Floods from 'training thunderstorms' lead to dramatic rescues and 2 deaths in Connecticut

OXFORD, Conn. -- Torrential rains turned streets into raging rivers in parts of Connecticut and New York's Long Island, trapping people in cars and a restaurant, covering vehicles in mud, and sweeping two women to their deaths, authorities said.

Dramatic rescues unfolded as a foot (30 centimeters) of rain fell on some parts of western Connecticut late Sunday and early Monday, coming down so fast that it caught drivers unaware. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said more than 100 people were evacuated by search and rescue teams Sunday evening.

The bodies of two women who had been in separate cars were recovered Monday in Oxford, a town of 13,000 about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest of Hartford, officials said. Both were Oxford residents.

Firefighters were trying to get the first woman to safety when the flooded Little River swept her away, Oxford Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said at a news conference with other Connecticut officials. The second woman got out of her car and tried to cling to a sign, but “the racing water was too much” and swept her away, too, he said.

“This is a tragic and devastating day for Oxford,” the town’s first selectman, George Temple, said.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal added, “Who would have thought the Little River would turn into a gushing torrent of destruction, which is what happened.”

In nearby Southbury, Lucas Barber used wilderness first responder techniques he learned as a backpacker and rock climber to wade through chest-high water to save Patrick Jennings, who has a prosthetic leg, and Jennings' dog from a car outside the Southbury Plaza mall.

Barber, 30, said he drove to higher ground and grabbed rope he keeps in his car for emergencies. Jennings’ car, he said, looked like it was “turning in the tide and seemed to be sinking.”

Barber said he first tried to throw his rope to the car, but then waded and swam to the vehicle once he realized Jennings had a prosthetic leg. He saw Jennings’ golden retriever, Stanley, in the back.

"Your dog is coming with us, but also I need to get you out right now,'" Barber said he told Jennings.

Jennings took off his prosthesis and Barber wrapped his rope around the man’s waist and chest. Barber tried tying the rope around the dog’s collar, but it came undone. Once he got Jennings to safety, he went back for Stanley. Halfway back, Barber said, the dog got excited to see Jennings and swam the rest of the way to his owner.

Barber said he went back a third time to fetch Jennings’ prosthetic leg, which was bobbing next to his car.

In Oxford, rushing waters surrounded the Brookside Inn, trapping 18 people. Firefighters stretched a long ladder like a bridge across the floodwaters to reach them as cars and other large debris carried by the torrent smashed into the building, said Jeremy Rodorigo, a firefighter from neighboring Beacon Falls. One by one, people crawled across the ladder to safety.

The firefighters also rescued a woman and a small dog from an apartment next door, Rodorigo said.

The storm system that hit Connecticut and then moved on to Long Island was separate from Hurricane Ernesto, which on Monday was over the open Atlantic Ocean but still expected to cause powerful swells, dangerous surf and rip currents along the U.S. East Coast.

William Syrett, a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State University, referred to the Connecticut-New York system as “training thunderstorms.”

“It’s like each thunderstorm is a car on a train track, and so they just keep going over the same place,” he said. He cited “perfect conditions” for the storms, thanks to the amount of moisture in the air and a slow weather system.

The unusual part was the amount of rain that fell over several hours, Syrett said, not the thunderstorms themselves.

Jennifer Santos, 17, said Sunday had seemed like a normal day at her parents' newly opened restaurant in Oxford, La Terraza Mexican Grill. Then the river began to swell, flooding the area around the building and eventually destroying the driveway.

“The water rose really quickly, to the point that it started getting up to knee level,” she said. “One of our customers almost got dragged off. Thank God she’s safe."

“I was kind of just shocked,” she said. “I didn’t really think it would happen, not as quickly as I had thought.”

Ed Romaine, the executive of Long Island's Suffolk County, said that hundreds of homes were affected by flooding and that mudslides covered the roofs of cars in some areas. He joined other officials at a news conference near a pond in Stony Brook where a dam breached and destroyed a section of a road and flooded homes.

Town of Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico called the flooding “an environmental and economic disaster.”

“Millions of gallons of water, turtles, fish, everything is downstream along with the personal belongings of many of the houses that were flooded,” Panico said.

The storms canceled more than 450 flights at Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports, officials said.

The storms dropped about 2 to 4 inches of rain on most of northern New Jersey, causing minor to moderate flooding on roads including the Garden State Parkway and other major highways that left some motorists stranded. No deaths, injuries or property damage were reported in New Jersey. Amtrak halted service between Philadelphia and New York’s Penn Station for several hours Sunday evening because of flooding on the tracks.

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This story has been corrected to show the last name of the Oxford fire chief is spelled Pelletier. Earlier versions misspelled it as Pellitier.

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Sisak reported from Philadelphia and Matthews from New York. Associated Press journalists Suman Naishadham in Washington, Julie Walker in New York and Bruce Shipkowski in New Jersey contributed.

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