NY airports and subway reopen, limited East Coast service (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York-area airports reopened on Monday as U.S. airlines gradually restored more flights to their operations throughout the Northeast that were halted by Hurricane Irene.

New York subways also resumed service, gradually at first, after weekend closure, as did passenger rail Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Philadelphia.

Amtrak service north of Philadelphia was canceled due to flooding, track debris and continued electrical power problems, the railroad said. All Northeast service was shut down on Sunday.

Commuter rail service from Washington to Boston was uneven as most lines struggled to offer full or even partial schedules due to flooding and power outages.

Airlines would need a day to reposition aircraft flown out of the region ahead of the storm, leaving Tuesday as their target for returning normal service to the storm-struck region.

John F Kennedy and LaGuardia in New York and Newark in New Jersey -- biggest U.S. aviation hub with 100 million passengers annually -- were closed on Saturday as the storm bore down on the mid-Atlantic.

The three airports handle about 6,000 flights per day total.

JFK and Newark opened to arrivals at 6 a.m. EDT and will begin handling departures at noon. LaGuardia would open to both arrivals and departures at 7 a.m., the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.

Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston were all open as well.

Airlines began winding down schedules on Friday in advance of Irene. They canceled more than 12,500 flights, including 1,300 on Monday, according to the online tracking service Flightaware.com.

Delta Air Lines include US Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines, and JetBlue Airways were most affected.

Some repositioning flights heading to open airports carried passengers while others were empty. Carriers had to reassemble flight crews and ground staff.

(Reporting by John Crawley; Editing by Derek Caney)

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LA mayor: Freeway to reopen starting at 11:30 a.m. (AP)

LOS ANGELES – A 10-mile stretch of one of the nation's busiest freeways will reopen beginning late Sunday morning because bridge work on the roadway was completed 16 hours ahead of schedule, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.

There have been no major problems since Interstate 405 was shut down at midnight Friday to allow for the partial demolition of a bridge, despite warnings of a "Carmageddon" of traffic jams.

At a Sunday morning news conference, Villaraigosa said workers would start reopening the freeway at about 11:30 a.m. The 405 was expected to be fully reopened as early as midafternoon.

He praised contractors for working so quickly and thanked city residents for heeding calls to stay off the roads. The mayor also gave credit to news outlets for spreading word about the closure, which had been planned to last for 53 hours.

Crews finished demolition work on the bridge at about 7 a.m., toppling two massive pillars.

For weeks, authorities warned people that driving as usual this weekend could trigger what's been hyped as Carmageddon — an event that could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of Los Angeles.

But the fears of epic traffic jams dissipated with only light weekend traffic.

"It was just so nice. It took me actually less time to get to work than it would have on a normal weekend," said Jenn Tanaguchi, a hairstylist who has to drive from downtown to her job at a salon in Brentwood. "People were telling me that i would have to leave two hours early, that everything would be blocked out. But there were no problems. It was such a nice ride."

The California Department of Transportation was preparing to reopen the freeway in phases. The off-ramps would open first, then the freeway itself, followed by the on-ramps, the mayor said.

The 405 could be fully reopened as early as 3 p.m., according to Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Dave Sotero.

Demolition work previously was expected to be completed by 2 a.m. Monday, followed by cleanup and reopening of the freeway at 5 a.m., with on-ramps and connectors all reopened by an hour later.

Project contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West faced a $6,000 fine in each direction for every 10 minutes of delay in getting the freeway reopened, according to the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. That's a total of $72,000 an hour.

Villaraigosa said Saturday workers have made "great progress" on demolition of the half-century-old Mulholland Bridge. Powerful machines with long booms hammered away at the south side of the span, which was being removed to allow construction of an additional freeway lane. The plan was to leave the north-side lanes standing until the south side is rebuilt. Another closure will be required in the future to demolish the north side.

The project picked up its apocalyptic name when Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said at an early June new conference that "this doesn't need to be a Carmageddon" if people avoided driving.

The drumbeat of warnings about the weekend triggered an instant industry of businesses trying to capitalize. JetBlue offered special flights from Burbank in the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, with seats for the short hop costing just $4 or $5.

A cycling group saw that as an opportunity for a race. The cyclists started their ride 90 minutes before the flight's departure time to simulate the time that passengers would have to arrive at Burbank. Another member of the group took the flight and all were to meet at a Long Beach park.

Cyclist Stephan Andranian said it took the bikers one hour and 34 minutes to complete the ride from Burbank to Long Beach, largely following the Los Angeles River. Flight passenger Joe Anthony's total travel time including cab ride from Long Beach Airport to the park was just over 2 1/2 hours.

"We want to show that using a bike in LA is not only possible but that it can be faster than other modes of transportation," Andranian said.

Some trespassers have crept on the 405.

Officials report a bicyclist made it onto the road before getting escorted off by police, a man was cited for driving on the roadway, several people were found putting up a large sign, and a man was caught scaling a perimeter fence.

Many mocked the frenzied language surrounding the closure, especially on Twitter, where Hollywood's comedians had at their hometown.

"How's everyone coping with this terrifying apocalyptic nightmare of having to ... oh my god ... stay home with your family?!!!" Bill Maher wrote.

Albert Brooks took a more philosophical in his Tweet: "If we would close the freeways every weekend we would have a great society."

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Los Alamos lab prepares to reopen as fire threat eases (Reuters)

SANTA FE, N.M (Reuters) – The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory has ended a state of emergency and was taking small steps on Saturday toward reopening as the threat from a record New Mexico wildfire subsided.

But highlighting the need for continued vigilance, a squirrel sparked a small blaze on lab property on Saturday when it touched a transformer. That fire, which measured about an acre, was quickly extinguished, the lab said in a statement.

Officials have yet to set any reopening date for Los Alamos, but with the risk to the laboratory and adjacent town mostly passed, lab director Charles McMillan said employees were slowly being prepared for reopening the lab.

"We've assessed the risk to the lab to be lower so we've changed the status based on that assessment," McMillan told a news conference.

The Las Conchas Fire consumed an additional 9,000 acres on Friday, and now stands at 113,734 acres, burning primarily toward the north, and further onto the western flank and into the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

A firefighting force of 1,600 people working to douse the flames has now managed to carve containment lines around 6 percent of the fire's perimeter on its eastern and southern flanks, keeping the blaze from invading the lab complex.

Now ranked as the largest wild-lands blaze ever in New Mexico, the fire surpasses the previous record set in 2003 by the 94,000-acre Dry Lakes Fire in the Gila National Forest.

By comparison, the largest blaze in Arizona, the Wallow Fire, has blackened well over 500,000 acres since it erupted May 29 of this year. It is still burning.

At one point earlier this week, the fire's edge was reported just 2 miles from a collection of about 20,000 metal drums containing plutonium-contaminated clothing and other waste stored on a corner of the 36-square-mile lab property.

Nuclear watchdog groups and some citizens had raised concerns about the fire possibly unleashing residual ground contamination left from decades of experimental explosions and waste disposal in the area.

FOCUS ON OTHER AREAS

The first employees to return to the Los Alamos lab, one of the nation's top nuclear arms production facilities, would be checking on the facilities, including air handling systems to be sure there was no clogging from the smoke, and bringing IT systems back on line, McMillan said.

A lab spokesman, Kevin Roark, said select employees would start returning on Saturday and that process would continue throughout the week.

McMillan said the status change at the lab would allow resources to be moved away from Los Alamos to focus on other areas, particularly in the north of the state where the fire continues to grow.

Officials have set no time for lifting evacuation orders for the town of Los Alamos, whose 10,000 residents fled earlier this week. Thick smoke lingered over the area.

On Thursday, the blaze had encroached on an Indian reservation to the north, the Santa Clara Pueblo, burning at least 6,000 acres of tribal land, including a number of sacred sites.

But the leading western edge of the blaze remained about 6 miles from the nearest populated areas of the pueblo on Friday, fire officials said at the time.

Firefighters on Saturday were conducting burnout operations to protect cultural and historical sites near the reservation, and archeologists were working with fire crews to minimize damage to sensitive areas, fire information officials said.

Thunderstorms and gusty winds expected on Saturday could spark new blazes or pose a hazard to firefighters, while downdrafts could help the fire spread, they added.

About 150 miles to the south, a separate wildfire caused by lightning blazed in and around the Mescalero Apache Reservation. By Friday morning, the Donaldson Complex Fire had burned some 90,000 acres, including several thousand acres on tribal land, but was 30 percent contained on Saturday, authorities said.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Greg McCune)

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