Hanna's torrents leave Mass. unscarred
Manchester, N.H., takes hit for region
While Massachusetts was spared the brunt of Tropical Storm Hanna's fury, Manchester, N.H., was unexpectedly socked with torrential rains flooding streets, homes, and the city's police station, where telephone service was temporarily cut, officials said.
Three to 6 inches of rain fell throughout New England Saturday night into yesterday morning, according to Alan Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton.
About 6.5 inches of rain pounded Manchester, quickly causing extensive flooding, Fire Chief Jim Burkush said. Flood waters forced some businesses to close, left three homes uninhabitable, and damaged more than a dozen others. It also stranded drivers and passengers in cars, officials said.
Fire Chief Michael Gemache said preliminary damage estimates are in the millions of dollars.
A "deluge of water" flooded the basement of the Manchester Police Department, causing "huge damage" to a firearms range and garage, Burkush said. At least one police cruiser and two or three motorcycles were damaged, as well as ammunition and gymnasium equipment, he said.
The Police Department's phone lines went down, and 911 calls were rerouted to the fire station next door until the system was fixed yesterday afternoon, Gemache said.
The Crosbie Street area was flooded due to overflow from nearby Goldfish Pond, and several people had to be rescued from flooded homes by fire boats. Officers also rescued people trapped in their cars, as waters rose in the Beech Street area near the John F. Kennedy Memorial Coliseum, he said.
No injuries were reported, Gemache said.
"This really has never happened to this magnitude in this neighborhood, including in the floods we had several years ago," Gemache said. "Once all is said and done, they're going to find out why this happened."
Firefighters responded to almost 200 calls for flooded basements, some of which had residual water 8 feet deep, Burkush said.
In Massachusetts, a wall collapse in a storm drain in Milford caused a sinkhole stretching about 100 feet down Stony Brook Lane, according to Fire Lieutenant Jim Vignone.
Vignone estimated that the sinkhole, reported to police about 9:45 Saturday night, was 8 feet deep and 30 to 40 feet wide, about the width of the entire street.
"If anybody had driven into it, it would have been a problem," he said. No one was injured, he said.
Vignone said a good portion of the sinkhole had been filled by yesterday afternoon, and he expected repairs to be completed today.
Cape Cod residents had prepared for damaging winds from Hanna, but were largely spared, meteorologist Dunham said.
"The winds didn't get up quite as high as we thought they would, but that's because the storm was weakening," Dunham said. "They pretty much lucked out."
The highest wind gust reported was just before midnight Saturday in Falmouth, at 56 miles per hour, according to meteorologist Eleanor Vallier-Talbot, also at the National Weather Service in Taunton.
Some homes in New England remained without power yesterday afternoon. In Central and Eastern Massachusetts, most
In New Hampshire, 1,200 customers of Public Service of New Hampshire were without power yesterday afternoon. Spokeswoman Nury Marquez said that Saturday night, 3,800 customers experienced outages. She said the company expected to restore power to all users by last night.
Hurricane Ike, which was affecting the Turks and Caicos Islands yesterday, was expected to move due west, said Vallier-Talbot, and probably would not affect New England.
Globe correspondent Matt Collette contributed to this report 