Misery follows flood's havoc

Residents who had been forced to flee began returning yesterday to homes ravaged by flooding and sewage, as Massachusetts prepared for a massive cleanup after the worst floods in 70 years to hit the Merrimack Valley.

With rivers receding, the scope of the devastation was just beginning to emerge, and state officials predicted a slow return to normalcy.

Although they have not yet developed an estimate of the economic impact of the flooding, the consensus is that damage has been staggering.

Some homes are not expected to be habitable for weeks or even months, and it is not yet clear when all the 3,500 to 4,500 residents who left their homes in 17 communities will return.

In Lowell, Diane Laderoute found yesterday that 2 feet of water in her living room meant that she might not be allowed to return for five months. And in Saugus, Daniel Doherty struggled to empty 4 feet of sewage overflow from his children's bedrooms.

''I keep looking at this and thinking there is a good reason the Big Guy did this, but I haven't figured it out yet," Laderoute, 46, said as she surveyed the damage to her home in Lowell's Pawtucketville neighborhood. Yesterday marked the first day since Sunday that flood water from Beaver Brook had emptied from her living room, where the water once stood 2 feet high.

An insurance company representative told her she will not be able to move back for five months.

The state plans to apply for federal disaster relief, and damage-assessment teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are expected to begin their work shortly, said gubernatorial spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.

Massachusetts officials said it is difficult to estimate how much the flooding will cost, because much of the damage is still under water. ''The thing isn't even over yet," said Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

In Lawrence, 240 nursing home residents were evacuated after a berm collapsed and water flooded the first floor. In Haverhill and Lowell, millions of gallons of raw sewage continued to spill into the Merrimack River, but environmental officials said they expect minimal impact from the outflow.

North of Boston, Route 1 was closed once again, forcing commuters to find frustrating, alternative ways to work.

Two flooding-related deaths were reported yesterday, one involving a car accident on a wet road in Plympton and another in which a dead man was discovered in a car in Topsfield.

Even though the Merrimack and Spicket rivers began to subside, nervous officials from Methuen to Amesbury kept watch on overstressed dams.

''The side retaining wall of our dam is starting to give way," Mayor Thatcher Kezer III of Amesbury said yesterday afternoon of a dam that protects downtown businesses. ''We've shut down Market Square in the middle of town and evacuated people from the buildings."

Kezer said he is also worried about the effect of boats and debris that have been dislodged by the flooding and could damage bridges on their way downriver. In Newburyport, more than 200 boat slips were destroyed by debris carried down the Merrimack and might be lost for the season, said Mayor John Moak.

In Peabody, where water still stood 11 feet deep in some parts of downtown yesterday, officials closed a regional shelter at the high school.

Among those leaving the shelter were a handful of people who had lived in trailer parks off Hawkes Street in Saugus. The flood victims, who had been evacuated from their homes Monday by firefighters in boats, were moving to a Peabody hotel for at least one night while officials scrambled to find hotel space for the next several days.

''I'm homeless," said Mike Thielman, who had left his trailer home at 4 a.m. Monday. ''My van is underwater; my trailer is underwater. I don't know what's going to happen."

Businesses in the flood zone are expected to suffer losses from water damage to their buildings and road closings. More than 50 school districts in Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire remained closed yesterday.

Governor Mitt Romney estimated that the cost of the flood would run into the ''tens of millions of dollars." In Peabody alone, officials predicted millions of dollars of damage.

Many rivers are not expected to fall below flood stage, the point at which they overflow their banks, until tomorrow or Friday because of the extraordinary amount of rainfall they have had to absorb over the past week.

''This keeps on giving, as it were," said Charlie Foley, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

By midafternoon yesterday, the Merrimack River in Lowell had dropped to 55.7 feet from a high of 58.8 feet at 7 p.m. Monday, the river's fourth-highest height on record. The flood level is 52 feet at that spot.

An additional inch of rain was expected last night, but that was expected only to slow the rate at which rivers recede, Foley said. A shift of winds to the west and south was expected to help push out the moisture and help the region dry out

State environmental officials said that the sewage pouring into the Merrimack River is not likely to have a long-term impact. The sewage will be heavily diluted by the rainwater that washes it through the pipes and also by the river, said Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

However, the state has closed shellfish beds from the New Hampshire border to the South Shore as a precaution. The beds will remain closed for about three weeks after the major sewage discharges have stopped, said Vanessa Gulati, a spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority stressed that all its drinking water is safe.

Among the two deaths linked to the weather, a New Hampshire man was found dead inside his car in 3-foot-deep water yesterday afternoon in Topsfield.

Investigators are trying to determine how James Elderkin, 59, of Derry, N.H., died, authorities said. Salem Road had been closed and barricaded because of flooding, Topsfield police said.

Mac Daniel and Kathleen Burge of the Globe staff contributed to this report.