Rescues continue in N.C. as ood waters from Floyd rise

Hundreds of thousands still had no electricity from North Carolina to Connecticut.

Brown water from the Tar River crept into three blocks of Main Street, where business owners waded or used small boats to check on property that had been dry just 12 hours earlier.

AP PHOTO Greenville, N.C. residents Bill Tugwell and John Wiens prepare to enter the second floor window of their apartment last week.

"Nobody knows how bad it is. Nobody expected this," said attorney Tommy Moore, who wore chest waders as he checked on a friend's law office. His own office was dry in Rocky Mount.

A helicopter roared overhead, looking for stranded residents near the riverbank.

"You hear these helicopters, and it just makes you sick," Moore said. "You know they're helping people, but it makes you realize how vulnerable we are. It's like a war zone."

At least 45 people died, including 20 in North Carolina, as Floyd churned up the East Coast and thousands of homes and businesses were damaged.

In Pinetops, N.C., authorities on Saturday recovered the bodies of four people whose boat capsized while they were trying to escape floodwaters. The bodies were that of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, and two girls who were between 3 and 5 years old, said fire chief Steve Burress.

In hard-hit North Carolina, high water on Saturday still blocked parts of Interstates 95 and 40, the state's two busiest highways, along with more than 300 other roads. More than 5,600 people spent the night in 69 shelters across eastern North Carolina.

The highway closures have created a logistical nightmare when it comes to supplying food and water to people in shelters and isolated communities.

Five shelters are being supplied exclusively by air-three in Edgecombe County and two in Pitt County.

Supermarkets are running out of food and to ensure people are fed, 30 mobile kitchens have been set up in 16 counties. Fort Bragg provided 50,000 ready-to-eat meals.

State agricultural officials estimated that a million poultry and 100,000 swine had perished. Together with anticipated crop losses, "this potentially is the worst agricultural damage that eastern North Carolina has ever faced," state agriculture department spokesperson Jim Knight said.

He said agricultural losses could exceed the $872 million benchmark set by Hurricane Fran in 1996.

Amtrak said Saturday that it had restored full service along the Northeast Corridor, which connects Boston, New York and Washington.

Limited service was being offered south to Richmond and Newport News, Va.

The railroad said it did not expect to resume service until at least today on Silver Service trains between New York and Miami; the Carolinian, which runs between New York and Charlotte, NC., or its Auto Train, which runs between Lorton, Va., and Sanford, Fla.

As Floyd's 15 inches of rain slowly drained away from eastern North Carolina, forecasters warned that more major flooding still lies ahead for the Tar, Neuse, and Cape Fear rivers.

While the Tar River crested Saturday in Tarboro at 43 feet - 24 feet above flood stage - the Neuse and Cape Fear rivers weren't expected to crest until tomorrow, also well above flood stage.

"It's going to be bad," said Al Lazo of the National Weather Service in Raleigh.

Nearly 50 helicopters, with more expected from other states, were in the air for rescue missions Saturday in Edgecombe, Nash, Pitt and Duplin counties. In Edgecombe County alone, 3,500 people had been rescued.

Contaminated drinking water supplies were a growing problem.

Several waste lagoons on North Carolina hog farms had reached or exceeded their capacities, and at least one had ruptured, spilling 2 million gallons of sewage waste into a tributary of the Northeast Cape Fear River.

More than 20 communities and 200 swine farmers have reported waste water problems, officials said. The entire water supplies of Pitt and Edgecombe counties were contaminated, said Renee Hoffman, a state public safety spokesperson.

Water service was restored Saturday for 119,000 people in Portsmouth, Va., and nearby Chesapeake and Suffolk, but residents were told to use the water only for flushing toilets. The area has been without drinkable running water since flooding damaged a pumping station on Thursday.

As many as 1 million people in New Jersey were told to boil their water, at least through the weekend, because flooding overwhelming a treatment plant.

In Franklin, Va., 9 to 12 feet of water from the Blackwater River filled more than 180 downtown businesses on Saturday, and authorities said the river might not crest until sometime Sunday.

"We all look at each other and have tears in our eyes and our hearts are throbbing," said Mayor Jim Councill, whose insurance office had water to its first-floor ceiling.

Greenville, a city of 44,000, was completely in the dark Saturday because the flooded Tar River short-circuited its main power plant. They were among some 277,000 without power Saturday in North Carolina.

Elsewhere, more than 75,000 customers remained without power in Pennsylvania; 74,000 in New Jersey; 6,000 in Vermont; over 128,000 in Maryland, 5,000 in Connecticut, 51,000 in Virginia and 50,000 in New York.

09-20-99