First responders launched flood and helicopter rescue operations of people trapped in cars and homes in rural areas of New York and Pennsylvania as heavy rain from the Remains of Debby The northeast was hit by severe flooding.
The worst flash floods to date in New York State occurred in villages and hamlets in a predominantly rural area south of the Finger Lakes, not far from the Pennsylvania border.
In Steuben County, which borders Pennsylvania, authorities ordered the evacuation of the towns of Jasper, Woodhull and part of Addison, saying people were trapped because numerous roads had become impassable due to flooding.
In the hamlet of Woodhull, a stream swollen by rain flowed so wildly that the water swamped a bridge. Local resident Stephanie Waters said the debris that hit the bridge included pieces of sheds, branches and uprooted trees.
“It was scary to hear the trees hitting the bridge,” she said.
Fire Chief Timothy Martin said everyone in Woodhull is safe, but “every business in Woodhull is damaged.”
John Anderson said he watched the floodwaters rise quickly, overwhelming some vehicles in Canisteo in Steuben County and nearby Andover in Allegany County. “It’s not a slow rise. It was very violent,” said Anderson, who reported for The Wellsville Sun. He said he watched people’s belongings being swept away by the rushing waters.
In Canisteo, farm owners Cliff and Deb Moss suffered severe damage to their dairy farm of more than five decades. A neighbor’s double trailer drifted from a field into a river during the flood, said their daughter Stacey Urban.
Urban said the catastrophic damage to the community is still becoming clearer and difficult to comprehend.
“They have lost a lot. It is beyond heartbreaking,” Urban said.
Steuben County Manager Jack Wheeler said the storm hit some of the same areas as Tropical Storm Fred three years earlier, and that half a dozen rescue boats were busy rescuing people trapped in vehicles and houses.
About 20 evacuees arrived at a Red Cross shelter set up at a high school, Red Cross spokesman Michael Tedesco said. A second shelter was also set up at another high school in Steuben County.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has declared a state of emergency.
Randy Padfield, director of the Pennsylvania State Emergency Management Agency, said a National Guard helicopter equipped with water rescue capabilities was dispatched to Tioga County because flooding in the region along the border with New York state had caused severe flooding.
Padfield said Tioga authorities have requested assistance from eight to 10 rescue sites, and several boat rescues are also being conducted.
In Potter County, also on the border with New York, the storm destroyed bridges and caused severe damage on Route 49, said Commissioner Bob Rossman.
“As far as I know, the road is as good as gone,” Rossman said. “It’s going to be a very expensive replacement. And it’s one of the county’s main thoroughfares.”
He said one firefighter suffered water-related injuries, but Rossman did not know the extent.
According to PowerOutage.us, more than 150,000 customers were without power in New York and Pennsylvania.
Debbie was downgraded to a tropical depression late Thursday afternoon and was a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. It reached land early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane. Then Debby made landfall in South Carolina for a second time early Thursday morning as a tropical storm.
In Vermont, Governor Phil Scott warned that Debby’s remains could cause severe damage in the state, including already soaked parts of Vermont which were hit by Flash flood twice in the last month. Floods that hit the northeastern part of the state on 30 July Bridges were destroyed, homes damaged and roads washed away in the rural town of Lyndon. It came three weeks after deadly flooding from the remnants of Hurricane BerylPresident Joe Biden has approved Vermont’s emergency declaration.
In an AP interview, National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Chenard said parts of New England and other states will see significant amounts of rain.
Rick Dente, owner of Dente’s Market in Barre, Vermont, tried to protect his store with plastic and sandbags as rain poured down Friday. “There’s not much else you can do,” he said.
Jaqi Kincaid, affected by floods last month in Lyndon, Vermont, said the recent storm destroyed their garage and well, leaving them without water, and knocked down a 120-foot tree and a fence. “We do a lot of this,” she told a reporter, holding her hands together as if in prayer.
Parts of downtown Annapolis, Maryland, were inundated by stormwater on Friday, including the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy. And flash floods hit the town of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, where one of Debby’s early bands spawned a tornado on Tuesday.
Water up to 0.9 meters high flowed into Monks Corner, a town about 48 kilometers north of Charleston, the National Weather Service said. In the surrounding Berkeley County, rescue workers carried out 33 flood rescues.
In Georgia, eight dams broke, half of them in Bulloch County, a rural region northwest of Savannah, said Governor Brian Kemp. At one point, 140 people were in emergency shelters, he said. In addition, some poultry farms in the state were flooded and some cattle died in flooded pastures, officials said.
At least eight people have died in connection with Debby, most of them in car accidents or from fallen trees.
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This story has been updated to correct that Jaqi Kincaid was hit by flooding only once, not twice.
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Sharp and Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Hill reported from Altamont, New York. Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press journalists Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York; Lisa Rathke in Barre, Vermont; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina contributed to this report.
