Floods submerge Northeast

Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee dumped an estimated 45 trillion gallons of water onto an already waterlogged East Coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now, more than two weeks later, many Northeast states are still coping with the aftermath of the storms, which left flood damage and devastation from Pennsylvania to Maine.

While Hurricane Irene had actual landfall in the Northeast states, the rainfall, flash flooding and other detrimental effects induced by Tropical Storm Lee in the region were just as intense, if not more so, according to Irish Weather Online.

“On Thursday, 98 different USGS river and stream monitors registered flood levels in the Northeast,” stated an Associated Press Article on the Fox News website. “And there are 26 areas that are considered in major flooding. That’s on top of more than 100 locales that set record flood stages from Hurricane Irene.”

According to multiple sources, the most recent Tropical Storm Lee induced tens of thousands of evacuations across the Northeast. For instance, on Thursday, Sept. 8, residents in Pennsylvania and New York were evacuated because of flooding of the Susquehanna River, along which much of the storm damage was accumulated, according to USA Today online.

“By 4 p.m. Friday, the river had receded slightly, to 41.4,” according to the New York Post.

ABC News reported the death toll at 14 as of Friday, Sept. 9.
Various relief agencies are working in the storm-damaged states to clean up the mess that has been made.

For instance, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, the Red Cross and other volunteer teams have begun responding to the disaster in the Northeast states, according to a Sept. 9 article by Baptist Press.

However, due to the effects of the double-disaster of Irene and then Lee, relief work has had to be tweaked and “until the water begins to recede, recovery work is impossible,” according to the Baptist Press article.