Slow-moving Tropical Storm Debby bringing torrential rains, major flood threat to southeastern US

Tropical Storm Debby moved menacingly into some of America’s most historic Southern cities and was expected to bring prolonged downpours and flooding throughout the day Tuesday after slamming into Florida and prompting the rescue of hundreds from flooded homes.

Record-setting rain from the storm that killed at least five people on Monday was causing flash flooding, with up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) possible in some areas, the National Hurricane Center said.

“Hunker down,” Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Georgia, told residents in a social media livestream Monday night. “Expect that it will be a rough day” on Tuesday, he said.

Flash flood warnings were issued in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, among other areas of coastal Georgia and South Carolina. Both Savannah and Charleston announced curfews Monday night into Tuesday.

In South Carolina, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday.

In addition to the curfew, the city of Charleston's emergency plan includes sandbags for residents, opening parking garages so residents can park their cars above floodwaters and an online mapping system that shows which roads are closed due to flooding.

In Edisto Beach, South Carolina, a tornado touched down Monday night, damaging trees, homes and taking down power lines, the Colleton County Sheriff's Office said on social media. No injuries were immediately reported, officials said.

The National Weather Service continued issuing tornado warnings well into Monday night for parts of the state including in the island town of Hilton Head.

Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane. It has weakened to a tropical storm and is moving slowly, drenching and bringing areas of catastrophic flooding across portions of eastern Georgia, the coastal plain of South Carolina and southeast North Carolina through Wednesday.

About 500 people were rescued Monday from flooded homes in Sarasota, Florida, a beach city popular with tourists, the Sarasota Police Department said in a social media post. Just north of Sarasota, officials in Manatee County said in a news release that 186 people were rescued from flood waters.

“Essentially we’ve had twice the amount of the rain that was predicted for us to have,” Sarasota County Fire Chief David Rathbun said on social media.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that the state could continue to see threats as waterways north of the border fill up and flow south.

“It is a very saturating, wet storm,” he said. “When they crest and the water that’s going to come down from Georgia, it’s just something that we’re going to be on alert for not just throughout today, but for the next week.”

Five people had died due to the storm as of Monday night, including a truck driver on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area after he lost control of his tractor trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cab dropped into the water below. Sheriff’s office divers located the driver, a 64-year-old man from Mississippi, in the cab 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

A 13-year-old boy died Monday morning after a tree fell on a mobile home southwest of Gainesville, Florida, according to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office. In Dixie County, just east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads Sunday night.

In southern Georgia, a 19-year-old man died Monday afternoon when a large tree fell onto a porch at a home in Moultrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Nearly 160,000 customers remained without power in Florida and Georgia on Monday night, down from a peak of more than 350,000, according to PowerOutage.us and Georgia Electric Membership Corp.

More than 1,600 flights were also canceled nationwide on Monday, many of them to and from Florida airports, according to FlightAware.com.

President Joe Biden approved a request from South Carolina’s governor for an emergency declaration, following his earlier approval of a similar request from Florida. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he has asked Biden to issue a preemptive federal emergency declaration to speed the flow of federal aid to the state.

Vice President Kamala Harris postponed a campaign stop scheduled for Thursday in Savannah.

North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Gov. Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed Monday. Several areas along the state’s coastline are prone to flooding, such as Wilmington and the Outer Banks, according to the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program.

North Carolina and South Carolina have dealt with three catastrophic floods from tropical systems in the past nine years, all causing more than $1 billion in damage.

In 2015, rainfall fed by moisture as Hurricane Joaquin passed well offshore caused massive flooding. In 2016, flooding from Hurricane Matthew caused 24 deaths in the two states and rivers set record crests. Those records were broken in 2018 with Hurricane Florence, which set rainfall records in both Carolinas, flooded many of the same places and was responsible for 42 deaths in North Carolina and nine in South Carolina.

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Martin reported from Atlanta. AP journalists Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida; Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Darlene Superville and Will Weissert in Washington, and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington, contributed to this report.