Seven dead as Irene edges into Virginia

Top developments:
? Two killed in Virginia, including 11-year-old boy
? Power failures affect more than 500,000 in Virginia
? Huge waves kill surfer in Florida
? Four dead in North Carolina, one missing
? Pentagon orders troops to stand by to assist
? At least 2.5 million under evacuation orders, 300,000 in NYC
? More than 8,000 flights canceled through Monday

Seven people, including two children and a surfer, were dead and the East Coast was a solid wall of red hurricane warnings Saturday as Hurricane Irene began lashing the Virginia coast on its way to what forecasters and authorities warned could be a catastrophic run north.

Neighbors said a woman came running out screaming, "Where's my baby?!" after high winds knocked a tree into an apartment complex Saturday afternoon in Newport News, Va. Rescue crews searched for several hours before finding the boy's body.

Later in the afternoon, a tree fell on a car in Brunswick County, killing an occupant, Virginia State Police Sgt. Michelle Anaya told the News & Messenger of Northern Virginia.

Police in Goldsboro, N.C., said a child died in a wreck after the car the child was in crashed at an intersection where Irene had knocked out power to the traffic lights. Several other people were taken to a hospital after the crash around 4 p.m. ET, Police Capt. Chad Calloway told The Associated Press.

Three other people were confirmed dead in North Carolina: one who died in a vehicle crash in Pitt County, a man who died after a branch fell on him in Nash County, and a man who died of a heart attack Thursday in Onslow County as he was trying to board up his home.

In Florida, the Volusia County Beach Patrol confirmed that a surfer was killed Saturday when he was knocked off his board at New Smyrna Beach, where surfers flocked to take advantage of 10-foot waves kicked up in the wake of Irene.

"It appears he went over a wave and might have gone head first into the ground," Tammy Marris, a spokeswoman for the agency, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said people should not be fooled by Irene's rating as a Category One storm, the lowest on the scale.

"She may be a One, but she's a mean One," Perdue said in an interview on MSNBC-TV.

Half a million without power in Virginia
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called Irene a "large and dangerous'' storm and urged residents to take it seriously. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, meanwhile, ordered 6,500 active-duty troops to prepare for orders to help with relief assistance.

Interactive: PhotoBlog: Eye of the storm (on this page)

At 5 p.m. ET, the eye was about 50 miles south-southeast of Norfolk, Va., and Irene's high-speed outer wall was already well into the state. With the worst danger past, hurricane warnings were canceled south of Cape Fear, N.C., near where Irene made landfall Saturday morning.

At least 506,000 customers were without power in Virginia, whose governor, Bob McDonnell warned Saturday morning that the next 12 hours "are going to be very, very bad for Virginians," with the hardest-hit areas expected to be Norfolk and Williamsburg.

Tropical storm conditions had already spread farther north into Washington, Maryland and Delaware. With Virginia, they make up the so-called DelMarVa peninsula, where tornadoes are often a significant secondary threat from hurricanes. A tornado that ripped through the Sandbridge area of Virginia Beach destroyed five homes and damaged several others.

"We're feeling the impacts now, but the worst is still to come," McDonnell told MSNBC-TV as rain bands started lashing the state. He said officials were especially concerned about coastal flooding.

Sandbags were no longer available anywhere in the nation's capital ahead of Irene's expected arrival in the Washington region about 6 p.m. ET.

Forecasters warned that major flooding was likely at the Maryland and Delaware beaches, which were expected to be swamped with a 4- to 8-foot storm surge that they said could cause significant beach erosion.

On Maryland's beaches, Irene was expected to arrive just about at high tide between 8 and 9 p.m. ET. NBC's Tom Costello reported from Ocean City that waves driven by sustained 30-mph winds were already peaking at 19 feet.

Eddie Hopkins, a spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, agreed that "our concern is for the flooding that we could see out of this," telling msnbc that "with the saturated ground, we're also very much concerned about the uprooting of trees and power lines."

In Delaware, areas around the Delaware River in and around Wilmington were being evacuated because of expected floods, George Giles, director of the Wilmington Department of Emergency Management, told MSNBC TV.

Landfall at daybreak
Irene made landfall about 7:30 a.m. ET at Nags Head, N.C. Winds howled through the power lines and felled trees, rain fell in sheets and some streets were flooded at daybreak on the North Carolina coast.

Progress Energy, the local electrical utility, said about 200,000 customers throughout coastal North Carolina were without power.

Readers capture Hurricane Irene's approach

A coastal town official in North Carolina said witnesses believed a tornado spawned by Irene lifted the roof off the warehouse of a car dealership Friday night in Belhaven and damaged a mobile home, an outbuilding and trees. Six homes were reportedly damaged by the apparent tornado.

NBC News reported early Saturday that the end of the Atlantic Beach Pier collapsed into the water, and NBC station WITN-TV of Washington reported that pier at the Sheraton in Carteret County was collapsing.

High winds also blew off part of the roof of Berkeley Mall in Goldsboro, N.C., on Friday night. No one was injured, emergency management officials said.

Interactive: Hurricane Tracker (on this page)

New York preparations well under way
Irene wasn't expected to reach the densely populated Northeast Corridor until late Saturday. Well ahead of its arrival, authorities ordered unprecedented evacuations and transit shutdowns.

"Staying behind is dangerous, staying behind is foolish, and it's against the law,'' Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a media briefing Saturday at Coney Island in Brooklyn.

Coney Island is one of the areas expected to be hit hardest, along with Staten Island and the New Jersey shore, by what Weather Channel meteorologist Bryan Norcross predicted would be a "horrible storm surge" Sunday morning.

The city's subway system closed at noon ET , an unprecedented shutdown due to natural causes. As airlines canceled more than 8,000 flights, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey told NBC News that all five major regional airports would be closed at least through Sunday.

Story: NYC Mayor Bloomberg says 1,400 people in city shelters

Philadelphia also made the unprecedented decision to close its SEPTA transit service with eight to 15 inches of rain expected. Philadelphia has already had record rainfall this summer, and meteorologists said it would take only two inches to trigger major floods.

All told, about 2.5 million people have been ordered to leave up and down the East Coast, more than 1 million of them from the New Jersey shore alone, Gov. Chris Christie said.

Christie said at a news briefing that he remained concerned because some residents of Atlantic City, particularly senior citizens, were refusing to leave, even though "we are most certainly going to suffer property and structural damage."

As hundreds of thousands of fled from Irene's path at the height of summer beach season, supermarkets and hardware stores were inundated with people stocking up on food, water, flashlights, batteries, generators and other supplies.

Once Irene passes through the New York region, New England remains Sunday.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said that 500 members of the Massachusetts National Guard had already been deployed to assist and that 2,000 more would be activated Saturday.

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a landslide alert for Connecticut, where Gov. Dannel Malloy warned that heavy urban flooding was possible from rain bands expected to drop more than an of rain per hour Sunday.

Video: President Obama briefed on Hurricane Irene (on this page)

President Barack Obama was briefed Saturday by the Federal Emergency Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. He said the storm could be "extremely dangerous and costly" for a nation that recalls the destruction in 2005 from Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans, killed as many as 1,800 people and caused $80 billion in damage.

By Alex Johnson of msnbc.com with Greg Forbes and Bryan Norcross of The Weather Channel; Rosanne Arlia, Tom Costello, Courtney Kube, Brian LePore, Luke Russert, Mike Viqueira, Norma Rubio and Anna Tuman of NBC News; NBC stations WAVY of Newport News, Va., WCAU of Philadelphia, WECT of Wilmington, N.C., WHDH of Boston, WNCN of Raleigh, N.C.; WRC of Washington, WTVI of Washington, N.C. and WVIT of Hartford, Conn.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44297053/ns/weather/

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