter of "life or death".

New York city authority warned that major links into the city would be snapped if the winds speed exceeds 60 miles/hour as predicted as they put 900 National Guards and a fleet of Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters on stand by.

The neighbouring New Jersey area which has a sizeable Indian population has ordered 750,000 people out of the Cape May area.

Irene's approach has rekindled painful memories of Hurricane Katrina which smashed into the Gulf coast in 2005 stranding thousands of people in New Orleans and overwhelming local and federal authorities.

In another first-of-its-kind decision, the authorities said they will shut down the entire transit system - a total of 468 subway stations, 840 miles of rail tracks, buses and commuter trains.

New York's mass transit system, which carries 8.5 million people on any given weekday, would bring into effect a "system-wide shut- down" at noon on Saturday.

"We have never done a mandatory evacuation before and we would not be doing it now if we did not think this storm had the potential to be very serious," Bloomberg said in a news conference.

"You only have to look at the weather maps to understand how big this storm is and how unique it is and it is heading basically for us," Bloomberg said.

Essential food supplies, medicine, water, batteries and flashlights flew off the shelves at departmental stores as New Yorkers lined up to refill their stockpile.

A sour experience with Hurricane Katrina meant that authorities were leaving no stone unturned this time around for Irene.