Ivan’s aftermath menaces the East

A town in Ohio brought out snowplows and fire hoses Monday to clear the muck away. In New Jersey, the Statehouse was closed after its parking garage was flooded by the Delaware River.

In Point Pleasant, W.Va., water rose near the tops of lampposts at a riverfront park outside the city’s floodwall. And parts of downtown Port Deposit, Md., were off limits after the Susquehanna River spilled into city streets.

The remnants of Hurricane Ivan brought ruinous flooding to a large swath of the East on Monday after causing misery across the South.

In Ohio, water reached the top of the goal posts at the Marietta College football field, which sits near a creek, and many homes and businesses had water up to 3 feet deep. Throughout eastern Ohio, about 1,700 people had been forced out of their homes over the weekend.

The scene was similar in Port Deposit, a low-lying town in northeastern Maryland on the Susquehanna River. The river rushed at 567,000 cubic feet per second Monday – more than five times its normal maximum level for this time of year.

In West Virginia, more than 300 homes and businesses were destroyed and about 470 homes were severely damaged.

In New Jersey, officials closed the Statehouse and several other state buildings in downtown Trenton after the Delaware sent 5 feet of water into the Statehouse parking garage.

Ivan and its remnants were blamed for at least 52 deaths in the United States and 70 in the Caribbean. Much of the destruction was caused by flooding in the storm’s wake.

Recovery efforts also continued in the South.