New Jersey highways were free Saturday of the usual traffic to the shore and shopping malls and carried, instead, caravans of tree-service companies readying for cleanup duty, ambulances taking patients to safer ground, and buses moving evacuees to shelters as Hurricane Irene approached.
By late afternoon, sheets of rain were dousing the state and winds whipped up whatever wasn't tied down. Some Atlantic City streets were washed over with seawater, and the National Weather Service warned of flooding on most of New Jersey's major rivers.
Several coastal areas were under evacuation orders Friday. Some were mandatory.
Gov. Chris Christie declared the state's largest-ever weather-related mass movement of residents and visitors a success. More than 1 million people had moved off the shore, he said Saturday. The evacuation left vulnerable places like Cape May County, at the state's southern tip, and Long Beach Island, an 18-mile barrier island off the central New Jersey coast, nearly totally empty. And it brought few serious traffic tie-ups.
He joked that people heeded his ``subtle'' advice to get off the shore. At a news conference Friday, Christie had said people should "get the hell off the beach.''
Some residents who refused to leave remained in low-lying coastal areas, Christie said. He said New Jersey Transit buses were being sent to high-rises for senior citizens in Atlantic City, ready to take their residents to shelters.
One of the buildings was Best of Life Park, not far from the Boardwalk. Manager Dorothea Arlotta said all 80 senior citizens who live in the 13-story building were determined to stay. "We're all accustomed to being here, so why should we go on a bus away from our home and end up in some college or high school gymnasium on a cot?'' she asked. "It would be traumatic for us to
leave here and even more traumatic if something happens in unfamiliar surroundings.''
Martha Lewis, office manager at The View at 101, a Boardwalk apartment building for senior citizens, said only a few residents left. The 109 who stayed rejected pleas from the police to get out.
"It's a 10-story building,'' she said. "This was built by Army engineers to withstand a hurricane and now we're going to see if that happens.''
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Much of Point Pleasant Beach in Ocean County had already complied with a mandatory evacuation order. But small groups of residents from here and neighboring towns came to the boardwalk to
watch the storm. The people who were left in the area were largely Irene skeptics who scoffed at reports of Irene's danger.
"You guys, the media, spin it out of control,'' said Bob Certo of nearby Brick Township, who wore his bathing suit and a T-shirt for a drenching walk along the beach as rain beat down all around. "You make it sound like Katrina.''
Certo predicted it wouldn't be so bad. "They're closing the bars at 6 tonight,'' he joked. ``Now that's a catastrophe!''
More than 5,000 people were in shelters across the state Saturday, the governor said. The American Red Cross was telling people that they had limited space and supplies in shelters. So, after days of officials urging people to leave coastal areas, the Red Cross was asking those who remained to consider staying put.
By Saturday morning, the state bused 1,200 people in from shore communities to the Sun National Bank Center in Trenton as a staging area. By early afternoon Saturday, they had all been moved to shelters elsewhere.
While the center was open, conditions were spartan. Yavor Tenev and a group of friends from Bulgaria were spending their summer working in the resort community of Ocean City for the summer and had nowhere else to go when the evacuations began. "There are a lot of people in there,'' he said, as he and his friends sat outside on a curb enjoying the last of the dry weather to come for a few days.
The group of 20-somethings were moved from a shelter in Woodbine to Trenton and arrived just before 2 a.m. Friday, but said there were no cots set up or blankets available so they could sleep. There was also no television, Internet or radios available. That mean they weren't sure what was going on with the storm.
Rowan University in Glassboro scrapped plans for move-in day for first year students and instead welcomed 1,084 evacuees, largely from Atlantic City. Students already on campus -- most of them athletes -- were told to go home. Some of those who could not get out joined a corps of volunteers, playing soccer with kids, unfolding cots and serving sandwiches.
Supermarkets were making it easy, putting bottled water at the front of the store -- if they still had any. They were facing runs on provisions like potato chips.
Around the state's suburbs, many bird feeders had been taken down and portable outdoor basketball hoops leaned on the ground as precautions against high winds.
Inland towns like Pennsauken, near Philadelphia, declared states of emergency to keep traffic off the roads Saturday night.
The Oyster Creek nuclear power plant near the shore in Lacey Township was partly powering down Saturday afternoon. Officials said that if winds were strong enough, it would shut down entirely.
And some people tried to make the most of their evacuation.
Terry Geck of Galloway, near Atlantic City, hit the road at 6 a.m. Saturday with his wife, 12-year-old daughter, dog Roxie and bunny Pewter and drove roughly 300 miles to Ithaca in upstate New York for a two-night stay. "They said we might get as much as 15 inches of rain. I said,
`No, not happening,''' Geck said.
The family decided to check out Ithaca's gorges and Cornell University instead of dealing with flooding and the possibility of a tree limb crashing into their home as they slept. They plan to head back to New Jersey on Monday.
Public transportation around the came to a halt by midday Saturday, as trains stopped running and incoming flights were suspended at the New York area airports, including Newark Liberty.
Atlantic City casinos were closed for only the third time since gaming began there in 1978. The only other times it happened was for Hurricane Gloria in 1985 and a state government shutdown five years ago.
Forecasters said the storm would be most intense in the state by early Sunday, most likely with its center just off the shore. High winds were expected to be felt across New Jersey. In coastal areas, they could be hurricane-force or nearly so, perhaps over 70 mph. And heavy rains -- 6 to 10 inches -- could cause floods on many of the state's already swollen waterways.
Storm surges of 3 to 6 feet were expected along the seacoast and the Raritan and Delaware Bays. The effect could be even bigger if the storm arrives, as expected, in conjunction with an abnormally
high tide around dawn Sunday.
Tornadoes were also possible.
Mohamed Kamal, owner of Louie's Pizza, less than a block from the beach in Cape May, went to check on his shop Saturday morning.
He planned to evacuate. But the weather seemed OK, so he opened his business. Most of the city was emptied, but he was a hero to the few who stayed. People were ordering two or three pizzas, he said.
"People are very happy I'm open,'' he said. "I'm glad to make everybody happy.'' He was planning to open at noon Sunday, figuring the worst of the storm would be over then.
