Heavy Flooding Hits East Coast Melting Snow Sends Floodwaters Surging In Mid-Atlantic States

Homeowners pulled up soggy rugs Monday and shoveled up the muck left by some of the worst flooding in the mid-Atlantic states in decades, while sump pumps chugged away, draining cold, muddy water from basements.

Discarded sodden rugs were strewn along the main street of Margaretville, N.Y., in the Catskills. High water there from the East Branch of the Delaware River also destroyed businesses.

Flooding from the melting snow and last week’s heavy rain had forced thousands from their homes in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland and New York. An estimated 100,000 in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., alone were ordered out for much of Saturday; Pennsylvania officials estimated damage from the floods and the Jan. 7 blizzard at $700 million.

In the hardest-hit areas of Pennsylvania, it was the worst flooding since Hurricane Agnes blew through in 1972. In that disaster, 220,000 Pennsylvanians were left homeless and 48 were killed.

The amount of water that flowed down the Susquehanna River where it crosses Maryland was the most since Agnes established the record in 1972.

At least 33 deaths were blamed on the flooding in the region, in addition to more than a dozen other deaths elsewhere over the past week that were blamed on cold weather and slippery roads.

Many of those who were evacuated had begun returning home Sunday.

“My first reaction - I was almost physically sick,” said Sue Kelly, surveying her mud-filled basement on Water Street in Washington Boro, Pa. “Then I just sat back and chuckled. I mean, what can you do? You’ve got to make the best of it.”

Steven Witkowski, an 84-year-old man cleaning his muddy home along the Mohawk River in Schenectady, N.Y., said the lesson is: “You don’t buy expensive rugs, because you’ll just have to throw them away.”

In eastern Ohio, water pumping stations were submerged, some 10,000 residents of Martins Ferry soon will be without fresh drinking water when storage tanks run dry. Some parts of the town already had no water.