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WEST, RI (AP) – The slow rolling system named Henri takes its time in flooding the northeast with rain, lingering early Monday atop an area made swampy by the storm’s relentless downpours.
Henri, who hit the ground as a tropical storm Sunday afternoon in Rhode Island, moved northwest through Connecticut. It threw rain west long before it arrived, inundating areas as far southwest as New Jersey before rocking northeastern Pennsylvania, even as it took on tropical depression status. .
More than 140,000 homes were without electricity and downpours closed bridges, flooded roads and left people stranded in their vehicles.
The Hamptons’ seaside towns of Long Island on Cape Cod in Massachusetts exhaled having been spared the worst of the potential damage on Sunday. Other parts of New England awaited the return of the storm.
The National Hurricane Center noted Henri would have to slow down further and possibly stall near the Connecticut-New York border, before returning eastward through New England and eventually pushing toward the Atlantic Ocean.
Henri could produce 3-6 inches (8-15 centimeters) of rain until Monday over parts of Long Island, New England, southeastern New York, New Jersey and northeastern New York. Pennsylvania, according to the agency. Parts of northern New Jersey to southern New York could receive up to one foot of rain, resulting in significant flash floods, he said.
New England officials worried that a few more inches of precipitation would be a headache after a summer of record precipitation.
“The ground is so saturated it can be inundated with just another inch of rain,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont warned Sunday night.
In the central New Jersey community of Helmetta, some 200 residents fled to the heights, taking refuge in hotels or with friends and family, as floodwaters flooded their homes on Sunday.
“It came so quickly – in the blink of an eye,” said city mayor Christopher Slavicek, whose parents were spending the night after fleeing their home. “Now there is the cleanup. It is therefore far from over.
President Joe Biden has declared disasters in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, opening the purse strings for federal aid to revive those states.
“We are doing all we can now to help these states prepare, respond and recover,” said the president, who also offered his condolences to the people of Tennessee on Sunday, after severe flooding caused by an unrelated storm killed at least 22 people and left dozens missing.
When Henri made landfall near Westerly, Rhode Island, there were sustained winds of around 60 mph (97 km / h) and gusts of up to 70 mph (110 km / h).
Some communities in central New Jersey were inundated with up to eight inches of rain at noon Sunday. In Jamesburg, television video footage showed downtown streets flooded and cars almost completely submerged. In Newark, Public Safety Director Brian O’Hara said police and firefighters rescued 86 people in 11 incidents related to the storm.
In Connecticut, about 250 residents of four nursing homes on the shore had to be relocated to other facilities. Several important bridges in Rhode Island were briefly closed on Sunday and some coastal roads were nearly impassable.
Other communities were waiting for sunrise to see the damage already done.
Linda Orlomoski, of Canterbury, Connecticut, was among those without power until Sunday.
“It is supposed to get very hot and humid again on Tuesday,” she said. “If we still don’t have power by then, it will be miserable. “
(Copyright (c) 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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