As of 9am on Monday morning, officials at all of the Atlantic City casinos were preparing to re-open their respective properties after a "lost weekend" stemming from the threat of Hurricane Irene.
ATLANTIC CITY — As of 9am on Monday morning, officials at all of the Atlantic City casinos were preparing to re-open their respective properties after a "lost weekend" stemming from the threat of Hurricane Irene and the state-ordered mandatory evacuation of the seaside town.
Resorts Casino Hotel appeared to be in good shape as of Monday morning, with dealers and officials readying the gaming areas and other parts of the property for a planned noon re-opening.
It has been reported that all Atlantic City casinos would be open by noon today.
With Atlantic City — and the 600 senior citizens who refused to evacuate a high-rise building complex in the resort — making international headlines over the weekend, looking at the Boardwalk Monday morning, one could hardly tell that anything happened at all.
Except for stores up and down the Boardwalk boarded up (most store crews were taking down the plywood Monday morning), and the historic closing of the casinos, not much did actually happen in Atlantic City in relation to the storm.
Except for mass evacuations.
Little beach erosion was present on the Atlantic City beach, and only minor cosmetic damage to the Trump Taj Mahal was visible as of Monday morning.
The beach bars, however, in Atlantic City, were "totalled" according to one eyewitness.
In the surrounding areas, there were still many power and cable TV lines being worked on, with most streets in the region covered with fallen tree limbs — and in some cases a fallen tree.
Apart from all of the billboards on the Atlantic City Expressway being empty, a precaution taken over the weekend by officials, the major roadways into Atlantic City were open and running per normal.
At 10am, CNN reported that at least 21 deaths have been caused by the storm.
"As a much-weakened Irene entered Canada, it left behind parts of the U.S. East Coast still grappling Monday with dangerous flood waters, widespread power outages and stranded residents," according to CNN.
At least 21 deaths in nine states have been blamed on Irene, with the latest victim a woman in Vermont who was swept away in the terrible flood waters in that state. Irene, according to officials, has weakened to "a post-tropical cyclone and headed over eastern Canada on Monday."
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The storm, which has killed several dozen people in the Caribbean, is expected to be a "storm of historic proportions" for the Mid-Atlantic region, including the New Jersey shore, New York City, Delaware, Pennsylvania and possibly Ohio.
The latest reports indicate that the Isaac is "much weaker than Katrina," but that thousands in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi have been forced to evacuate as the tropical storm moves in.
“July and August are the two best months of the year and to lose [last weekend], you can never really get it back. It’s not something that you can recoup. So it’s just gone. And that hurts a lot, but it’s not something we are not going to overcome.”
Late August weekends and Labor Day weekend are when most of the Jersey shore businesses make their profits.
March 2010, a construction crane next to my apartment complex broke lose and we were forced to evacuate in a door to door sweep.
At least 19 deaths over the past 24 hours, from Florida up to Connecticut, have been blamed on Irene-related incidents, according to national officials.
By the time the southern New Jersey shore region woke up Sunday morning, there was a collective sigh of relief as Hurricane Irene made landfall early in the morning, resulting in much less than flooding and damage — and power outages — than initially anticipated.
While Hurricane Irene has everybody signing the wrong words to the 1982 Dexy's Midnight Runners No. 1 hit "Come on Eileen," the following songs have likely come to mind for many in the path of the big storm.
See live photo feed, live Atlantic City Web cam and latest updates on Hurricane Irene and the Jersey shore region.
AP: "The National Weather Service on Thursday issued a hurricane warning for nearly all the state's 130-mile coast on the Atlantic Ocean, and for areas along the Delaware Bay and River from Cape May nearly to Trenton."
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