LUCAMA, N.C. — Tropical Storm Debby spawned damaging tornadoes that killed one person, flooded a town and temporarily shut down part of Interstate 95 early Thursday as it blew into North Carolina after making a second landfall overnight.
The storm was expected to churn up the East Coast, where residents as far north as Vermont could get several inches of flooding rain this weekend.
The National Hurricane Center says Debby came ashore early Thursday near Bulls Bay, South Carolina. Debby first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It was still a tropical storm Thursday morning, with maximum sustained winds at 50 mph (80 kph).
Debby wasn’t done flooding parts of eastern South Carolina and southeast North Carolina, and an additional 3 to 9 inches (8 to 23 centimeters) of rain is possible as the storm moves north, raising concerns of flash floods in mountainous areas of Virginia and West Virginia.
Debby also could bring more tornadoes Thursday in parts of North Carolina and Virginia, forecasters said. At least three tornadoes were reported overnight in North Carolina, including one around 3 a.m. that damaged at least four houses, a church and a school in Wilson County east of Raleigh, county officials said.
One person died in a home damaged by the tornado in Lucama, North Carolina, Wilson County spokesman Stephen Mann said in an email. No further details on the person were immediately provided.
Theresa Richardson hunkered down with her husband and granddaughter in the closet of their Lucama home as the tornado tore through about a mile away.
Debris struck the house. And they could hear the roof of nearby Springfield Middle School being ripped off. The home of one of her granddaughter’s friends was destroyed from the tornado.
Richardson said this wasn’t the first time the area was struck by a tornado - her neighbors call the road they live on “Tornado Alley.”
The superintendent of Wilson County Schools confirmed damage at Springfield Middle School, where sections of the walls and roof of the 6th and 7th grade halls are gone or compromised.
“It was heartbreaking to see the school right after the event,” Superintendent Lane Mills said in a statement.
Meanwhile, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Lucama, deputies in Bladenboro had posted photos of a patrol car damaged by a tree as well as roads that had been washed out. Standing water a few feet deep covered parts of the tiny North Carolina town.
Many of the townspeople helped fill sandbags on Wednesday before up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) of floodwaters backed into the downtown overnight. Working in the dark, the town administrator, commissioners and residents helped businesses save as much merchandise as possible, Police Chief Kevin Rouse said.
When the sun came up, water could still be seen bubbling out of manhole covers in the town of about 1,600. Debby may not have been the worst storm to come through the region, but Rouse said he watches every storm wearily.
“Even though it wasn’t a severe, major hurricane you still had a lot of water. You start getting 6, 12, 20 inches of rainfall, that’s going to cripple you,” Rouse said.
In Huger, northeast of Charleston, South Carolina, Gene Taylor waited for the water to drain from his house along French Quarter Creek as high tide passed. He had learned the hard way to begin moving his belongings up or out of his home last week as Debby approached. Taylor figures this is the fourth time he has had floodwater in his home in the past nine years.
“We got caught with our pants down in 2015. We waited, didn’t think the water was going to come up as quick. But it did, and it caught us. We couldn’t even get the vehicles out,” Taylor said.
At least four dams were breached northwest of Savannah in Georgia’s Bulloch County, but no deaths had been reported, authorities said. More than 75 people were rescued from floodwaters in the county, said Corey Kemp, director of emergency management, and about 100 roads were closed.
“We’ve been faced with a lot of things we’ve never been faced with before,” Bulloch County Commission Chairman Roy Thompson said. “I’m 78-plus years old and have never seen anything like this before in Bulloch County. It’s amazing what has happened, and amazing what is going to continue to happen until all these waters get out of here.”
The neighbors on Tappan Zee Drive in suburban Pooler, west of Savannah, took Debby’s drenching with a painful dose of déjà vu. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew overflowed a nearby canal and flooded several of the same homes.
Located roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) inland from the Atlantic Ocean, with no creeks or rivers nearby, the neighborhood doesn’t seem like a high-risk location for tropical flooding. But residents say drainage problems have plagued their street for well over a decade, despite local government efforts to fix them.
Debby also dumped rain on communities all the way up to the Great Lakes and New York and New Jersey. Moisture from the tropical storm strengthened another system Tuesday evening, which caused strong thunderstorms, according to weather service meteorologist Scott Kleebauer.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service has confirmed that two tornadoes touched down in northeast Ohio when a series of severe thunderstorms roared through the region Tuesday afternoon. The storms caused extensive damage and knocked out power out to hundreds of thousands of residents for several hours. No injuries were reported in either tornado.
As much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of New Jersey in less than four hours, and New York City officials warned of potential flash flooding, flying drones with loudspeakers in some neighborhoods to tell people in basement apartments to be ready to flee. Multiple water rescues were reported in and near the city.
All that water has to drain out to sea. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said his state was just entering Act 2 of a three-act play, after more than 60 homes were damaged but roads and water systems were without significant problems.
The final act may come next week if enough rain falls upstream in North Carolina to cause major flooding along rivers as they flow to the Atlantic Ocean.
A state of emergency was in effect for both North Carolina and Virginia. Maryland issued a state of preparedness declaration that coordinates preparations without declaring an emergency.
At least seven people have died due to the storm, five of them in traffic accidents or from fallen trees. The sixth death involved a 48-year-old man in Gulfport, Florida, whose body was recovered after his anchored sailboat partially sank.
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Associated Press contributors include Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Russ Bynum in Pooler, Georgia; Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, New Jersey; Jeff Martin in Atlanta, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington.
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