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Tropical Storm Alberto has left a trail of deadly destruction across parts of the US with Virginia and North Carolina ravaged by landslides and floods and dams now perilously close to rupturing. Remnants of Alberto, the first named storm of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, are now pushing into Canada after heavy rains drenched the Southern Appalachians, claiming lives in raging flash floods, triggering mudslides and washing away bridges. Since its Memorial Day landfall in the Florida Panhandle, Alberto’s heavy rains have been widespread, with flooding reported from Alabama through Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, West Virginia and Illinois.
Tropical Storm Alberto has claimed lives in raging flash floods, triggered mudslides and washed away bridges. Since its Memorial Day landfall in the Florida Panhandle, Alberto’s heavy rains have been widespread. Flooding was reported from Alabama through Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, West Virginia and Illinois.
In Virginia, flash flooding blamed on Alberto turned a peaceful creek into a roaring death trap as witnesses reported a man and woman were swept away when their car was washed off a road Wednesday night. Police say searchers found one of the victims Thursday and would resume searching Friday for the other still missing.
The Carolinas also were dealing with problems of their own from Alberto. In the North Carolina mountain town of Boone, one of those mudslides was blamed for a gas leak and explosion that destroyed a home Wednesday afternoon, killing two people.
Four North Carolina dams being closely watched by a state team of special engineers were holding up, Gov. Roy Cooper said midweek. But Cooper went ahead and declared a state of emergency for his hard-hit mountain counties.
A North Carolina dam that forced evacuations of more than 2,000 people after it was hit by a landslide is no longer in danger of collapsing.
Two TV reporters – Mike McCormick and photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer – died on Monday while on assignment in North Carolina covering the storm, when a tree uprooted from rain-soaked ground and toppled onto their SUV.
Authorities in Cuba say Alberto left four people dead there as the storm drenched the island in heavy rain.
Remnants of Alberto, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, are now pushing into Canada.
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