Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in advance of Hurricane Irene’s expected landfall in Connecticut Sunday, has declared an emergency, giving him additional powers, including ordering evacuations from low-lying areas and shutting down highways.
“I think if I lived in a low-lying area that has ever been evacuated before, I would currently assume you would receive an order of evacuation,” he just told reporters and a television audience in the state armory. “I think that’s the easiest preparatory standard to apply. This is a massive storm, moving slowly, with a lot of wind. the moving slowly portion is particularly important because it’s a very wet storm. I think all of the predictions we’re seeing would call for 10 inches of rain in affected areas and six inches of that, seven inches of that, might fall in a very short period of time, as few as six hours as much as 18 hours. That means flooding.”