Remnants of Ivan kill more people
Remnants of Hurricane Ivan made a violent mark across the Southeast and the Appalachians, where several people were killed by falling trees and floods that washed away scores of roads. Search teams were sent to scour damaged areas for stranded residents.
Ivan and its remnants had been blamed for 44 deaths in the United States, 16 of them in Florida. The storm also was blamed for 70 deaths in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, utility companies said more than 1.3 million homes and businesses still had no electricity Saturday from Florida north to Pennsylvania.
In Wheeling, Doug Patterson spent part of Saturday shoveling a wall of sand along the outside of the bank where his wife works, one of a small army of people working to protect businesses from the rising Ohio River, swollen by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan.
Across the street, water covered the city’s riverfront park and amphitheater so deeply that only the very tips of light poles and trees marked its location.
“The whole place is pretty messed up, to be honest with you,” said Patterson, 43.
As the broad area of rain that remained from Ivan streamed off through New England on the way to the North Atlantic, the National Weather Service predicted the Ohio River would crest today at 46 feet, about 10 feet above flood stage and close to its record.
By early afternoon Saturday, it was already at 41.7 feet, the National Weather Service said.
The river had submerged the northern tip and southern half of the city’s Wheeling Island, which holds residential neighborhoods and Wheeling Island Racetrack and Gaming.
“We’ve been plucking people out of here left and right,” firefighter David Schaffer said.
“People are waiting until the last minute, and then they see the water come up and they get panicked.”
Downriver, residents were urged to evacuate parts of Moundsville, and big flood gates were closed at Parkersburg, where the river was expected to crest Sunday at five feet above flood stage.
All around West Virginia, flooding and mudslides had blocked 207 roads and damaged hundreds of houses, authorities said.
Upriver in western Pennsylvania, downtown Pittsburgh’s Point State Park was under water Saturday where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers join to form the Ohio. Dozens of boats that had broken free of their moorings were floating down the fast-rushing rivers.
Elsewhere, streams had started to recede in hard-hit western North Carolina as others rose in New York. Parts of northern New Jersey and eastern New York measured 5 inches of rain Saturday.