Splash, Whoosh: Belle Thunders In

City of Cambridge officials met in an emergency session yesterday afternoon to prepare for the after-effects of Hurricane Belle.

City Manager James L. Sullivan asked that his fire, police and civil defense personnel be deployed in full strength to make sure that all Cambridge streets be kept free from water and debris.

"We expect there will be a lot of flooding in the East Cambridge lowlands," Sullivan said. Five inches of rain will be expected by late this morning. "That's more rain than we've had in the last four days," Sullivan said.

Richard McNamara, the city's purchasing agent, said yesterday at the meeting that the city had procured all the saws and sledgehammers needed to clean the streets of felled trees and downed power lines.

Four of the city's hospitals geared themselves to handle the storms' victims, and the city schools are set to provide temporary housing for the homeless.

Meanwhile the city's residents and storeowners braced themselves for the storm, taping windows and bringing down little-used storm shutters to block the hurrican's winds.

Sullivan warned residents with electrical appliances to be wary of trekking down to the inevitably flooded basement because of the chances of suffering electrocution.

City officials also readied a number of auxiliary pumps in case of severe flooding.

While the city made late night preparations, however, the storm showed signs of slackening.

As it rolled up the Northeast coast, the hurricane never met its most damaging expectations.

Although it did cause substantially higher tides threatening northern coast towns, and causing evacuations from Provincetown to Plum Island, Belle's punch seemed to be losing instead of gaining steam.