The Rivers are rising to historic levels as dams break with others at the brink. The death toll has risen to 17 in the Carolinas with no end in site to the massive flooding as most of the waterways have not reached their crest.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says state wildlife officials have made at least 600 rescues during the flooding that has ravaged the state.
She says the central area of the state is recovering as the waters recede, but officials are keeping a close eye on the southeastern part of the state.
She added 62 dams across the state are being monitored and 13 had already failed.
More than 400,000 state residents were under a “boil water advisory” affecting about 16 water systems, said Jim Beasley, a spokesman for the S.C. Emergency Response Team.
The damage in South Carolina is still being assessed and numbers are up in the air regarding how many have lost homes and their businesses. Costs in recovery are being estimated at close to a billion and will not be truly known until the flooding recedes.
President Obama has declared several counties in South Carolina as major disaster areas. With some areas of the state that have received up to 24 inches of rain, 18 dams that have breached, lakes and creeks overflowing as well as roadways completely washed away, South Carolina is indeed a major disaster. With billions of dollars in damage and over a dozen deaths reported, South Carolina is still waiting for the rivers and lakes to crest.
Although the bulk of the rain has ended, high waters are still a very dangerous reality after the historic flood event in South Carolina. Rescue crews went door to door in South Carolina’s capital city of Columbia as officials continued to free residents that were trapped by severe flooding that swamped virtually the entire state.
In a press conference Tuesday morning, Governor Nikki Haley gave an update on the current recovery efforts. Over a dozen deaths have been reported with over 600 National Guard that are now in the state assisting with rescue and recovery efforts. More than 31,000 homes are without power. Boil water advisories are in effect with up to 40,000 people currently without drinking water or reporting low water pressure. State and Government officials are working closely with hospitals in Columbia that are reporting water problems and over 400 roads and over 150 bridges have been closed due to flooding conditions.
Some rivers in the state and in states further south are not expected to crest for up to two weeks leading residents to realize that this flooding event is far from over.
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has declared a state of emergency after flooding that left two people dead and six people missing.
Severe storms raged through the state dumping inches of rain in just hours over parts of the state already saturated from previous storms. The flash flooding swept through rural areas, washing away mobile homes and vehicles.
Among the missing is a man being hailed as a hero for saving his father, uncle and sister. Scott Johnson went back after saving the first three from the flood waters to get his grandmother and a teenage nephew. He jammed his nephew into a tree before the flood water swept him away along with his grandmother.
The grandmother’s body was found Tuesday. Johnson is still missing.
“It just wears your legs out to walk,” said Gary McClure, the local emergency management director. “You walk from here to there in that mud and you’re ready to sit down. It just pulls you down.”
The other confirmed death was a 65-year-old man whose SUV was being swept away by flood waters and he tried to exit the vehicle to escape.
Police say that the search area for the missing stretches more than 8 miles through rugged Appalachian Mountains terrain east of Lexington. Over 500 homes and 1,200 residents live in the area.
The National Guard has been called into the area to help with search and rescue efforts.
The forecast for the region is calling for more rain which officials say has “nowhere to go but roads, homes and yards.”
Missouri’s governor is preparing for violence in the wake of the release of a grand jury’s decision on the Michael Brown case by deploying the National Guard and declaring a State of Emergency.
Governor Jay Nixon said the troops would only play “a backup role to police” in response to protesters breaking the law if they are dissatisfied with the grand jury’s actions.
Police in Ferguson had been criticized for their response to the violent protests following the death of Brown because some felt they acted in a too “militarized” manner.
St. Louis aldermen were upset about the declaration of the governor.
“The National Guard is called in when policing has failed. Military presence in my city will mark a historic failure on the part of (government),” Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman, said on Twitter. “This is not a war. There is no military solution.”
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said the city’s police force will handle any issues and that they will wear normal police attire unless “conditions become violent.”
An anti-Christian organization is threatening to sue the Missouri National Guard because a display of Bibles was located on a base.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association had a lawyer send a threatening letter to the Missouri National Guard demanding the removal of a display of Gideon Bibles from the General Services Administration building in St. Louis.
The AHA claims that the Bibles in a government building “represents a clear breach of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.”
“The machinery of the U.S. military … is being used to distribute Bibles,” the letter claims. “ … The religious endorsement is particularly egregious in this case because unlike in many of the school cases where private citizens distributed the Bibles, the government is the entity distributing the Bibles here.”
The Bibles are available for someone to take if they want them but they are not given to soldiers nor are soldiers required to take them. Various courts have permitted similar placement of Bibles across the nation.
However, the anti-Christianists say the mere existence of the Bibles is coercion.
Residents of Ohio’s fourth-largest city endured a weekend when the water coming from their taps was nothing but toxic trouble.
Officials with Toledo, Ohio announced early Saturday morning that the 400,000 residents of the city needed to avoid drinking, bathing or cooking with the water because of the amount of toxin in the water from an algae bloom in Lake Erie. The city obtains its water from a pipe two and a half miles into the lake.
Mayor D. Michael Collins announced the ban just after 3 a.m. Saturday. He said an algae bloom that normally does not move into the area of the water intake at this time of year was pulled in because of high winds and waves. A satellite image of the lake showed the algae bloom centered right around the water intake.
The Ohio National Guard brought filtration systems and large shipments of bottled water into Toledo for residents. Governor John Kasich declared a state of emergency that ended Monday morning when the water was determined to have a safe level of algae related toxin.
Water plant operators along western Lake Erie have been concerned about the amounts of phosphorus going into the lake for years. They have been able to compensate for blooms in past years but this year’s early blooming was unexpected.
The city was dealing with reports of price gouging. One Toledo television station found a discount store selling bottled water at twice the normal price.
A small country church in Carthage, Missouri wanted to honor veterans and soldiers during their Vacation Bible School. The military banned troops from going to the event.
Paramedics, police and firefighters in the community showed up Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to talk to the kids, teach them some basics of their jobs and receive thanks for their efforts to make the community better.
On Thursday, when the National Guard was supposed to show up, no one was there.
The military told the National Guard troops they were banned from the event and if they showed up at all on the grounds of the church they could face discipline. The military said that just the presence of the troops or any National Guard asset meant they were sponsoring the Baptist religion.”
The military officers were more concerned about someone who is not a Christian being offended by the troops appearing at the church than they were about any Christians who might be upset at being told they weren’t worth visiting.
The Missouri National Guard reportedly tried to do all they could to attend the event but it was at the federal level where the ban on associating with Christians was ordered.
National Guard troops were furious at the Defense Department’s actions.
“We had a lot of disappointed kiddos because of the National Guard being unwilling to allow a Humvee and a few soldiers to spend an hour at a Baptist Church,” a Guardsman said. “It makes we wonder what I’m actually fighting for.”
