MEAN IRENE

President Barack Obama on Sunday will visit Paterson, N.J., where currents of the Passaic River swept through the city of 150,000, flooding part of downtown and forcing the emergency evacuations of hundreds of people who likely underestimated the storm’s ferocity.

National Guard helicopters ferried supplies to mountain communities in Vermont that had no electricity, no telephone service and limited transportation in or out. Elsewhere, the massive cleanup effort was already well under way at homes, farms and businesses across the flood-scarred landscape.

Repair estimates indicated that the storm would almost certainly rank among the nation’s costliest natural disasters. Even as rivers finally stopped rising in Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut, many communities and farm areas remained flooded, and officials said complete damage estimates were nowhere in sight.

An estimate released immediately after Irene by the Kinetic Analysis Corp., a Maryland-based consulting firm that uses computer models to estimate storm losses, put the damage at $7.2 billion in eight states and Washington, D.C.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/weary-residents-begin-post-irene-cleanup-in-us-northeast/article2150300/