United States: Storm Henri still deprives 60,000 inhabitants of electricity, New York holds its breath

Henri loses power. After have deprived some 110,000 inhabitants of electricity northeastern United States Sunday – more than 72,000 people in the state of Rhode Island, 30,000 in Connecticut, and 10,000 in Massachusetts according to the site poweroutage.us – the hurricane, downgraded to a tropical storm on Sunday, seems to be calming down.

This Monday morning, some 60,000 residents of the northeastern United States are still without electricity (50,000 in Rhode Island and more than 10,000 in Connecticut). However, the situation appears to be under control and the storm less threatening.

Sunday, the country was on the alert. At the end of the afternoon, US President Joe Biden called on residents to guard against the risk of flooding and to anticipate a possible lack of food and means of communication.

Henri hit the American coasts near Rhode Island at 12:15 p.m. (6:15 p.m. Paris time), according to the US National Weather Service. In its 5 p.m. bulletin (11 p.m. in France), the American Hurricane Monitoring Center, NHC, said the storm was blowing with winds of up to 65 km / h, down from 120 km / h the day before observed at sea.

This bulletin predicted that Henri will move less quickly over the next few hours and is likely to “stagnate near the border between the State of New York and Connecticut (overnight Sunday to Monday)”.

” We had a narrow escape “

The northeastern United States is usually relatively untouched by such storms, which instead affect states further south such as Florida or Louisiana. With warming of the ocean surface, hurricanes are getting more powerful, scientists say. In particular, they pose an increasingly significant risk to coastal communities that are victims of wave-submersion phenomena, amplified by rising sea levels.

While Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee said there was “significant flooding” in some areas, initial reactions from some residents seem to indicate that the storm was not as bad as expected. “We escaped narrowly,” said James Kiker, a Newport resident, saying he saw “little damage” in his area, with a few broken branches.