Residents Flee Floods in Midwest, South

Floods fed by up to a foot of rain Thursday forced evacuations in the South and Midwest, and the squalls moved slowly east, drenching the Gulf of Mexico coast from Louisiana to Florida, weather officials said.

Rescue workers dispatched boats through Columbia, Miss., to pull people from flooded homes and trailers. The flood swept away an unidentified woman who left her stalled car, but she grabbed a tree limb and was rescued unharmed, authorities said.

Pete Reynolds of the National Weather Service said forecasters tracking the heavy showers as they moved eastward over Columbia reported that a foot of rain fell within about 12 hours.

‘Covered in Water’

“Just about all the streets in Columbia with the exception of high-lying areas are covered in water,” Civil Defense Director Charlie Conley said. “We can handle a little bit of rain but nothing like we had this morning.”

The rain eroded an earthen dam that held back a pond in Columbia, flooding several houses and submerging cars. Several highways also were closed because of high water, authorities said.

Reynolds said flood watches were posted for the southern parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida as the storms--remnants of a tropical depression that developed earlier in the week--rolled east along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

Rain was falling in Fairhope, Ala., at up to two inches an hour, officials said. More than five inches of rain had fallen in Foley, much of it since midnight.

10 Inches of Rain

Not far to the east, parts of the Pensacola, Fla., area were flooded with up to 10 inches of rain.

Flash-flood watches were posted Thursday in Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas also.

Fire crews rescued 10 people who were stranded in their cars because of high water in Wichita, Kan., and eight people were evacuated along a flooded creek that threatened their homes. As much as seven inches of rain fell in Wichita, weather officials said.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Arlene, pushing 12-foot seas, thrashed Bermuda with 50-m.p.h. winds and rain Thursday.

Jim Dickson, 41, who is trying to become the first blind person to sail the Atlantic alone, planned to ride out the storm’s winds before sailing his 36-foot sloop Eye Opener to Bermuda to repair his voice-activated navigational system.

Weathering the Storm

“He’s just going to weather this storm out and wait another 24 hours now,” before trying to reach Bermuda, said Ian Johnson, radio watch officer at Harbor Radio, which supervises marine traffic.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami also were watching a tropical depression that formed early Thursday in the Atlantic Ocean about 575 miles east-southeast of Antigua.

The latest depression was producing 35-m.p.h. winds, and forecasters warned that it could strengthen and become a tropical storm.