Skies clear over New England after historic floods

BOSTON - The skies cleared over New England today after five days of torrential rain and the worst floods in 70 years, but hundreds of people crowded into makeshift shelters after mass evacuations from swamped homes.

"We've turned a corner here," said Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge. "The vast majority of rivers have crested. Now it's a matter of getting them down below flood stage over the next day or so."

Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine since Monday as rivers threatened to overflow their banks or broke through sand-bag barriers erected by National Guard troops and rescue workers.

By this morning, washed-out roads, badly damaged buildings and the danger of buckling damns had prevented many residents from returning home. The Red Cross said 372 people had moved into shelters in New Hampshire and 209 in Massachusetts.

Rescue workers sloshed through knee-high water contaminated with sewage in streets resembling murky lakes north of Boston near the Merrimack River, which flows from New Hampshire to Massachusetts before dumping into the Atlantic Ocean.

A 59-year-old man whose body was found in a swamped car in Derry, New Hampshire, was the first known death directly related to the floods, New England Cable News reported.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said 369 National Guard soldiers helped with evacuations and relief work.

"We've been under water for a few days now. We of course have no business because of that," said Norm Brown, 53, who runs a mechanics shop in the hard-hit Massachusetts city of Peabody, where downtown streets were submerged with floodwaters that rose at one point as high as door handles.

"There's a car lot here where we have 40 cars with water up to the hood. It's crazy," said Robert Dombroski, who runs an automobile repair shop in Lowell, a suburb north of Boston, where some residents were fishing for carp in flooded streets.

Authorities said they expected the storm to pass tomorrow but relief work could continue for another week, as they assessed the full extent of damage that Romney said could reach "tens of millions of dollars" in Massachusetts alone.

Up to 43 cm of rain have fallen since the weekend, swelling the Merrimack River at one point more than 2.4 metres above flood stage -- its highest since 1938. It had receded by 0.9 metres by early this morning.

"We have a little rain in the forecast -- not significant enough to add to flooding issues. But this will probably slow down the recession of these rivers," said Judge.

Romney said about 2,500 people were evacuated from their homes in Massachusetts overnight. In New Hampshire, several thousand residents were evacuated and more than 700 roads in the state had been closed, the New Hampshire Bureau of Emergency Management said. Hundreds were evacuated in Maine.

All three states declared states of emergency and are seeking federal assistance.

The flooding caused sewage to back up into cellars and sinks, rescue workers said. About 35 million gallons a day of sewage -- the equivalent of 54 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- was flowing into the Merrimack River in Haverhill after a piping system burst, authorities said.

The torrential rain turned May into the second-wettest month since records began in 1872, with about 27.3 cm of rain -- more than triple the monthly average of 8.1 cm -- falling in Boston by the midpoint of the month.

- REUTERS