Power Outages Could Last Weeks

Irene is gone, but her wrath is still being felt by the millions of people up and down the East Coast without power. At the storm’s peak, 7 million people were without power, and about 5 million remain in the dark now. Blackouts could last weeks, officials said Monday, citing an enormous pile-up of service requests and the difficult travelling conditions left by falling trees and flooding. In terms of electric outages, Irene was more powerful than the last hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. in 2008. About 600,000 have no power in Connecticut alone, the biggest blackout in the state’s history.