nice to be here with you for the next five hours. tropical storm irene after lashing new york city, irene is dutching heavy, heavy rainfall in parts of upstate new york and also new england. the storm made landfall overnight as a hurricane in two stops, first on the landfall on little egg inlet in new jersey, and then it hit another landfall, coney island, new york. at that time irene had weakened to a tropical storm. >> on long island, irene's storm surge flooded downtown long beach. some streets in manhattan also flooding, but the water really has started to recede already. it is sweeping up the east coast. irene has killed at least 15 people at last count as it started, as it fist made landfall in north carolina, more than 4 million people as a whole without power. irene moving north now. its biggest threat is inland flo flooding. >> still the word is "caution," and we have cnn crews up and down the east coast for you to bring you up-to-the-minute coverage on tropical storm irene live on cnn. the storm pushed the hudson river over its banks and into lower manhattan. soledad o'brien has been there covering this for hours and hours. i saw the cars stuck behind you. now you're along the hudson at battery park. talk to me about the water level. it was over the banks for a while. is it better now? >> oh, it's significantly bert. all you really see right now are puddle, and that's great news because over here as well the water was topping over the banks, basically. we saw the same thing in the west village and in the meat packing district. it was making things quite a mess. but then the winds slowed and the rain slowed and that seemed to help a lot after the tide had risen. that's good news for new york because the worst has definitely passed. what you see now is the high winds, which i know you can tell behind me. this is where a number of tourists have come. the statue of liberty over my shoulder. there are a lot of people out. occasionally a police officer will go by and sort of shout out to people, listen, the danger is not over, there can be live wire, be cautious, but for the most part people are kind of ignoring that, milling around, bringing their kids out. so far it's actually not been terrible damage or at least the bad damage that we were expecting. as we drove through west village earlier, you could see -- and i have video of this, fred -- some of the damage that happened there. in a lot of cases you saw those newspaper boxes, you know, toppled over by the heavy winds, in some cases a tree, and not so much from the high winds but really because of the ground. once it gets saturated it tends to sort of -- the trees just can fall, kind of collapse over so, that seemed to be some of the biggest problems there. we have some of that. as you mentioned, when we were right along the hudson river, we saw the river topping the banks. we were there, it was probably about two feet over the banks, the pathways that follow the river were completely covered in water and some cars also got stuck under water. but then, quite quickly, within i'd say 90 minutes or so the water drained and things got back to normal. little bit of damage for the folks there because some apartments where they didn't have pumps pumping the water on the first-floor level got three feet or so of water. >> soledad, tag teaming with fredricka. i have a question for you. we heard from homeland security secretary janet napolitano saying if you're in that area, stay inside. what's the directive? we're waiting for a news conference from new york major michael bloomberg, but what's the directive from city officials? are people fine to stick their heads out and assess or they should stay in? >> reporter: we're waiting to hear from mayor bloomberg in that press conference we heard would be around 12:15. it's running late, many expect because they'll be able to update us on the status of the subway. once they open mass transit, that will change things, as well. for the most part, people are not worried about any risk. people are out and about. if they think there's wind, we have not seen downed power line where is we are and most people don't seem to be worried about that. even the police officers who roll by telling people to be cautious are basically saying that, be cautious. they're not saying go back inside. they're not saying something is dangerous. they're saying keep your eyes open. >> good words of advice from the police officers there in new york. soledad o'brien, thank you very much. fred, to you. irene at this point expected to dump a whole lot of rain. of course it's leaving the new york city area making its way to upstate new york. they're already starting to feel the effects as well as connecticut. onto rhode island. that's where rewill find our gary tuchman in newport. you and i spoke yesterday and you talked about there were some who were actually considering riding out the storm in their boats. you're feeling the effects now. have they second-guessed that by now? >> reporter: the battle is not over here at new por, rhode island. it's great a lot of people did decide to ride out this storm on their boat bus this is the newport, rhode island, marina. but as you can see there are beautiful pleasure craft and fishing boats. people slept on them overnight. overnight it wasn't bad. but the rain has stopped. we had heavy rain for several hours that ended about an hour and a half ago and it seems like the worst is over, yet the winds have picked up. in this state of rhode island, the smallest state in the country, 150,000 customers without power, including most of the people here in newport. the power is out here. we have lots of people coming out, asking us, is the worst over? can we go outside? we can tell them, despite the fact there is a mandatory evacuation order, most have stayed because there's nowhere to go. it's so far to drive get out of the hurricane/tropical storm zone last night. we're telling them the worst is over but the winds will pick up. be careful when you go outside. lots of people have gone outside. the fact they are not used to hurricanes in southern new england, the last hurricane that came 20 years ago, hurricane bob, and this is not a hurricane now, but a tropical storm. they're not used to those either. they get the nor'easter. ip to make sure we don't fall into the water here. it's a narrow pier. we don't want any problems, including the people i love and respect and work with. but although it's very windy, minor flooding but there are no injuries whatsoever. just 150,000 customers without power. right now it appears much of the east coast, not all of the east coast, much of the east coast, people consider themselves relatively lucky. >> okay to. that is good news. gary tuchman, thanks so much. state of rhode island. very small. however, we kind of fanned out in that state. we'll move on to another region of it. >> let's stay in rhode island and go to kate bolduan in providence where kate is apparently at a floodgate. let's see where she is. paint the picture for us. tell us what it looks like where you are. >> reporter: hi there, brooke. a similar story what gary is seeing and feeling in newport. the real story here in providence is the strong drop kag force winds, some fierce wind gusts we've been feeling throughout the day. the rain has tapered off, picking back up here. that's not the problem. it's been the wind damage that has been a great concern for all of the residents for providence. we've been feeling gusts throughout the morning. in downtown providence, you can see this is a hurricane barrier built in the 1960s to protect the city from some serious storm surges if they would come through. that barrier, when all three of those barrier gates are down and deployed, they can protect the city, supposed to be able to protect it from storm surges of some 20 feet. that's clearly not what they've experienced. we've seen in the last couple hours that one of these gates is at least partially being opened up to let the water flow more freely into the narragansett bay. what we're seeing now is obviously these strong winds are continuing. we're watching this hurricane barrier to see how things are going here. we're seeing a lot of residents kind of coming out after hunkering down much of the morning, many people kind of coming out to see what they can see pap that's not what fema or officials or state officials have been advising, but that's what people are doing. then of course the chance of some -- those strong winds picking pack up again this afternoon. we're tracking much of that. we're seeinging a lot of trees down throughout the city of providence. we've heard many trees and storm damage throughout the state of rhode island because of that. it's the fierce wind. these tropical storm-force winds are still a serious concern. >> kate, while i have you, we have a split screen of you and other images. you mentioned downed trees but some images look like rivers but i know they're roads. can you give me a quick assessment of damage and any injuries in the state of rhode island? >> reporter: we haven't heard about any my jor injuries in the state of rhode island. we know with the rain, with the wind being here on the coast and with all the rivers and the bays that are in rhode island, that clearly the water is getting onto the roadways. we are seeing some of the roads are quite tricky and many impassable because of the trees that are going down. the northeast has seen a lot of rain already this season and this is just adding to it. power's out for some 150,000 to 175,000 people in the state of rhode island without wpower. the national grid will be working on that. one of the problems they face in terms of remedying the situation and getting the power back on, not safe to be sending out crews to fix the problem when the wind gusts remain so high. they need the wind to die down a bit. obvio obviously, that would help a lot in trying to get the power back up for many of these residents. so a lot of the damage that we're seeing seems to be clearly from the strong wind gusts. the hotel we were in, i was up on the 14th floor. i'll tell you the windows were shaking at many points throughout the night and this morning, brooke. >> kate bolduan in rhode island, thank you very much. pretty significant in the northeast. that's the big problem. in addition to the power outages, because there's been so much rain, it has seen a lot of rain in the month of august, the ground is saturating, which means the big trees, root systems are weakened as well as the power lines. >> it's the days to come. >> that's right. >> even though we'll say good-bye to irene, it's the fallout from the storm and the rains. chad knows more about that. we'll check in with chad. >> let's move on to new york, shall we? >> let's. where irene pushed the east and hudson rivers over their banks. cnn's mary snow is in queens, new york. mary, yikes. i see a huge tree over your left shoulder. looks like on top of a car. >> reporter: yeah. you guys were just talking about the saturated ground. what we see is this tree just ripped from its roots, breaking through the concrete sidewalk. fortunately, no one was injured. this tree came down in the middle of the night about 2:00 in the morning. here's the dane rouse par, though. you're seeing all these power lines down. and there are several of them. and then if we could just pan up a little bit further you'll see is that power line, there's a transformer on top of that, and that is leaning. this is the dangerous part. there is a police line up here, so cars can note come through. there are several lines that are down and people are walking on the street. dangerous situation. obviously, the police have been here because they've put up that tape. as you can imagine, residents we've been talking to are pretty nervous about this situation here. as we made our way through queens, we're trying to check out reports of damage. we've seen some downed trees. you know, we're talking to soledad a few minutes ago. we hadn't seen widespread damage that had been anticipated. but you do see spots like this one where people are really shaken here. >> we've got to ask about the car behind you, mary. was anyone in it when the tree fell? >> reporter: no. no. fortunately, they were not in it. and the people who are in this house fortunately were not -- no one was injured, shaken, they say, and they're nervous about this power line with this transformer because it is leaning and these downed power lines. but fortunately, no one was hurt. >> thank goodness. mary snow, thank you very much in queens. >> it really is a significant worry because with these trees coming down we know that irene has already claimed some ten lives in five states. >> yes. some of which involved downed trees. >> a big concern in the washington, d.c., area, of course, was -- >> the national cathedral. >> that's right. earlier in the week last week there was a 5.9 earthquake. that caused a little bit of damage. >> a little bit. >> to the national cathedral as well as the national monument. to washington to find out what this recent weather from irene may have done to further compromise these buildings, these historic structures. >> we'll take you to d.c. first, a look at some of the best images of hurricane irene pounding the northeastern coast today. take a look. >> whoa. let's gets out of here! let's get out of here! grab the mike. grab the -- go-gurt? 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>> you know, we haven't, but we've got an tremendous level of cooperation through multiple government agencies from new jersey transit to our local housing authority to county government. you know, it's really good to see how much people are working together, and a lot of that goes really by what i consider good judgment, by the president, our governor, calling states of emergency early enough and really getting everybody to start coordinating action early. we were out there preparing for this many, many hours if not days ahead. and we're able to get most of it right. again, we're learning a lot right now. early this morning i discovered we had people going out looking for homeless folks. i found more this morning. we got 41 people to move off the streets into our shelters. we'll learn what we can from this and be even more prepared should this happen again. >> mayor booker, it's brooke baldwin in atlanta. you had gone door to door, a bit of a wake-up call for folks in newark, my mayor is at my door, i should be leaving. you're tweeting about bridges and tunnels. can you give us a quick update as far as transportation goes? >> yeah. the port authority in my last update and the transit and new jersey are still going through deliberations about when exactly they're going to open up. we live in a tightly knit tristate area, so the bridges and tunnels going into manhattan are all opened up. the good thing is we're slowly returning back to normal, but i'm asking again as a governor that today people leave today be and let it be a day where disaster relief people can really get working and emergency people can get working. i've seen a lot of just dumb behavior, and that has caused me to have to engage rescue workers to do things. the smartest thing to do is stay in. as for again the people working and the work that was done, we were out there knocking on doors asking people to evacuate areas. there have a lot of caution for peo