Communities across the U.S. are recovering Thursday from major flooding caused by heavy rains this week. The wild weather is blamed for at least four deaths so far.
Dramatic scenes played out around the country, much of it caught on video, like a 9-foot-tall wall of water that blasted through the window of Good Samaritan Hospital in Nebraska. Like many of the hard hit communities, they were unaware of how much rain was coming.
On Long Island in New York, many vehicles had to be abandoned after roadways were swamped. Officials said a man died when a tractor-trailer hit his slow-moving SUV at the height of the storm on the Long Island Expressway.
The towns of Islip and Brookhaven declared states of emergency after what Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone called an "unprecedented" deluge.
A new record was set in Islip, which was slammed with 13 inches of rain in just a few hours. The city's drainage system can only sustain 5 inches over a 24-hour period.
"It's not just how much rain fell, it's how fast it fell," Accuweather senior meteorologist Jack Boston said, calling the storm a once-every-50-years event. "We're talking about billions and billions of gallons of water and it all has to go somewhere."
"My house is like on an island right now. I have water all around my house. They were my cars; they are all gone," said Mike Grassullo, a resident of North Babylon in Long Island.
"It was up to my waist," said James Piano, who was rescued in North Babylon by firefighters after his truck was swamped. "That little Miata over there was floating in the middle lane, literally floating."
In the New Jersey town of Millville, the storm dumped nearly 9 inches of rain. One woman there suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung when the walls of her basement collapsed due to flooding.
The storms hit states across New England from Rhode Island to Maine, but also all the way out West in Michigan which issued a disaster declaration for the Detroit area after heavy rains sent mud flowing down onto stretches of freeway.
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