carolina coast. as many as 65 million people all along the eastern seaboard are going to be impacted in some way, shape or form by irene. and many people are already trying to find shelter where they can. take a look at the size of this storm. eight states from north carolina to massachusetts are under states of emergency. and right now, this first hurricane of the season that is impacting so much of the east coast is pummeling north carolina. it barreled ashore on the outer banks of north carolina just after dawn this morning, about five miles northeast of cape lookout. it is now down to a category 1 hurricane with maximum winds of 85 miles per hour. still very significant. make no mistake, it is a very powerful storm. and it is still very dangerous. there have been two storm-related deaths in north carolina reported so far. and we're seeing a lot of fierce winds and drenching rains there. parts of the region haven't seen a storm like this in decades. we're talking about along the eastern seaboard. cnn has crews up and down the east coast. take a look right there. dotting the map along the east coast there. you'll be hearing from many of them this afternoon. right now, president barack obama is at fema headquarters in washington. that's where all the disaster and relief efforts are being coordinated. officials say they're expecting everything from flooding to power outages and possibly tornadoes along the eastern seaboard. >> these will not be on the ground very long. they won't be the type of tornadoes we saw this spring. but they can very devastating. we ask people outside the evacuation zones during the storm to stay inside, stay away from exterior walls and windows, interior areas, just like you would prepare for tornadoes. >> irene remains a large and dangerous storm. people need to take it seriously. people need to be prepared. as we have suggested during the week, think of this in three phases -- preparation, response and recovery. some of our states are now moving into the response mode. but other states further north along the atlantic seacoast are still in preparation mode. >> there's reynolds wolf in kill devil hills being smacked around by some pretty significant winds. tell us more, reynolds. >> reporter: i'll tell you, it really has been intense. if you check out the sign, it says, please do not remove deck furniture. they have one thing of deck furniture here. i'm glad the hotel moved the rest because irene would do it for them. the wind has been the most intense thing we've noticed over the last couple of hours. not a whole lot of rain. there's been some water picked up and brought onshore. but it's really just the sand and the wind we've been experiencing. something else we've been experiencing across the outer banks has been something caused by the wind, widespread power outages. at this point, hundreds of thousands of people, possibly upwards of 300,000 people without power across the tar heel state. i would expect that's going to get worse as time goes on because this is not just going to stay here. at it pulls northward, we're going to be affected by the back half of this system. that's going to knock down a few more power lines, a few more trees and more power outages. drinking water is fou an issue, too. there's already been a boiled water alert for parts of the communities along the outer banks. that may also move to other parts of the region. another issue we have to help keep people safe, in the community of duck, north carolina, we have a mandatory curfew that will last until monday. in terms of people getting out and about, there have been a few people like us -- there haven't been a whole lot of people out and about. they want people to remind inside if at all possible. irene is certainly moving. she's going to be moving way up the coast, right to new york. right to my friend, poppy harlow. poppy's got the latest. let's send it over to her. >> reporter: reynolds, you've got the wind. i've got the rain. this is the heaviest rain we've got in new york city yet. but, folks, if you're in new york and watching, expect a lot more for a long time. we're at the southernmost tip of new york in battery park city, part of zone "a" that's being evacuated. you'll see a lot of taxis waiting here. they've been filled with people throughout the day. you've got massive, massive apartment buildings here with mandatory evacuations. 370,000 people in new york city, mandatory evacuation for them, the first-ever this city has seen. i myself live a few blocks from here. i had to evacuate at about 4:00 this morning. so this is no joke. just a little while ago, we had a chance to talk to the manhattan borough president. he's in charge of this whole area, right under mike bloomberg, the mayor. take a listen to what he said, especially to those people that are not heeding the warning to evacuate. take a listen. >> you should take this very seriously. you should heed the recommendation, which is if you live in a vulnerable zone, in this case, battery park city in lower manhattan, now's the time to pack up your belongings and hit the road because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. and we are working all day today to make sure that people understand that this is a very serious situation. no need to panic. no need to get unglued. but if you follow simple recommendations, we will get through this. >> reporter: the biggest change right now since we've been reporting since 5:00 a.m. this morning, fredricka, is that all of new york city public transit is now completely shut down. the mta, the subway which carries 5 million new yorkers a day, it is shut down for the foe seeshl future, until the storm passes and they can take care of any flooding. the buses are all shut down. people are relying now on yellow cabs and they're relying on their feet to walk wherever they're going to go. i will tell you that it's been interesting to hear from people here that say, we think this is hype, we think it's overblown. we don't think that we need to evacuate. we will see what the recommendation is from the mayor's office. you've got to get out. when i talked to the mayor's office last, they said that there could be a storm surge anywhere between six and 12 feet. we're a block here from the water. you can imagine what that water from new york harbor would be like coming in. all three sides where i'm standing are completely surrounded by water. if you're not from new york, manhattan is an island. we are particularly vulnerable. people in low-lying areas need to move out, fred. >> so, poppy, i wonder, too, for a lot of the cabbies lined up behind you to take people out, mayor bloomberg also mentioned all the bridges are going to be closed at some point, too. are a lot of the cabbies concerned that they're only going to take you to perhaps upper manhattan as opposed to taking you out of the borough completely because they may not be able to make their way back in? >> reporter: we're not there yet, fredricka. what will happen is the major bridges and tunnels into new york city will close if the wind hits 60 miles an hour. if the storm says a category 1, obviously that wind could be well above 60 miles an hour. so that will happen. people need to move inland. they can go right now -- they can cross the bridges into new jersey, et cetera. or they can move to -- i'm staying in midtown manhattan, for example, near central park. that's considered a safe area. you're on much higher ground and away from the water. but the bridges and tunnels will close if winds exceed. this is important, when it comes to power, electricity, if there is significant enough flooding in lower manhattan, we're told by con edison, the power company that provides the power here, they may have to cut off power completely to lower manhattan. they're having a press conference shortly. we're monitoring that. what that means is that elevators in big buildings like this, shut down. this building behind me, they're cutting their elevator service off at 5:00 p.m. that is another reason why people need to evacuate, fredricka, is the loss of power. >> that's right, poppy harlow, thanks so much, in lower manhattan. it may seem very unusual and it is, but it isn't the first time a hurricane has actually taken aim at new york city. it's just been quite a few decades. take a look at these pictures from the great new england hurricane of 1938. it was a category three storm. at least 682 people were killed. and the damage estimated at $4.7 billion in today's dollars, that is. and six years after that took place, another hurricane lashed new york, 390 people died in that one. most of them were out at sea. early warnings and evacuations spared hundreds of lives onshore. so as you heard poppy harlow just report about an hour ago, new york city began shutting down its public transit system. and it is bracing for this direct hit. the city's mayor says airports are also closed to incoming flights. new york's mayor, michael bloomberg, says he simply doesn't want people to take any chances. >> you can't prepare for the best case. you have to prepare for the worst case. and that's why yesterday we issued a mandatory evacuation order for the more than 370,000 new yorkers residing in the low-lying areas called zone "a" areas and in the rest of the rockaways, which is classified as zone "b." the difference with zone "b" and zone "a," zone "b" is higher, but the rockaways are a special case because if the bridges get closed, there's no ways off the island. and it would be very difficult for us to provide emergency services. >> so just a little bit more on those bridges. if the wind hits 60 miles an hour, the city says it will start closing bridges, including a couple of the big ones. the george washington and the tri-borough bridge. tolls in and out of new york have been suspended to ease the flow of cars out of the city as people need to evacuate based on those warnings, particularly in that zone "a"-type area. the statue of liberty, that, too, of course, will be closed today as a precaution in the wake of hurricane irene. the city wants to assess the storm's impact before opening it up again to visitors when that happens. is in e cnn hurricane headquarters. she is tracking irene's path. still hovering around north carolina. but those cities and states northward are still putting their preparations in place because we're talking about the most populous portion of the entire nation. >> let's go ahead and focus in on new york city for a minute and some of those closures. right now, i want to tell you the news today for new york city does look a lot better than it did yesterday. that said, this is still a major storm and we're going to have major impacts for it. we think the storm will be east of new york city. that's going to put us on what we call the good side of the storm. means much of our winds will be offshore and that our impact is going to be a little bit less. we're expecting the winds to be near that 60-mile-an-hour threshold. i'm thinking somewhere between 50 and 65-mile-per-hour with possible some gusts greater than that. timing wise, you can already see we have the showers and the thundershowers. this is just the start. and the tropical storm force winds, they think, are going to be ri reifing by this evening with the peak of this storm early tomorrow morning, probably starting before dawn and continuing into the early afternoon before things start subsiding by storm. in the latest statistics, in case you're just checking in, this is a category 1 storm now. winds at 85 miles per hour. for this to be a hurricane, it has to have 74-mile-per-hour maximum sustained winds. we're in the middle of that category. there's been weakening for a couple of different reasons. dry air has been training into that storm. a little bit of wind shear on the southwest side of the storm. and some additional weakening can be expected. that said, it is still forecast to be a category 1 as it makes its way upshore. normally you don't think category 1, how bad is it going to be? part of the reason why this one is going to be worse than your typical category 1 is because of its size. when you get a storm this big, this thing stretches out more than 800 miles across when you look at just the cloud field of it. when it's that big, the storm surge gets to be greater. we're looking at the latest forecast for new york city and up into long island, probably somewhere between three and six feet. that's the most recent projection that we're expecting with that water. but it depends on how high it goes on whether or not it coincides with high tide. right now, it's looking like it's going to be close to that. it will be moving through parts of the northeast and new england, let's say, by the afternoon here. on sunday and by monday, the whole thing is going to be out of that. in addition to the water from the surge and those wind impacts that i was talking about, the rainfall, this is going to be a bigger story than anything else for the large majority of the people that are being impacted by the storm. not necessarily the number one life-threatening thing for those of you on the coast. but look at this in the interior. talking about 6 to 10 inches of rainfall easy. isolated amounts up to 15. if you live in a low-lying area, if you live along a river or small creek that tends to go out of its banks on a regular basis, we are going to see those begin to rise once again and a lot of flash flooding. we've already had reports down here into the outer banks, as much as 10 to 15 inches. and that's just happened in the last 24 hours. so we think that this forecast is going to verify and that will be a major threat. so washington, d.c., philadelphia, new york, on up into boston, all are going to be dealing with these concerns. this is a long impact storm, fredricka. unfortunately, a lot of times these hurricanes will accelerate a lot as they move through the northeast. this one isn't going to pick up that much forward speed. that's why the rainfall is going to be so heavy. new york city, they're going to feel this storm for a good 24-plus hours. that's not the hurricane conditions. but they're going to feel it for at least that long. >> and folks along the north carolina coast are feeling it in a very big way, particularly the very low-lying areas of elizabeth city, north carolina. let's take a look right now. our affiliate there, news 14 carolina, is covering that area right now. look at the live pictures they're getting of the wind and the rain right now. let's listen in. >> reporter: we're starting to see a lot of flooding. that's really the main concern that we're dealing with here in elizabeth city. they're worried about storm surge about three to five feet above ground. there was a mandatory evacuation issued yesterday for all those residents living in the low-lying areas. we hope that people living by creeks, rivers, took precaution and evacuated yesterday because it would just simply be unsafe to be out riding around in these conditions right now. believe it or not, a lot of people from the outer banks escaped inland here to elizabeth city. hotels are booked throughout the weekend with people who escaped the storm from there. they'll try to ride it out here along with us. >> we have crews spread out across the state. one of the areas hardest hit was the crystal coast. right now, the county manager -- >> we continue to bring you affiliate coverage along the eastern seaboard so you can get a better idea of exactly what people are experiencing in some of these areas, particularly in north carolina, where they're already feeling and still feeling the brunt of hurricane irene. more of our continuing coverage of hurricane irene after this. 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[ male announcer ] they'll see you...before you see them. cops are cracking down on drinking and riding. drive sober, or get pulled over. we want to continue our look of hurricane irene. sometimes it's difficult to get some perspective about what the wind and the waves might be doing. take a look at this image right here. you see that sailboat being kind of bounced around quite a bit there. this is moorhead city, north carolina. earlier this morning, all eyes were on this particular area as the outer bands of the hurricane were moving in. you can see the wind, the rain and then, presto, out of nowhere, you no longer see that sailboat, presumably it being taken over and overcome by the wind and the waves there. moorhead city, north carolina. once again, hurricane irene still hovering along the north carolina coast. it's making its way north. when it does, it will impact the nation's capital, washington, d.c. already starting to come to a grinding halt in anticipation of hurricane irene. pictures right now kind of ominous look there of the washington monument on that washington mall, not far from the monument there. there was to be a pretty sizable dedication of the martin luther king memorial to take place this weekend. all that now on hold as a result of hurricane irene. people are also throughout the city being relocated. specifically from walter reed medical hospital to the naval hospital in bethesda, maryland. that's where a number of military injured have been for a long time at walter reed, now being relocated in anticipation of this state of emergency now declared by the mayor of the city. athena jones is also live in washington, d.c. athena, the relocation of a number of those veterans, that was to take place anyway just from some restructuring of how the war injured are being treated. but they just accelerated it quite a bit because of hurricane irene, right? >> reporter: that's right. they've been planning to close down walter reed. this is the last transfer -- the last set of patients to be transferred. they were planning on doing it tomorrow. but instead, they moved it up by a day. this all took place this morning between about 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. they transferred 18 patients in 18 ambulances from walter reed to the navy medical center in bethesda. this closing of the hospital has been long planned. they just want to shift the transfer up to get ahead of the storm. several different kinds of inpatient-type people, people who may have been critically injured. i believe there were four critically injured, nine wounded warriors among the people who were transported. as you mentioned, of course, this postponement now of this big deal ceremony that was to take place tomorrow, the dedication of the martin luther king, jr., memorial. this is a memorial that is more than 25 years in the making. there are thousands of people expected to descend on the mall at that memorial site down there by the tidal basin for this dedication. that's going to have to be postponed. but people here in the city are preparing as well as they can for the storm. the city's been handing out handbags. yesterday they distributed 7,000 sandbags and ran out by about 5:00. so they've been distributing more of those sandbags today. i talked earlier with the d.c. fire and ems chief about what people should do to prepare for the storm. let's listen to what he had to say, fred. >> the message for them is make sure they have "d" cell batteries, have food, have water. and get enough cash in the event they need money. if power goes out, the atms might not be working. >> reporter: that point about getting cash was a good one, the kin