Three dead as hurricane batters US east coast

At least three people, including an 11-year-old, have died in storm-related incidents since Hurricane Irene slammed into the US east coast on Saturday, officials said. The child died midday Saturday when a tree fell on an apartment complex in Newport News, Virginia hours after the category one hurricane crashed ashore in neighbouring North Carolina, a city emergency spokeswoman said.
"There was an 11-year-old boy pinned under the tree and he was pronounced dead at the scene," Anita Walters told AFP, adding that the boy's mother made it out of the apartment unharmed. Another two people died in North Carolina, where the hurricane made landfall early Saturday morning with 85 mile (140 kilometer) per hour winds, driving rain and flood surges that caused a wide swath of power outages.
"One man in Onslow County died when he suffered a heart attack while putting plywood on his windows," Tom Mather, a public affairs officer with the North Carolina emergency management office, told AFP. "Another man died overnight when his car hydroplaned in Pitt County and hit a tree," he said. Local TV station WRAL cited the Nash County Sheriff as saying a man died when heavy winds caused a tree branch to fall on him as he was outside feeding his animals.
Police could not immediately be reached to comment on the report. Another man went missing after he plunged into the Cape Fear River near Wilmington early on Saturday, according to Michelle Harrell, of the New Hanover County emergency management office. "It's unclear at this point whether he jumped in or was pushed," she said, adding that a search was launched after the incident but then temporarily called off because of the weather.
Emergency management officials said up to 10 inches (25 centimetres) of rain had fallen in some coastal areas and a six to 10-foot (1.8 to three-meter) storm surge caused flooding in several counties. A number of people in New Bern had to be rescued from their homes, including at least one family with small children, a local TV station reported.
Phone service was down across much of the state's northern coast, and power companies said some 600,000 people were without electricity in Virginia and North Carolina. The hurricane is on track to careen up the east coast late Saturday and Sunday, passing over or near Washington, New York and Boston, a densely populated urban corridor home to some 65 million people.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama on Saturday visited Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters to get an update on preparations for Hurricane Irene as it charged north along the US East Coast. Obama, who cut short his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, by a day because of the hurricane, said it would be a "tough slog" getting through the storm but praised the federal effort so far.
The hurricane was expected to hit Washington in the early hours of Sunday before hurtling toward New York City. The US government was widely criticised for its slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded New Orleans. This week FEMA and Homeland Security officials have been out in full force urging residents in the path of the hurricane to prepare and take heed of local warnings.