September 19, 2003	Friday	Rajab 21, 1424

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MANTEO (North Carolina), Sept 18: Hurricane Isabel screamed ashore in North Carolina on Thursday with furious winds and torrential rains that forced evacuations throughout the US mid-Atlantic region, cancelled nearly 1,000 flights and shut down the federal government in Washington.

Nearly a quarter of a million people were ordered to leave their homes and about 800,000 utility customers lost electricity as Isabel downed trees and snapped power lines along the North Carolina and Virginia coast.

Utility officials expected the storm to wreak more havoc to the power grid as it moved inland.

Isabel pounded the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina with wind gusts up to 168 kph. The eye came ashore at Ocracoke Island at midday, crossing over Howard’s Pub where a dozen stalwarts rode out the storm.

“The rain was coming down sideways and we have a couple of feet of water on the highway,” pub owner Buffy Warner said. “There were times the building shook and visibility was zero.”

The nation’s capital braced for Isabel’s fury.

“It is big, it is ugly. It is a bad storm and it is heading our way,” Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said.

Airlines canceled nearly 1,000 flights at 19 airports, leaving skies along the East Coast nearly clear of commercial air traffic and disrupting flight schedules nationwide.

Isabel was a strong Category 2 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale measuring hurricanes’ destructive power. Category 2 storms can badly damage mobile homes and roofs, rip down power lines and cell phone towers and block roads with felled trees and utility poles.

Forecasters said the storm would weaken as it moved north into Virginia and sideswiped Washington, but would be strongenough to rattle high-rise buildings and could spawn tornadoes.

But the biggest threat was from flooding. Isabel could dump 10 inches of rain on a region saturated from months of above-normal rainfall which has loosened tree roots.

States of emergency were declared in North Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C., Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Throughout the region, shelters opened, schools closed and residents braced.

More than 240,000 people were told to evacuate low-lying areas of North Carolina and Virginia or risk getting trapped by flooding from storm surges of up to 11 feet.

Nearly 6,000 North Carolina residents sought safety in shelters. Bridges to some islands in the Outer Banks were closed because of the heavy winds. On Ocracoke Island, where the famous English pirate Blackbeard was killed in battle with the British Navy, 80 per cent of the roads were under water.

Crashing waves along the Outer Banks crumbled the deck of an oceanfront hotel, ate away beaches and gouged chunks out of the grass-covered dunes.

North Carolina’s cotton, soybean and sweet potato fields were expected to take a beating. The Coast Guard halted shipping traffic at Virginia’s Hampton Roads port, the nation’s largest coal exporting port.

In Washington, the federal government was closed except for emergency personnel and residents sandbagged homes. Most of Congress left town and the Defence Department, busy with the Iraq war, relied on emergency staff.

The capital’s Metro subway and bus system closed and Amtrak halted virtually all train service south of Washington.

President George W. Bush left the capital by helicopter for his Camp David retreat on Wednesday to beat the storm.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a four-lane 32-km bridge that spans the Chesapeake Bay, was closed. In Virginia, the National Guard had helicopters ready to rescue anyone stranded by floods. “It’s raining hard, it’s messy... I think people are battening down the hatches for the afternoon and evening as the winds are starting to pick up here,” Virginia Gov. Mark Warner said.