Hurricane Debby Devastates Carolinas, More Damage Potentially Coming

Hurricane Debby caused a lot of damage in the Carolinas, but the devastation is not over for people in the area and further north.

Residents and a TV news crew check out the dam that broke on Siple Avenue in the Rayconda neighborhood on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024. The same dam broke during Hurricane Matthew. / Andrew Craft / USA TODAY NETWORK

Hurricane Debby, which landed in the United States more than once last week, brought some horrible weather to the southeast United States up the East Coast into Canada. Torrential downpours started on August 5th when it hit Florida.

The rain was only the beginning, as flooding occurred in many areas and tornados ripped through the Carolinas. While the rivers receded to normal on Sunday, flood warnings existed in several states as they were far from being in the clear.

Because of how saturated the ground is, any local downpours in the coming days could result in flash flooding. That is dangerous conditions for any travelers, as people are urged to avoid attempting to travel across flooded roadways.

In Lumberton, North Carolina, authorities revealed that a fatality unfortunately occurred when someone attempted to drive through floodwaters on a road that was closed. They were swept away to their death.

“It bears repeating,” the agency said in the post. “Never drive into flooded roadways and obey road closed signage.”

In South Carolina, another 3-4 inches of rain was possible on Sunday after many people thought the storm had past. That amount of rain in such a short period time after the area had already been battered would result in flash flooding as well.

Moving further up the coast, the damage from Debby was still being felt on Monday. Despite not being as wet as the Carolinas to the south, more than 35,000 residences and places of business were without power in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

Harder hit areas in Ohio, which had tornadoes in the middle of last week, were still without electricity. 23,000 outages were reported.

Evacuations and rescue missions occurred in parts of New York, Pennsylvania and New England that were hit by the tail end of the Hurricane into the weekend on Friday night.

In Canisteo, New York, a family saw their farm nearly wiped off the map. Stacy Urban, whose family owns Moss Vanwie Farm, said flooding was so bad that three-fourths of their stock has been destroyed.

“This is complete and total devastation,” she said by phone Sunday as fire department officials were bailing out the home’s flooded basement. “We never thought this would happen.”

About 7,500 of the 12,000 acres of the farmland was destroyed. But, on a positive note, all 150 of their cows and 200 younger livestock have been accounted for, along with all of their equipment.