MIAMI (Reuters/AP) - Hurricane Irene weakened as it pushed into New York on Sunday and was downgraded to tropical storm status, the National Hurricane Center said.After battering the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast with hurricane power, Irene's winds dropped to 65 mph/100 kmh by 9am edt, the center said.On Saturday, Hurricane Irene opened its assault on the Eastern Seaboard by lashing the North Carolina coast with wind as strong as 115mph (185kph) and pounding shoreline homes with waves.The centre of the storm passed over North Carolina's Outer Banks for its official landfall just after 7:30am. EDT (1130 GMT). The hurricane's vast reach traced the East Coast from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to just below Cape Cod. Tropical storm conditions battered Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, with the worst to come.Irene weakened slightly, with sustained winds down to 85mph (137kph) from about 100 (160kph) a day earlier, making it a Category 1, the least threatening on the scale. The National Hurricane Centre reported gusts of 115mph (185kph) and storm-surge waves as high as 7 feet (2 meters).The first death from the storm was reported in Nash County, North Carolina, outside Raleigh, where emergency officials said a man was crushed by a large limb that blew off a tree.Hurricane-force winds arrived near Jacksonville, North Carolina, at first light, and wind-whipped rain lashed the resort town of Nags Head. Tall waves covered the beach, and the surf pushed as high as the backs of some of the houses and hotels fronting the strand."There's nothing you can do now but wait. You can hear the wind and it's scary," said Leon Reasor, who rode out the storm in the Outer Banks town of Buxton. "Things are banging against the house. I hope it doesn't get worse, but I know it will. I just hate hurricanes."At least two piers on the Outer Banks were wiped out, the roof of a car dealership was ripped away, and a hospital in Morehead City that was running on generators. In all, more than 400,000 people were without power on the East Coast.Susan Kinchen, who showed up at a shelter at a North Carolina high school with her daughter and 5-month-old granddaughter, said she felt unsafe in their trailer. Kinchen, from Louisiana, said she was reminded of how Hurricane Katrina peeled the roof of her trailer there almost exactly six years ago, on August 29, 2005."I'm not taking any chances," she said.In the Northeast, unaccustomed to tropical weather of any strength, authorities made plans to bring the basic structures of travel grinding to a halt. The New York City subway, the largest in the United States, was making its last runs at noon, and all five area airports were accepting only a few final hours' worth of flights.The New York transit system carries 5 million people on weekdays, fewer on weekends, and has never been shut for weather. Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down. Washington declared a state of emergency, days after it had evacuated for an earthquake.New York City ordered 300,000 people to leave low-lying areas, including the Battery Park City neighbourhood at the southern tip of Manhattan, the beachfront Rockaways in Queens and Coney Island in Brooklyn. But it was not clear how many people would get out, or how they would do it."How can I get out of Coney Island?" said Abe Feinstein, 82, who has lived for half a century on the eighth floor of a building overlooking the boardwalk. "What am I going to do? Run with this walker?"