Washington:
The toll from Hurricane Irene has risen to at least seven, including an 11-year-old boy in Virginia and a 55-year-old surfer in Florida, emergency officials said on Saturday.
Four fatalities were in North Carolina, where Irene made landfall early Saturday morning with 85 mile (140 kilometer) per hour winds, before heading up the eastern US seaboard on course for a rare direct hit on New York city.
The child died on Saturday when a tree fell on his apartment in Newport News, a city on a coastal peninsula in Virginia, while the surfer died Friday when he took to his board in treacherously high surf off the Florida coast.
"There was an 11-year-old boy pinned under the tree and he was pronounced dead at the scene," Newport News city spokeswoman Anita Walters told AFP, adding that the boy's mother made it out of the apartment unharmed.
Virginia emergency officials confirmed a second fatality in the state but did not know the circumstances.
North Carolina emergency management spokesman Brad Deen said a fifth fatality had been reported in the state but it couldn't be confirmed.
"We're confirming four," Deen told AFP, adding that one was a man who had a heart attack on Friday while nailing plywood over his windows in preparation for the hurricane.
Two people were killed in separate driving accidents in North Carolina, while the fourth fatality in the state was a man struck by a falling tree limb while outside feeding his animals, the official said.
Coroners were still to confirm the cause of death of the surfer who died in Florida, state emergency official William Booher told AFP.
"We had sent out an advisory recommending everyone check beach reports and use an abundance of caution before entering the water," Booher said.
The hurricane is on track to careen up the east coast late Saturday and Sunday, passing over or near Washington, New York and Boston, a densely populated urban corridor home to some 65 million people.