Toppled Trees, Power Outages Left Behind in Irene's Wake

Irene showed up as a hurricane, became a tropical storm and left behind a trail of soggy destruction today, knocking down trees, snapping power lines and dumping several inches of rain on a hunkered-down city.

Cranston was spared the worst, though, and there have been no major reports of severe flooding, although a section of Edgewood was evacuated this morning as the storm pushed through, bringing a substantial storm surge along with it.

Councilman Robert Pelletier, the City Council's public safety liason, said that the city is now "mostly quiet" and the bulk of the damage was fallen trees and the subsequent power outages.

At the height of the storm, nearly 300,000 people were without power across Rhode Island. In Cranston, outages peaked at about 15,000 out of the 35,000 National Grid customers in Cranston, which means more than half the city was without power.

There are still more than 14,000 people without power, although many sections of the city are enjoy electricity tonight.

We'll be fanning out across the city tomorrow with photos and stories from people who weathered the storm.