Slow-moving Tropical Storm Debby Bringing Torrential Rains, Major Flood Threat to Southeast U.S.

HORSESHOE BEACH, Florida – Tropical Storm Debby moved ominously toward some of the most historic cities in the American South and was expected to bring prolonged rain and flooding throughout the day Tuesday. after crashing in Florida and leading to the rescue of hundreds of flooded homes.

The record rainfall from the storm that killed at least five people was causing flash floodswith up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.

The center of the storm was in southeast Georgia on Tuesday morning, with maximum sustained winds near 45 mph (75 kph) and moving northeast near 7 mph (11 kph). The center is expected to move off the Georgia coast later Tuesday. Some strengthening is forecast for Wednesday and Thursday as Debby moves offshore before moving inland Thursday over South Carolina.

“Hang in,” Van Johnson, mayor of Savannah, Georgia, told residents in a live social media broadcast Monday night. “Expect it to be a difficult day” on Tuesday, he said.

More than 6 inches of rain fell Monday at the Savannah airport, but more rain fell overnight and continued into Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, among other coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina. Both Savannah and Charleston announced curfews from Monday night through Tuesday.

In South Carolina, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debbie a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing on Monday.

In addition to the curfew, the city of Charleston’s emergency plan includes sandbags for residents, opening parking lots so residents can park their cars above floodwaters, and an online mapping system that shows which roads are closed. due to floods.

In Edisto Beach, South Carolina, a tornado ripped through the town Monday night, damaging trees, homes and downing power lines, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office said on social media. No injuries were immediately reported, officials said.

The weather service continued issuing tornado warnings through Monday night for parts of the state, including Hilton Head Island.

Just outside Hilton Head Island, musician Nick Poulin wasn’t too worried about Debby since his gear was inside and he made sure his car wasn’t parked under trees so it wouldn’t get hit by falling branches.

“I was born and raised here, so we had a lot of storms,” he said. “It’s usually not as bad as people think.”

Debby made landfall on the Florida Gulf Coast early Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane. a tropical storm and is moving slowly, drenching and bringing areas of catastrophic flooding to parts of eastern Georgia, the South Carolina Coastal Plain and southeastern North Carolina through Wednesday.

About 500 people were rescued Monday from flooded homes in Sarasota, Florida, a beach town popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department said in a social media post. North of Sarasota, Manatee County officials said in a news release that 186 people had been rescued from the floodwaters.

“We basically had double the amount of rain predicted,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said on social media.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that the state could continue to see threats as waterways north of the border fill and flow south.

“It’s a wet, very saturated storm,” he said. “When they crest and the water comes down from Georgia, it will be something we will be on alert for, not just today, but throughout the next week.”

Five people were killed by the storm on Monday night, including a truck driver on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area after he lost control of his trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cabin fell into the water below. Sheriff’s office divers located the driver, a 64-year-old man from Mississippi, in the cab 40 feet below the surface, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

A 13-year-old boy died Monday morning after a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, Florida, according to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office. In Dixie County, east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads Sunday night.

In south Georgia, a 19-year-old man died Monday afternoon when a large tree fell onto the porch of a Moultrie home, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

More than 140,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia as of Tuesday morning, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp. Nearly 12,000 more were without power in South Carolina on Tuesday morning.

More than 1,600 flights were also canceled across the country on Monday and more than 550 flights were canceled on Tuesday, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware. with.

President Joe Biden approved a request from South Carolina’s governor for an emergency declaration, following earlier approval of a similar request from Florida. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he asked Biden to issue a pre-emptive federal emergency declaration to speed up the flow of federal aid to the state.

vice president Kamala Harris postponed a campaign stop scheduled for Thursday in Savannah.

North Carolina is also in a state of emergency after Governor Roy Cooper declared it in a executive order signed Monday. Several areas of the state’s coast are prone to floodingsuch as Wilmington and the Outer Banks, according to the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.

North Carolina and South Carolina have experienced three catastrophic floods from tropical systems in the past nine years, all causing more than a billion dollars in damage.

In 2015, moisture-fueled rains when Hurricane Joaquin passed far offshore caused massive flooding. In 2016, floods from Hurricane Mateus caused 24 deaths in both states and rivers broke peak records. These records were broken in 2018 with Hurricane Florencewhich broke precipitation records in both Carolinas, flooded many of the same locations, and was responsible for 42 deaths in North Carolina and nine in South Carolina.

___

Martin reported from Atlanta. AP journalists Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida; Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Darlene Superville and Will Weissert in Washington, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.