As Hurricane Irene continued its trek towards New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed New Yorkers with words of warning.

“Combined, I think it’s fair to say these conditions make it unsafe to stay outside. Let me just repeat that. The time for evacuation is over. Everyone should now go inside and be prepared to stay inside until weather conditions improve, which won’t likely be until Sunday afternoon,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a 10 p.m. news conference.

“We have prepared for this. We have worked very hard. We warned the public and now we have to deal with what comes from Mother Nature. Your safety, your own safety, is dependent on what you do,” he said.

The normally bustling streets of the Big Apple 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.

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.

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers living in low-lying coastal areas from Manhattan to Long island were trying to get out of Hurricane Irene’s path or were hunkering down to ride out the potentially devastating storm Saturday as it moved up the Eastern Seaboard.

Asked if the city could’ve done more to promote evacuations, a fatigued Bloomberg listed the efforts taken.

“We’ve tried as much as we can to get out the message. We’ve had organizations like Con Ed who have offered their phone banks, their automated calls to call people and say please evacuate , the law requires that you do so. We’ve had as much press as we could possibly get to inform people. We’ve used the staffs of a variety of agencies to call people to do that. I think most people have heard about it. Whether they’ve chosen to do so, I don’t know,” he said.

“If you haven’t evacuated, our suggestion would be that you stay where you are,” he added.

County officials on Long Island ordered a mandatory evacuation of many southern shore communities. Dozens of shelters were opened to receive people evacuating from places like Patchogue, though officials were encouraging people to stay with relatives or friends where they would be more comfortable. Those using shelters were encouraged to bring their pets in crates.

(Source: WCBSTV)