4 Ohio Counties Hit by Flooding; Hundreds Flee

Hundreds of residents fled floods that swamped homes, businesses and submerged roads under six feet of water Thursday in north-central Ohio, and Gov. Richard F. Celeste declared a state of emergency in four counties.

Search parties used boats to rescue people stranded by the floods fueled by downpours from a line of thunderstorms that rumbled through the Ohio Valley toward the Northeast.

Parts of north-central Ohio have been deluged with more than 5 1/2 inches of rain since late Wednesday, and Celeste placed Delaware, Morrow, Marion and Richland counties under a state of emergency to clear the way for federal assistance.

Residents in low-lying areas of those counties were forced from their homes as rain-swollen waterways overflowed. In Morrow, authorities evacuated nearly 400 residents at two trailer parks and an apartment complex in Mount Gilead.

The Ohio Disaster Services Agency said some 60 businesses and about 400 homes were flooded in Shelby, a community of about 9,000 in Richland County. The governor’s office estimated damage to streets, bridges and public buildings at more than $9 million in that city alone.

“You just can’t believe the sound,” said Herman Daniels of Shelby, whose basement walls collapsed under pressure of the surging Black Fork River. “We tried to get everything out (but) all of a sudden the water came from that direction.”

June Hartland, surveying damage to her silk-screening business in Shelby, said: “They told me a (clothes) dryer came out of the Fire Department over there and went through my windows.”

A traffic death and several traffic injuries Thursday in Oklahoma were blamed on the storms, and three people drowned in Lake Livingston in eastern Texas when wind capsized their boat. A fourth person in the boat was hospitalized.

The storms in Oklahoma set off an oil tank explosion, overturned a mobile home, knocked out power to several hundred people and flooded some roads.

Flooding also was reported in Verango County in northwest Pennsylvania, where authorities worked to rescue an undetermined number of people cut off by rising water at a campground.

“We’re getting dumped on right now with rain. It’s really pouring here,” said Stephen McElhaney, deputy coordinator for emergency management in Verango County.