Ferocious, 200-mile-wide Hurricane Irene barreled north toward the Eastern Seaboard as President Obama and other officials on Friday warned tens of millions of nervous Americans in the nation's most densely populated corridor to prepare for a pummeling.
The president cut short his vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., by a day to return to Washington, airlines announced plans to cancel more than 6,000 flights, stores were emptied of batteries and water, and tourists and residents fled dozens of vulnerable beach towns and coastal communities.
New York officials ordered the first mandatory evacuation in the city's history, insisting that more than 250,000 people leave low-lying neighborhoods in the city's five boroughs. Officials made another first-of-its-kind decision, announcing plans to shut down the city's entire transit system at noon Saturday — all 468 subway stations and 840 miles of tracks, along with the rest of the nation's largest mass-transit network: thousands of buses in the city as well as the buses and commuter trains that reach from Midtown Manhattan to the suburbs.
All 23 Broadway musicals and plays also were canceled for Saturday and Sunday.
Likewise, aviation officials said the five main New York City-area airports will be closed to arriving domestic and international passenger flights beginning at noon Saturday.
Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down, and Washington declared a state of emergency.
Federal and state agencies activated emergency plans to help with what officials predicted would be widespread power outages, evacuations, flooding and storm surges. The Red Cross opened emergency shelters along the storm's projected path.
Irene was on a track experts have feared for decades as they watched the rapid expansion of coastal resorts and housing developments in the lowlands behind them. They have worried that a storm tracking along the shore, renewing its force over the warm Atlantic and then ripping with each rotation like a circular saw into coastal areas, could produce unprecedented devastation.
"It looks like the track of Irene is going to have a major impact along the East Coast starting in the Carolinas all the way up through Maine," said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
By early Saturday, Hurricane Irene's eye should be about 66 miles from Cape Fear, N.C. Winds along the North Carolina coast will most likely hit 98 mph, with gusts up to 132 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm is going to last most of the day in North Carolina. The eyewall should make landfall just east of Morehead City by 2 p.m. Saturday, said Susan Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the weather service. By then, Irene might have weakened to a Category 1.
By Sunday, if the current track holds, the storm will hit New York.
Nine states declared emergencies and called up National Guard troops to assist in rescues and other emergencies. FEMA moved industrial generators, medicine, bottled water and other supplies to staging bases in North Carolina, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
With the devastation of Hurricane Katrina still painfully fresh — New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will mark the sixth anniversary next week — the Obama administration seemed determined not to appear to be caught flat-footed.
"I cannot stress this highly enough," Obama said Friday at the beachfront compound he rented in Chilmark, Mass. "If you are in the projected path of this hurricane, you have to take precautions now. Don't wait. Don't delay. We all hope for the best, but we have to be prepared for the worst."
Irene raked the Bahamas earlier this week, causing widespread flooding and substantial damage. But it lost force and was a Category 1 on Friday night, with winds of up to 100 mph.
The storm was expected to strengthen again, however, before it roars into barrier islands off North Carolina. Forecasters fear it then will head north toward Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
The moment Saturday when the eye of the hurricane crosses land "is not as important as just being in that big swath," said Richard Pasch, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. "And unfortunately, it's a big target."
Irene is expected to dump several inches of rain in the Middle Atlantic and New England region. Much of the ground already is saturated from heavy rains this month, and residents were warned to expect falling trees and heavy flooding.
For East Coasters, the storm's arrival will punctuate a week full of reminders of Mother Nature's fickle temper. A once-in-a-lifetime earthquake rattled buildings and nerves in much of the Northeast on Tuesday. But officials say Irene poses a much more serious danger.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave residents of low-lying areas until Saturday night to leave their neighborhoods for shelter on higher ground, the first mandatory evacuation in the city's history. Residents of nursing homes, hospitals and psychiatric wards in those areas were being transferred to higher ground Friday.
"We don't have the manpower to go door to door to drag people out of their homes. ... Nobody is going to get fined, nobody is going to jail," Bloomberg said. But if residents didn't leave, he added, "people might die."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was more blunt as mandatory evacuations were ordered in four coastal counties and Atlantic City casinos decided to officially cease all gaming at noon Saturday, only the third closure since gambling began there 33 years ago.
"Get the hell off the beach. ... You've maxed out your tan," said Christie, dismayed by television broadcasts that showed people still lounging on the beach in Asbury Park on Friday.
Some hurricane veterans down south would not be swayed, even though thousands already were without power Friday night.
The evacuation under way in North Carolina's Dare County, an area composed largely of the fragile barrier islands of the Outer Banks, did not scare John Wilson IV.
While the order sent 150,000 tourists to highways heading north and west, Wilson went nowhere.
"We'll get a lot of rain, a lot of flooding, but we'll be just fine," he said. He planned to ride out the storm with friends inside the Roanoke Island Inn, which his family has owned for generations.
Farther south, near Morehead City, Irene's outlying rain bands began pounding tiny boarded-up communities with an eerie, sustained vigor Friday evening.
Compiled from the Tribune Washington bureau, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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