The Latest: Debby makes landfall again as tropical storm soaks South Carolina
As Debby batters South Carolina, heavy rains from the tropical storm are also expected to cause flooding in parts of the Mid-Atlantic states and the Northeast through Saturday morning. Meanwhile, residents as far away as the Great Lakes and New Jersey have also experienced heavy rains associated with the slow-moving tropical storm.
Here’s the latest news:
Tropical Storm Debby is headed toward the East Coast, where it made its second landfall. The National Hurricane Center reports that Debby made landfall early Thursday morning near Bulls Bay, South Carolina.
The storm is expected to continue moving inland, spreading heavy rains and possible flooding into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast by the weekend. Debby first made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday along Florida’s Gulf Coast.
As Debby batters South Carolina, the tropical storm’s heavy rains are also expected to cause flooding in parts of the Mid-Atlantic states and the Northeastern United States through Saturday morning.
At least four dams have been breached by floodwaters in Bulloch County, northwest of Savannah, Georgia, but no fatalities have been reported so far, authorities said at a news conference Wednesday.
More than 75 people have been rescued from floodwaters in the county, said Corey Kemp, the county’s emergency management director. About 100 roads are closed, he said.
“We’re faced with a lot of things that we’ve never faced before,” said commission chairman Roy Thompson. “I’m 78 and older and I’ve never seen anything like this in Bulloch County. It’s amazing what happened, and amazing what’s going to continue to happen until all this water is gone.”
Gene Taylor waited for a few inches of water to flow out of his house Wednesday afternoon as the tide came in at his home on French Quarter Creek, just off the Cooper River in Huger and about 15 miles northeast of Charleston.
It’s the fourth time his house has flooded in the last nine years, and this time he’s heeded the warnings and moved everything upstairs or outside.
“To save everything, we’ve learned from the past that it’s better to be prepared for the worst. And unfortunately, I think we’ve had it,” Taylor said. “We were caught in 2015 with our pants around our ankles. We waited, not thinking the water would rise that fast. But it did, and it caught us off guard. We couldn’t even get the vehicles out.”
A few doors down, Charles Granger was cleaning up after about eight inches of water entered his home, a common problem now.
“Eight inches disrupts your whole life,” Grainger said. “You don’t get used to it. You just grin and bear it. It’s part of living on the creek.”
Water levels are rising as rainfall from Tropical Storm Debby drains into the sea. The National Weather Service in Charleston tweeted that the Canoochee River in Claxton, Georgia, is nearly 18 feet high, surpassing the previous flood record set in 1925.
No deaths or injuries have been reported in Tropical Story Debby in South Carolina, but Gov. Henry McMaster said Wednesday that the state was just entering the second act of a three-act play.
“We’ve been lucky so far. Things haven’t been as bad as they could have been,” McMaster said of the heavy rains Monday and Tuesday that caused flooding that damaged more than 60 homes but caused no significant problems to roads or water systems.
Act 2 is tonight into Thursday, when Debby makes landfall again, bringing heavy rain, this time to the northern coast and inland. Another 4 to 8 inches of rain is possible, said John Quagliariello, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Columbia.
βIt may not be as disastrous as what we said, but we still think these rain bans could linger in the same area for a long time, cause a lot of rainfall and a lot of flooding,β Quagliariello said.
The final phase could occur next week if enough rain falls upstream in North Carolina to cause major flooding in rivers flowing to the Atlantic Ocean.