HORSESHOE BEACH, Florida — HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Debby was threatening some of the most historic cities in the American South, and was expected to bring persistent downpours and flooding throughout Tuesday. The hurricane had hit Florida, leading to hundreds of people being rescued from their flooded homes.
Record rainfall from the storm that killed at least five people on Monday caused flash flooding, with some areas possibly dropping as much as 30 inches (76 centimeters), the National Hurricane Center said.
“Hunker down,” Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Georgia, told residents in a social media livestream Monday night. “Expect a rough day” on Tuesday, he said.
Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, among other areas on the Georgia and South Carolina coast. Both Savannah and Charleston announced curfews Monday night through Tuesday.
In South Carolina, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times during a 90-second briefing on Monday.
In addition to the curfew, the city of Charleston’s emergency plan also includes sandbags for residents, opening parking garages so residents can park their cars above the water level, and an online mapping system that shows which roads are closed due to flooding.
A tornado touched down in Edisto Beach, South Carolina, on Monday evening, damaging trees and homes and taking down power lines, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office reported on social media. No injuries were reported, officials said.
The National Weather Service continued to issue tornado warnings for parts of the state Monday evening, including the island town of Hilton Head.
Debby made landfall early Monday morning along the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane. It has been downgraded to a tropical storm and is moving slowly, causing flooding and inundation across parts of eastern Georgia, the South Carolina Coastal Plain and southeastern North Carolina through Wednesday.
About 500 people were rescued from flooded homes Monday in Sarasota, Florida, a beach town popular with tourists, Sarasota police said in a social media post. Just north of Sarasota, officials in Manatee County said in a news release that 186 people were rescued from floodwaters.
“We actually had twice as much rain as forecast,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said on social media.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned that the state could still face dangers as waterways north of the border fill up and flow south.
“It’s a very saturating, wet storm,” he said. “When they crest and the water comes out of Georgia, it’s just something we’re going to be on high alert for, not only today, but for the next week.”
Five people had died in the storm Monday night, including a truck driver on Interstate 75 near Tampa after he lost control of his semi-trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cab fell into the water. Divers from the sheriff’s office found the driver, a 64-year-old Mississippi man, in the cab 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
A 13-year-old boy died Monday morning after a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, Florida, the Levy County Sheriff’s Office said. In Dixie County, just east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died Sunday night in a car crash on wet roads.
A 19-year-old man was killed Monday afternoon when a large tree fell on the porch of a home in Moultrie, Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Nearly 160,000 customers were still without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday evening, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.
More than 1,600 flights were also canceled nationwide on Monday, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware.com.
President Joe Biden has approved a request from the governor of South Carolina for a national emergency, following his earlier approval of a similar request from Florida. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he has asked Biden to declare a preemptive federal emergency to speed the flow of federal aid to the state.
Deputy Director Kamala Harris a campaign rally scheduled for Thursday in Savannah has been postponed.
North Carolina is also in a state of emergency after Governor Roy Cooper declared it in a executive order signed on Monday. Several areas along the state’s coastline 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, each causing more than $1 billion in damage.
In 2015, rainfall fed by moisture as Hurricane Joaquin passed far from the coast caused massive flooding. In 2016, flooding caused Hurricane Matthew caused 24 deaths in the two states and rivers reached record highs. Those records were broken in 2018 with Hurricane Florencewhich broke rainfall records in both Carolinas, caused flooding in many of the same places and was responsible for 42 deaths in North Carolina and nine in South Carolina.
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Martin reported from Atlanta. AP reporters Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Fla.; Michael Schneider in Orlando, Fla.; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Ga.; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Darlene Superville and Will Weissert in Washington, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.