(Portland) Some 500,000 customers were still without power in the northeastern United States early Tuesday afternoon, after the passage of a storm whose winds of nearly 100 kilometers per hour uprooted trees and left at least four dead.
The vast majority of outages were reported in Maine and Massachusetts, according to the Poweroutage.us website.
“We are planning a multi-day restoration effort involving hundreds of line and tree crews,” Central Maine Power, the state’s largest power company, warned Monday evening.
Many communities were saturated, with some receiving almost eight centimeters of rain during the storm. Some towns in Vermont, which suffered significant flooding following a storm in July, saw their damage worsen. Some school districts remained closed in the region Tuesday.
About 15 inches of rain fell in parts of New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania, and parts of several other states received more than 4 inches of rain, according to the U.S. National Weather Service . Streets were flooded in some communities. Wind gusts reached nearly 70 miles per hour along the southern New England coastline.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills closed state offices Tuesday to allow power to be restored and cleanup efforts from the storm, which downed many trees and closed roads.
Maine had more than 385,000 customers without power as of early Tuesday, or half of its customers, according to Poweroutage.us.
Some rivers in the region have risen to crests. The Androscoggin River in Rumford, Maine, reached a peak level of 22 feet during a 24-hour period that ended early Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. The flood level is 4.6 meters. The river is expected to drop below flood stage Tuesday afternoon.
The Kennebec River at Augusta was at 20 feet and still rising. It is expected to reach a crest of 7.6 meters Thursday evening, according to the weather service. The flood level is 6.4 meters.
Police in the riverside town of Fairfield issued a voluntary evacuation order for some areas. In Mexico City, along the Swift River, police searched for two people whose car failed to cross a bridge. Two other people inside were rescued and treated for hypothermia.
In New Jersey, a house surrounded by floodwaters caught fire Tuesday in Lincoln Park and was engulfed in flames. The firefighters were unable to reach him. Police said it was unoccupied.
Seventeen people were rescued from the waters in Conway, New Hampshire, four of them by helicopter.
Five months after Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, flooded, water entered the basements of some downtown businesses as the city monitored the level of the Winooski River, authorities said.
PHOTO LISA RATHKE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Five months after Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, flooded, water entered the basements of some downtown businesses.
Three people were rescued from a home in Jamaica and another in Waterbury when that person’s vehicle was swept away by floodwaters, Jennifer Morrison, Vermont’s public safety commissioner, said at a conference. press with the governor. Several shelters have been set up.
A number of roads were also closed across the state due to flooding, including in Londonderry and Ludlow, the southern Vermont communities that were hit hard by flooding in July.
“While there will be damage to infrastructure, homes and businesses, we do not expect it to be of the same magnitude as in July,” reassured Governor Phil Scott. That said, some of the places that were affected in July are experiencing flooding again. For them, it’s the month of July and it’s a real blow. »
As the storm began, weather services issued flood and flash flood warnings for New York City and surrounding areas, parts of Pennsylvania, upstate New York, western Connecticut , western Massachusetts, and parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
An 89-year-old man from Hingham, Massachusetts, was killed early Monday when high winds caused a tree to fall on a trailer, authorities said. In Windham, Maine, police said part of a tree fell and killed a man who was clearing debris from his roof.
In Catskill, New York, a driver was killed after his vehicle drove around a barricade on a flooded road and was swept into the Catskill Creek, the Times Union reported. A man was pronounced dead in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, after he was found in a submerged vehicle Monday morning.
On Sunday in South Carolina, a person died when their vehicle was flooded on a road in a Mount Pleasant community.