East Coast Under Water

For the past few days, many East Coast residents waded through waist-high water on washed out roads, some paddling to swamped homes in canoes, and meteorologists predicted more rain in all three New England states, which have declared states of emergency.

Emergency crews steered boats along streets to help evacuate people, while National Guard soldiers set up checkpoints to block off roads. About 200,000 sand bags were used to hold back overflowing rivers across Massachusetts.

About 12 to 15 in. of rain has fallen since Friday, swelling the Merrimack River that runs through southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts almost 8 ft above flood stage – its highest since 1936.

Thought it may be bad now, officials are expecting it to get much much worse as weather forecasts for more rain with several rivers still rising.

Several thousand New Hampshire residents had been evacuated from homes and more than 600 roads in the state had been closed, the New Hampshire Bureau of Emergency Management said.

A bulging dam in Milton, New Hampshire on the Maine border was in danger of failing and could send a 10 ft wall of water downstream, the National Weather Service said.

About a thousand people were evacuated from their homes in the Massachusetts' suburbs of Melrose, Haverhill, Lawrence and Peabody, where flooding caused sewage to back up into cellars and sinks, rescue workers said.

Thousands of gallons of sewage has been flowing into the Merrimack River in Haverhill, while many more millions of gallons were expected to spill in from a treatment plant in the city of Lawrence, said Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Source: EPA