(Birmingham) At least four people have been killed in floods in the southeastern United States.
After a weather forecast in Alabama, flash flood warnings were in effect over a large area Thursday.
At least four people were killed when vehicles were struck. A four-year-old girl and an 18-year-old girl have drowned in separate incidents in the northeastern part of the state.
Elsewhere, rescuers found the bodies of a teenager and his girlfriend in a car that had been swept away by a flood in Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham. Both victims were 23 years old.
Alabama and northwest Florida received about fifteen centimeters of rain in 24 hours. More heavy rain was forecast for the Birmingham metropolitan area on Thursday, but meteorologists are expecting another wet day for that state and parts of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. Fifteen more inches of rain is expected by Thursday night.
Near the Alabama-Florida border, several businesses were found dozens of inches underwater.
The rain has wreaked havoc in northern Alabama, hitting cars in the Birmingham and Tennessee river valleys. Rescuers had to help motorists when insecurity and stagnant water made the journey dangerous in some places.
The worst flooding was in Belham, just outside Birmingham, where 82 people were rescued from their homes and 15 inches of people were forced out of bed by rivers and streams as three inches of rain fell. More than a hundred rescuers were mobilized.
About 950,000 liters of sewage was discharged from sewage systems near Mobile Bay in Baldwin County.
The water level in Alabama has dropped to six inches since the beginning of the week and ten more inches are feared. The northern part of the state is expected to receive the heaviest rainfall.
There were also fears of heavy thunderstorms and isolated hurricanes over the next few hours. The U.S. Meteorological Agency has released a hurricane clock for northeastern Alabama, northwestern Georgia and southern Tennessee.
Bad weather is expected to begin to pull out of Alabama late Thursday. Flash flood warnings are in effect along a line crossing the mountains of northwestern Florida, northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee and West Carolina.
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