New Jersey and Vermont struggled with their worst flooding in decades on Monday, a day after Hurricane Irene slammed an already soaked region with torrential rain, dragging away homes and submerging neighborhoods underwater.
Spared from Irene's worst fury, New York City went back to work on Monday despite a partially crippled mass transit system and power outages that left 100,000 customers in the metropolitan area without electricity.
More than 12,000 East Coast flights were canceled and it could take three days to restore normal service, the industry group Air Transport Association said.
Overall, some 5.5 million homes and businesses were still without power from North Carolina to Maine, and utilities said it could take days to restore electricity in more accessible areas and weeks in the hardest-hit regions.
Total economic damage could reach $20 billion, Standard & Poor's Senior Economist Beth Ann Bovino said. Hundreds of thousands of homes suffered damage, raising questions about how much would be covered by insurance as many homeowner policies do not cover flood damage.
In Fairfield, New Jersey, about 20 homes near the Passaic River were submerged, some in at least five feet of water. Some people waded chest high or rode canoes down the street, while others just sat and witnessed the flood from their stoops.
"This is the worst flood we have ever had," said Mike Chiafulio, 52, who could only watch as the water continued to rise around his mother's house.
The flooding exceeding what he remembered from notable floods in 1968 and 1984.
"We've never seen anything like this and it's still rising," said Wieslaw Borek, 54, who has lived in the area for 17 years. "People have been forced to leave and get out. There could be looting, you never know."
21 DEAD IN UNITED STATES
At least 21 people died in the United States in addition to three who died in the Dominican Republic and one in Puerto Rico when the storm was still in the Caribbean.
"It's going to take time to recover from a storm of this magnitude," President Barack Obama told reporters in Washington. "The effects are still being felt across much of the country, including in New England and states like Vermont where there's been an enormous amount of flooding.
"I'm going to make sure that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and other agencies are doing everything in their power to help people on the ground."
Vermont officials called it the state's worst flooding since 1927.
Air travel at New York City's three major area airports slowly resumed service, and financial markets operated normally, although volumes were low.
New York City subways returned to service, but many commuter lines to the city and national train carrier Amtrak were disrupted due to tracks that were flooded or blocked with fallen trees and debris.
While Irene failed to produce the devastation many had expected when New York City preemptively ordered unprecedented evacuations and a shutdown of its mass transit system on Saturday, it still left hundreds of thousands of homeowners with flood damage, especially in New Jersey and Vermont.
"I keep being somewhat disappointed by some of the national press that think because Manhattan wasn't hit, everything is fine. We're not Manhattan, but we have human lives here in Vermont, too," Governor Peter Shumlin said after surveying washed out roads and bridges and homes bobbing in the water.
Shumlin visited the Whetstone Studio for the Arts in Brattleboro, an artsy community of 12,000 along the Connecticut River. Gushing water ate away at the building and left its second floor dangling precariously over the flood.
MAJOR FLOODING
Some 5 to 15 inches of rain fell over a 24- to 36-hour period in northeastern states, said David Vallee, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service, creating moderate to major flooding in parts of eastern New York state, the Connecticut River valley and much of northern New Hampshire and Vermont.
"Right now in Vermont, they are still very much in a search-and-rescue to try to figure out where people are cut off and make sure they have everybody located and accounted for," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate told reporters in Washington.
One person was killed after being swept into a river, and at least one of Vermont's historic covered bridges was washed away as Irene's rains sent rivers spilling over their banks.
Many northeastern rivers, already swollen from an unusually wet summer, were still cresting.
Fairfield, New Jersey, home to more than 7,000 people, was in danger of becoming an island as flooding from the Passaic River was expected to surpass that of a memorable flood in 1984, Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura said.
"We are surrounded already," said Gail Dupas, 36, who fled to a hotel after floodwaters on her street reached neck deep. "It's devastating. You have to grab what you can. Anything that's irreplaceable."
In Atlantic City, casinos started re-opening on Monday, creating backups as gamblers sought to check into hotels.
"We are still calculating the total revenue and profit loss from the shutdown but having to close our casinos the weekend before Labor Day in Atlantic City is significant to our business in Atlantic City," said Jennifer Weissman, spokeswoman for the Caesars Group, which owns several casinos there.
The costly cleanup will also further strain budgets of state and local governments, where economies have not recovered from the recession.
"It's a hit but not a fatal hit," said Joseph Seneca, a professor at Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. "The ability of states to respond (to the hurricane) is more constrained," Seneca said.
(Reporting by Christine Kearney in Fairfield, New Jersey; Scott Malone in Brattleboro, Vermont; Karen Pierog in Chicago; Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Lauren Keiper in Boston; Ben Berkowitz, Josh Schneyer and Edith Honan in New York; Tabassum Zakaria and Jeff Mason in Washington; David Warner in Philadelphia; Beth Gladstone in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Matthew Goldstein in Millburn,
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