More May Flee Homes as Northeast Rain Persists

More rain fell Monday on the soaked Northeast, where high water had forced more than 1,000 people to leave their homes, and residents of some low-lying areas were warned that they might have to join the evacuees.

The water had washed out or flooded scores of roads.

Snow that the same storm had piled into drifts up to 15 feet high in the central Appalachians was melting. And after a week of record cold across the South, the only record lows Monday were in the 40s in Florida.

Deaths blamed on the weather included four in Kentucky and one each in Ohio and West Virginia in traffic accidents; an Ohio man died while shoveling snow and an Alabama woman died of hypothermia, police said.

Some Return Home

More than 1,000 people had been evacuated from homes in New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey. But many of the estimated 500 who fled from western Massachusetts’ Berkshires were returning home Monday, civil defense officials said.

Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis declared a state of emergency Monday, and officials said 800 to 1,000 National Guardsmen were on alert and could be mobilized within 15 minutes.

The continuing rain on already saturated ground prompted authorities to close schools throughout central and southern New Hampshire and to warn residents along some streams that they might have to leave.

By midday Monday, however, streams, rivers and reservoirs in New Hampshire had stabilized or had begun to recede, David Cass, a civil defense spokesman, said.

Saco River Danger

In Maine, the threat of renewed flooding was greatest along the Saco River, where 400 people who were evacuated late last week were still unable to return. The Saco was rising again Monday after being swollen with four inches of rain that fell in New Hampshire since Sunday, said Peter Lamontagne, civil defense director for York County.

All major rivers in Massachusetts were at the overflow point. Officials said about 10 communities had problems with dams.

New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu declared a state of emergency Monday to ease civil defense operations. Several hundred people were evacuated in Goffstown, Bennington and Deering.

About 30 roads were washed out across New Hampshire, and about 65 mobile homes had been damaged or destroyed near Ossipee Lake, civil defense spokesman Ken Jollimore said.