HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla.—Tropical Storm Debby slammed Florida on Monday with torrential rain and high winds, contributing to at least four deaths in the state and the rescue of hundreds from flooded homes before turning menacingly toward the Eastern Seaboard’s low-lying regions and threatening to flood some of America’s most historic Southern cities.
Record-setting rain was causing flash flooding, with up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.
About 500 people were rescued from flooded homes in Sarasota, Florida, a beach city popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department said in a social media post. It was one of the cities hardest hit by flooding on Monday.
“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said in a social media update.
Just north of Sarasota, officials in Manatee County said in a news release that 186 people were rescued from flood waters.
“We are facing an unprecedented weather event with Hurricane Debby,” said Jodie Fiske, public safety director for Manatee County. “The safety of our residents is our top priority, and we are doing everything in our power to respond effectively to this crisis.”
A flash flood emergency was issued into Monday evening for the Lake City area in the north central part of the state, where up to a foot (30.5 centimeters) of rain had fallen and more was expected.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that the state could continue to see threats as waterways north of the border fill up and flow south.
“It is a very saturating, wet storm,” he said during an afternoon briefing at the state’s emergency operations center. “When they crest and the water that’s going to come down from Georgia, it’s just something that we’re going to be on alert for not just throughout today, but for the next week.”
Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. It since has weakened to a tropical storm and is moving slowly, covering roads with water and contributing to at least five deaths.
A truck driver died on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area after he lost control of his tractor trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cab dropped into the water below. Sheriff’s office divers located the driver, a 64-year-old man from Mississippi, in the cab 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
A 13-year-old boy died Monday morning after a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, according to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office.
And in Dixie County, just east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads Sunday night. The Florida Highway Patrol said a 14-year-old boy who was a passenger was hospitalized with serious injuries.
In southern Georgia, a 19-year-old man died Monday afternoon when a large tree fell onto a porch at a home in Moultrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Nearly 200,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday afternoon, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.
Airports were also affected. More than 1,600 flights had been canceled nationwide, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware.com.
The potential for high water also threatened Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina.
Local leaders in Savannah said flooding could happen in areas that don’t usually get high water if Debby stalls out over the city. With winds and rainfall expected to worsen overnight, authorities issued a curfew from 10 p.m. Monday until 6 a.m. Tuesday.
“This type of rain hovering over us, coming with the intensity that they tell us it is coming, it’s going to catch a whole lot of people by surprise,” said Chatham County Chairman Chester Ellis.
In South Carolina, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday morning.
The city of Charleston has an emergency plan in place that includes sandbags for residents, opening parking garages so residents can park their cars above floodwaters and an online mapping system that shows which roads are closed due to flooding. Officials announced a curfew for the city starting at 11 p.m. as some of the heaviest rain is expected to fall overnight.
North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Gov. Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed Monday. Several areas along the state’s coastline are prone to flooding, such as Wilmington and the Outer Banks, according to the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.
North Carolina and South Carolina have dealt with three catastrophic floods from tropical systems in the past nine years, all causing more than $1 billion in damage.
In 2015, rainfall fed by moisture as Hurricane Joaquin passed well offshore caused massive flooding. In 2016, flooding from Hurricane Matthew caused 24 deaths in the two states and rivers set record crests. Those records were broken in 2018 with Hurricane Florence, which set rainfall records in both Carolinas, flooded many of the same places and was responsible for 42 deaths in North Carolina and nine in South Carolina.
President Joe Biden was briefed on Debby’s progress while at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House said. Biden approved a request from South Carolina’s governor for an emergency declaration, following his earlier approval of a similar request from Florida. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he has asked Biden to issue a preemptive federal emergency declaration to speed the flow of federal aid to the state.
Vice President Kamala Harris has postponed a campaign stop scheduled for Thursday in Savannah, Georgia.
Debby made landfall near Steinhatchee, a tiny community in northern Florida of less than 1,000 residents. It’s not far from where Hurricane Idalia made landfall less than a year ago as a Category 3 storm.
Sue Chewning lives in nearby Cross City and has weathered both storms. In her nearly 73 years of living in the area, she said she doesn’t recall any direct hits from a hurricane—until this one-two punch from Idalia and Debby.
“Some people may say, ‘I can’t take this anymore’. But I think for the most part … it’s a close-knit community and most of the local people, they’re going to stay, dig down, help each other,” Chewning said.
By Jeff Martin and Christopher O’Meara