Tornado death raises Tropical Storm Debby toll to seven as heavy rains keep falling
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, S.C. 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.
Debby wasn’t done flooding parts of eastern South Carolina and southeast North Carolina, and an additional 3 to 9 inches of rain are 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.
Hurricane Debby made landfall in north Florida, bringing the potential for record-setting rains, catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge.
One person died in a home damaged by the tornado in Lucama, N.C., 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.
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.”
Tropical Storm Debby has brought prolonged downpours to the southeastern United States and could hover over the Atlantic Ocean for the next few days, then boomerang back onto the mainland
The superintendent of Wilson County Schools confirmed damage at Springfield Middle School, where sections of the walls and a were destroyed or compromised.
Meanwhile, about 100 miles 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.
In Huger, northeast of Charleston, S.C., Gene Taylor waited for the water to drain from his house along French Quarter Creek as high tide passed. 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,” Taylor said. “But it did, and it caught us. We couldn’t even get the vehicles out.”
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 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.
“We had a multi-round period of showers and thunderstorms that kind of scooted from Michigan eastward,” Kleebauer said.
As much as 6 inches 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.
About 270,000 customers remained without power in Ohio as of Thursday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, following severe storms including two confirmed tornadoes.
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, Fla., whose body was recovered after his anchored sailboat partially sank.
Seminera and Minchillo write for the Associated Press. AP contributors include Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C.; Russ Bynum in Pooler, Ga.; Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, N.J.; Jeff Martin in Atlanta, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Wash.
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