PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — As people in the Florida Panhandle and southern Alabama cleaned up in the wake of Isaias, the storm's remnants brought heavy rainfall and the risk of flooding across the central Appalachians and the mid-Atlantic region on Sunday. Meanwhile, rain and waves from Tropical Storm Rachel battered Southern California.
In western North Carolina, rivers overflowed as heavy rainfall raised the risk of flash and urban flooding, according
to the National Weather Service. Tornadoes were possible in parts of Virginia and North Carolina, and life-threatening surf and rip current conditions were expected to continue along the Gulf and southeastern Atlantic coasts.
The remnants of a separate storm — Rachel — were expected to bring heavy rains and gusty winds to parts of the southwestern U.S., according to the National Hurricane Center.
At least four deaths were linked to Isaias, including two people killed when trees fell onto homes in Florida and Alabama. The first hurricane of the Atlantic season, Isaias came ashore as a Category 2 hurricane Friday near Destin, Florida, a Gulf Coast vacation spot filled with high-rises and tourist shops. The storm then roared into Alabama with tropical-force winds before heading farther north.
In Florida’s Escambia County, Sheriff Chip Simmons said a woman was killed when a tree fell on her home and a man died of carbon monoxide fumes from a generator running in his garage. Four of the man’s family members, ranging in age from 4 to 72, were treated but were expected to survive, the sheriff said.
One person died when a tree fell on a house in Birmingham, said Cory Moon, the city’s fire chief. A second storm-related death in Alabama was attributed to a motor vehicle crash involving a downed tree in Barbour County, said Josh Johnson of the state’s emergency management agency.
In Burke County, North Carolina, officials said there were at least two water rescues.
An unhoused male and female were camping when floodwaters from the Catawba River caught them off guard. They were rescued, along with their dog, according to a spokesperson for the county emergency management agency. Separately, a woman trapped inside her car in floodwaters was freed outside of Morganton.
In McDowell County, North Carolina, just west of Burke County, first responders said they dealt with five landslides and voluntary evacuations overnight Saturday into Sunday as they responded to flooded roads and streams overflowing their banks.
“Despite a challenging night, we are thankful to report no known injuries or loss of life. We call that a success!” the county emergency management agency posted online.
Nearly a dozen local weather stations in the western North Carolina county reported torrential 24-hour rainfall totals at 9 a.m. Sunday, from about 5 inches (13 centimeters) to as much as 9.57 inches (24 centimeters) at the fire/rescue station in Enola. The National Weather Service said rainfall was diminishing in the area but that rapid river rises and flooding remained possible.
Hurricane-force winds in the Florida Panhandle blew the roof off a Pensacola hotel, and the city’s mayor said the airport “took some damage.” The storm flattened a boathouse in Destin and ripped away part of the facade of a high-rise in Panama City Beach.
At a church in Pensacola where the United Cajun Navy was distributing supplies Sunday morning, a line of hundreds of cars stretched around the block. Yvette Haro said she arrived at 5 a.m. after being turned away the previous day because supplies had run out.
With a 10-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter at home, she said it's hard to go to stores and wait in long lines. She was looking for water, paper towels, toilet paper and cleaning supplies.
“Anything that they’re willing to give us is helpful,” she said.
While her home didn't suffer any damage, the loss of electricity was making things difficult, Haro said. “The biggest thing is our food going bad. It’s really hard to keep grilling everything and then where do we store all this food?”
Roughly 416,000 customers were without power Sunday at 1 p.m. ET in southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, according to poweroutage.com.
Sarah Gatewood, a spokesperson for Florida Power & Light, said workers from all over Florida and from more than two dozen other states were mobilized to help restore power.
“We know how frustrating it is to be without power and we know that our customers are counting on us, and that’s why we bring in additional resources and focus our efforts 24/7 on getting the lights back on for our customers,” she said.
Rachel became a post-tropical cyclone overnight, bringing damaging rain and waves to southern California.
Waves from the storm battered a century-old wooden boardwalk on the Long Beach peninsula and forced homeowners to evacuate over the weekend. The strip of multimillion-dollar oceanfront properties, along with much of the Southern California coastline, was already reeling from Hurricane Marie in September.
Jake Gordon, a Long Beach real estate agent, said he was devastated to see the historic boardwalk in his hometown reduced to a splintered pile of wood amid ongoing erosion from storm surges.
“This area is completely shattered and vulnerable,” Gordon said. “The fact that Rachel came and gave it the knockout blow — I don’t want to say it can’t get any worse for these houses, but it’s really, really sad.”
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said that the storm would affect the whole city, and urged city residents to avoid the peninsula through the weekend as crews worked to clean up the area. More than half a dozen houses along the coast were declared structurally unsafe.
“It is not normal that we see this type of activity, especially for our residents in the peninsula,” Richardson said Saturday. “These kind of impacts are not normal, they are unprecedented for our community.”
And in the Pacific, Hurricane Simon was a Category 4 storm as it approached Mexico’s coast Sunday. Simon was expected to bring heavy rainfall to parts of southwestern Mexico with life-threatening flooding and mudslides.
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Brumback reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporters Julie Walker in New York, Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, and Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed.
