Flooding in NY

Hmm.. No wonder the roads are closed, I'm staying put till morning, Amtrak isn't running, neither are the buses. It sounds pretty serious out there.

Three die in accidents as floods ravage N.Y.

The Associated Press

Binghamton - Flooding from torrential rains swept away homes and businesses, closed the Thruway, forced mass evacuations and cut a chasm across Interstate 88 that claimed the lives of two truckers yesterday.

The deadly deluge that swamped parts of the East Coast began cutting across upstate New York Tuesday. By yesterday, flood warnings were posted from the Catskills to the Adirondacks, and a 50-mile section of the Thruway in the Mohawk Valley was shut down. Gov. George Pataki issued disaster declarations for a swath of central and eastern New York.

- TWO TRUCKERS DIE - Two truckers on I-88 - one headed east, the other west - separately drove their trucks into the 25-foot deep hole created by a collapsed culvert in Sidney, police said. It was raining hard at the time of the accidents and it was not clear if the truckers even saw the break, which created a jagged tear across the highway wide enough to swallow the cabs. The gap, created by the surging water of Carrs Creek, closed the road between exits 8 and 13. The truckers' names were not immediately released.

- DRIVER KILLED - A Chenango County man, Robert Stockwell, 31, died after driving his car through a washed-out section of road near his home in New Berlin.

- BINGHAMTON HIT HARD - The heaviest-hit area in New York was around Binghamton, which got 4.05 inches of rain Tuesday, the most received in a 24-hour period. Mayor Matthew Ryan declared a state of emergency for the city and ordered evacuations in some neighborhoods. A house floated down the rain-swollen Susquehanna River near the city yesterday, and whole villages in rural Delaware County were cut off by flood waters.

- GUARD ACTIVATED - Gov. George Pataki activated about 125 National Guard members for evacuation duties, rescue and traffic control. Several hundred people were being cared for at a Red Cross emergency shelter set up at Binghamton University after the Susquehanna, Chenango and other rivers flooded. Marilyn Weiner of the Red Cross said about 1,000 people had registered to get food, clothing or lodging. Pataki told CNN that thousands of people were evacuated.

- EMERGENCIES DECLARED - Thirteen counties declared states of emergency: Orange, Sullivan, Ulster, Delaware, Broome, Cortland, Tioga, Chenango, Oneida, Montgomery, Schoharie, Otsego and Herkimer. Portions of Madsion County also were declared emergency areas.

- MOHAWK VALLEY - The Mohawk Valley was also deluged. Homes were evacuated around the Mohawk River, and the surging water forced the Thruway closure between Exit 28 at Fonda-Fultonville and Exit 31 at Utica. The closure was expected to last through this morning.

- MUDSLIDES - In rural Schoharie County, about 90 miles northeast of Binghamton, a mudslide closed a road and prevented emergency crews from reaching residents of a home cut off by the debris. The county's emergency management office said there were no reports of injuries from the mudslide but reported "quite a few roads" in the farming region were closed because of flooding.