The normally bustling streets emptied out and the rumble of the subways came to a stop.

New York buttoned up Saturday against Hurricane Irene, which threatened to paralyze Wall Street and give the big city its worst thrashing from a storm since at least the 1980s.

City officials cautioned that if Irene stayed on track, it could bring gusts of 85 mph overnight that could shatter skyscraper windows. They said there was an outside chance that a storm surge in Lower Manhattan could send seawater streaming into the maze of underground vaults that hold the city’s cables and pipes, knocking out power to thousands and crippling the nation’s financial capital.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the first mandatory evacuation ever in New York. More than 370,000 people were told to be out by 5 p.m. from low-lying areas on the fringes of the city, mostly in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

All subway service was suspended because of the threat of flooding in the tunnels — the first time the nation’s biggest transit system has shut down because of a natural disaster. Sandbags and tarps were placed on or around subway grates.

“Heed the warnings,” Bloomberg said, his shirt getting soaked as the rain fell in Coney Island. “It isn’t cute to say, ‘I’m tougher than any storm.’ I hope this is not necessary, but it’s certainly prudent.”

People arrived in a trickle at a shelter set up at a high school in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Some carried garbage bags filled with clothing; others pushed carts loaded with their belongings.

They were evacuated from a public housing project in Brooklyn’s Red Hook section. Tenants said management got them to leave by telling them the water and power would be shut off at 5 p.m.
“For us, it’s him,” said Victor Valderrama, pointing to his 3-year-old son. “I didn’t want to take a chance with my son.”

In Times Square, shops were boarded up and the street performer known as the Naked Cowboy, who stands at the Crossroads of the World wearing only underwear and a guitar, had a life vest on.

Construction came to a standstill across the city, and workers at the World Trade Center site dismantled a crane and secured equipment. The mayor said there would be no effect on the opening of the Sept. 11 memorial on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

(Source: ABC)