Under water, under stress
As of Monday afternoon, when the worst of the rain stopped, the National Weather Service said rainfall totals in the hardest-hit areas in South Carolina had received more than 2 feet of rain since last week.
The South Carolina town hit by the most rainfall, Mount Pleasant, got almost 27 inches, according to the weather service. A total of about 11 trillion gallons of water had fallen across North Carolina and South Carolina combined. More rain is coming this weekend, forecasters said Thursday.
40,000 households had no running water, 26,000 had no electricity as of Monday.
Chad Shields uses a kayak to deliver food to his parents after their home was flooded on Wednesday in Summerville, South Carolina. The state experienced record rainfall amounts over the weekend and officials expect the damage from the floodwaters to be in the billions of dollars.
State highway patrol officers have responded to 4,926 service calls over the last several days.
Police watch rescue boats looking for residents trapped in their homes on Sunday in Columbia, South Carolina. The state experienced a record rainfall, with at least 11.5 inches falling Saturday.
A reported 2,122 of those calls have been responses to vehicle collisions.
A car is submerged in Lake Katherine on Tuesday in Columbia, South Carolina. The state of South Carolina experienced record rainfall amounts over the weekend and officials expect the costs to be in the billions.
Some 3,000 National Guardsman are in the state, and that number will increase to 5,000, Gov. Nikki Haley said.
Lewis Whetstone of the the Army National Guard passes out water to those in need on Tuesday in Columbia, South Carolina. The state experienced record rainfall amounts over the weekend and continues to battle the results of the flooding.
About 600 people and hundreds of pets had been rescued.
Family pets watch as Michael Carroll (not pictured) arrives to check on them at the Carroll family's flooded property in Conway, South Carolina, on Tuesday. The Carroll family has been living with several feet of water on their land since Saturday. Fourteen people have died amid historic rainfall in South Carolina, the state's governor said on Tuesday, as residents grappled with the damage wrought by flooding on their homes, roads and water supply.
A reported 824 people were in shelters as of Wednesday.
Five-month-old Jeremiah Odum, left, and his 2-year-old brother, Braxton, napped on a cot in a high school gymnasium being used as a Red Cross shelter for flood evacuees in Rowesville, S.C., on Monday. The boys and their mother, 24-year-old Nyshambi Vega, arrived at the shelter after being rescued by firefighters with paddleboats when chest-deep floodwaters crept to the door of their apartment in Holly Hill, South Carolina, over the weekend.
Thirteen dams had failed, and 62 were being monitored out of the thousands in South Carolina.
Floodwaters break through a walkway in Columbia, South Carolina. After a week of steady rain, the showers tapered off Monday and an inundated South Carolina turned to surveying a road system shredded by the historic flooding. South Carolina had problems with crumbling roads and bridges and old drinking water systems and dams long before the historic floods of the past week. Now the state faces what will likely be hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of bills to fix washed-out roads and bridges and destroyed dams.
Seventy-four miles of the Interstate Highway System were closed as of Tuesday.
An information alert board announces the closing of Interstate 95 because of the flash floods at the crossing with Interstate 26 in South Carolina on Monday. Relentless rain left large areas of the Southeast under water. The states of North and South Carolina have been particularly hard hit, but the driving rain in recent days has spared almost none of the East Coast.