BARRE, Vt. (AP) — The remnants of Debby raced northward with heavy rain that caused flooding and evacuations on Friday in western New York, creating new misery after causing at least eight deaths over a multi-day journey of destruction up the East Coast.
The worst of the flash flooding so far in New York was occurring in villages and hamlets in a largely rural area south of the Finger Lakes, not far from the Pennsylvania border.
Two communities and part of a third were under evacuation orders, and first responders launched rescues as people became trapped and floodwaters made multiple roads impassable in Steuben County, south of Rochester. County officials ordered the evacuation of the towns of Jasper, Woodhull and part of Addison.
Steuben County manager Jack Wheeler said the storm was hitting the same areas of his county Tropical Storm Fred three years earlier, and that a half-dozen swift water rescue steams were actively retrieving people trapped in vehicles and homes.
John Anderson said he watched the floodwaters come up quickly, overwhelming some vehicles in Canisteo, in Steuben County, and in Andover, in Allegany County. “It’s not a slow rise. It’s been very fierce,” said Anderson, who was providing dispatches to The Wellsville Sun. He said he watched people’s belongings from basements being carried away by the raging water. “It’s been scary.”
In Woodhull, also in Steuben County, Town Supervisor Scott Grant was relying on phone calls and news reports to keep up with the emergency, unable to leave his house because of flooded roadways. “It looks like it hit our Main Street again, it’s not pretty,” he said.
Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director Randy Padfield said a National Guard helicopter with aquatic rescue capability was sent to Tioga County on Friday afternoon because flooding conditions had become severe in the region that runs along the New York state line.
Padfield said Tioga officials have asked for help with eight to 10 rescue locations, and there are also multiple boat-based rescues being conducted.
In Vermont, Gov. Phil Scott warned of serious damage in the state, including already drenched parts of Vermont that were hit by flash flooding twice last month. Flooding that slammed the northeastern part of the state on July 30 knocked out bridges, destroyed and damaged homes, and washed away roads in the rural town of Lyndon. It came three weeks after deadly flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Beryl. President Joe Biden approved Vermont’s emergency declaration.
Rick Dente, who owns Dente’s Market in Barre, Vermont, worked to protect his business with plastic and sandbags as the rain poured down on Friday. “There isn’t a whole lot else you can do,” he said.
Jaqi Kincaid, hit by flooding last month in Lyndon, Vermont, said the previous storm knocked out her garage and well, so they have no water, and felled a 120-foot (36-meter) tree and took down fencing. “We’re doing a lot of this,” she told a reporter, holding her hands together as if in prayer.
Stormwater swamped parts of downtown Annapolis, Maryland, including at the U.S. Naval Academy campus Friday. And flash flooding hit the South Carolina town of Moncks Corner, where one of Debby’s early bands unleashed a tornado on Tuesday.
Up to 3 feet (0.9 meters) of fast-moving water rushed into Monks Corner, a city about 30 miles (48 kilometers) north of Charleston, the National Weather Service said. Across the surrounding Berkeley County, emergency crews made 33 high water rescues.
In Georgia, there were eight dam breaches with half of them occurring in Bulloch County, a rural region northwest of Savannah, Gov. Brian Kemp said. At one point, 140 people were in shelters, he said. Also in the state, some poultry facilities were flooded and some cattle were lost in flooded pastures, officials said.
Debby was downgraded to a tropical depression late Thursday afternoon, and was a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. It made landfall early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane. Then, Debby made a second landfall early Thursday in South Carolina as a tropical storm.
By 11 a.m. Friday, Debby was centered between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Albany, New York, moving northeast at a rapid 37 mph (59 kph), the National Hurricane Center said.
At least eight people have died related to Debby. The latest was identified as Hilda Windsor Jones, a 78-year-old woman who was home alone when a tree fell during the storm Thursday night, splitting open her mobile home in North Carolina, the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office said.
Jon Porter, Accuweather’s chief meteorologist, warned that Debby could present an increased threat of tornadoes and flooding, including along the busy I-95 corridor.
“There will be multiple threats in Debby’s final chapter, and it’s a dangerous one,” Porter said.