At least nine people, including a child, were dead after a severe rainstorm pounded a large section of the South and left hundreds of thousands of people without power Sunday morning and communities contending with flash flooding.
In Tennessee, the National Weather Service in Memphis issued a flash flood emergency Sunday afternoon after a levee along the community of Rives failed, causing “rapid onset flooding” there and in the surrounding areas.
“Get to high ground now,” the weather service warned on social media. Rives, which is northeast of Memphis, has a population of about 300. The Tipton County Fire Department said that about 200 people needed to be rescued.
Steve Carr, the Obion County mayor, declared a state of emergency Sunday in response to the severe flooding. He said on Facebook that there would be mandatory evacuations in Rives because of “the rising water, no electricity, and freezing temperature creating a life-threatening situation.”
Some evacuees were taken to the hospital, according to the Obion County Emergency Management Agency.
Carr added that other low-lying areas, including the town of Kenton about 13 miles south of Rives, also faced “imminent threats” because of the flooding.
The Rives fire chief, Campbell Rice, pleaded on a Facebook livestream for residents to evacuate immediately. He said he had responded to floods every year for the past 35 years, but “this one is totally different from the ones in the past.”
The levee was designed to hold back the Obion River, a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for maintaining the levee.
Kentucky was hit particularly hard by the rain and at least eight people died there because of the storms, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said at a news conference Sunday. He said that officials expected the death toll to rise.
He said there had been more than 1,000 rescues and there were more than 300 road closures.
The governor said weather conditions were still dangerous in the state.
In addition to the flash floods, riverbank flooding was going to be significant, he said. Wind gusts of 30 to 45 mph Sunday, combined with the wet ground, were uprooting trees and sending limbs crashing down.
A snowstorm was expected to bring several inches of snow Tuesday night.
In Kentucky, a woman and her 7-year-old child died after the mother’s vehicle was swept away during flash flooding in Hart County, said Anthony Roberts, the county’s coroner.
Donald K. Nicholson, 72, of Manchester, Kentucky, died when he was driving on Kentucky Route 80, said Jason Abner, the Clay County coroner. Nicholson got out of his vehicle when the road became impassable and was swept several hundred feet, Abner said.
Beshear said three other people also died in floodwaters and two people died in motor vehicle accidents.
In Georgia, a person was killed in Atlanta after an “extremely large tree,” fell on a house during a thunderstorm early Sunday, Capt. Scott Powell of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department told reporters.
In Virginia, there had been more than 100 rescues as of Sunday morning, said Lauren Opett, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.
L.D. Mosley, 70, a retired coal company electrician, had just finished fixing his shed when a wall of mud, rocks and trees slammed into it Saturday. The landslide came off the mountain behind his home in Hindman, Kentucky, which is about 130 miles southeast of Lexington.
Mosley estimated that as much as 80 tons of earth covered his property.
“I’m just so heartsick of it right now, I’d like to just throw my hands up and leave,” Mosley said.
In the nearby community of Krypton, Kentucky, Scott McReynolds had lost power at his home and was stuck inside because of the water at the end of his driveway.
McReynolds, the executive director of a housing nonprofit called the Housing Development Alliance, is involved in a statewide effort to move vulnerable residents out of floodplains and onto former strip mines that provide flat land for building new neighborhoods.
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