Isabel raced into Canada on Friday, dumping less rain and packing less of a punch than expected. By the time it reached the frontier, it had shriveled from a 100 mph hurricane into a 30 mph tropical depression.

Despite its rapid weakening, the storm caused at least 23 deaths and potentially billions of dollars in damage. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown warned that Isabel's flooding threat may be a delayed reaction.

"Because Isabel moved through so quickly, we're going to see some blue skies and people will think it's all over with. But indeed we still have a very good chance of some flash flooding. We will still have some rivers that continue to creep up on their banks and overspill," Brown said.

Gary and Kate Hathaway, who live off a cove on Middle River in Baltimore County, said they would probably need to re-landscape their backyard - ruined by flooding that covered their back porch - and possibly make foundation repairs to their home.

"When it blew in, it landed in our backyard," Kate Hathaway said. "Our house was like a moat."

She said she could hear their pier, as well as pieces from other piers, hitting their home during Thursday's storm.

President Bush has declared federal disasters in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Delaware officials say they probably would make a disaster request next week.

In all, about 6 million people from North Carolina to New York lost power from Isabel - 1.6 million of them in southeastern and central Virginia, where uprooted trees and downed power lines closed hundreds of highways and secondary roads. Debris was scattered everywhere. Long lines spilled around gasoline stations that managed to stay open.

By late Friday, nearly 1.3 million Virginians were still without electricity. A quarter-million people remained without power in North Carolina, and outages were widespread in other Mid-Atlantic states.

Along North Carolina's Outer Banks, where Isabel first made land Thursday, Friday's brilliant sunshine brought the first real glimpse of the destruction. In the town of Kitty Hawk alone, at least three fishing piers crumbled into the surf and about 25 oceanfront homes were destroyed or ripped from their foundations.

On the only highway through the 120-mile barrier islands, long stretches were simply erased, or left pocked with asphalt craters. Near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Isabel's storm surge tore a new inlet that stranded 300 residents and floated at least one house into the Pamlico Sound. Authorities were still working to account for all of the 4,000 coastal residents who refused to evacuate.

Brooks Stalnaker of Harlowe along the Neuse River in Craven County described riding out the storm in a neighbor's house while watching the river destroy his own home.

"The water was banging against the center (window) pane, and I told my wife, 'It can't take much more of this.' About 10 minutes later, she started crying and said, 'Oh my God, there it goes.' We saw it go. It looked like it just collapsed within."