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Spring wildfires, floods wreak havoc from coast to coast

Inmates from the Georgia Department of Corrections use Class A foam and rakes Tuesday, May 1, 2007 to extinguish the remains of a fire in Waycross, Ga. As part of a team of 830 firefighters from across Georgia and neighboring states, inmate crews worked 12-hour days raking pine
straw and dry leaves from residents’ yards to protect their homes in the fire’s path. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton)

Nature’s fury made life miserable from one end of the United States to the other, with people forced out of their homes by wildfires near both coasts and the Canadian border and by major flooding in the Midwest.

And although the calendar still said spring, the first named storm of the year was whipping up surf on beaches along the southeastern coast.

However, it was not quite a day for the record books.

“It’s a major flood,” National Weather Service meteorologist Suzanne Fortin said of the early May flooding in Missouri. “It won’t be a record breaker, but it will be in the top three.”

But in southern Georgia a three-week-old fire had become that state’s biggest in five decades after charring 167 square miles of forest and swamp.

Flooding the Plains

The flooding was produced by the drenching weekend thunderstorms across the Plains states that also devastated Greensburg, Kansas. In addition to 11 tornado deaths, two drowning deaths were blamed on the storms, one each in Oklahoma and Kansas.

High water had poured over the tops of at least 20 levees along the Missouri River and other streams in the state, authorities said Wednesday.

Missouri National Guard troops were helping. And Highway Patrol troopers were working 24-hour shifts near Big Lake, a village town of about 150 permanent residents in the state’s northwest corner, which was inundated by five levee breaks along the Missouri River and four smaller ones on other streams, said patrol Lt. John Hotz.

No injuries were reported but the Missouri Water Patrol rescued about 20 people from their flooded homes.

In Missouri’s Jackson County, authorities evacuated 300 to 400 residents and at least a dozen homes were partially under water from the Missouri River.

On the West Coast, in view of many Los Angeles residents, a blaze had covered more than 800 acres in the city’s sprawling Griffith Park behind the iconic Griffith Observatory. Hundreds of residents evacuated overnight.

Florida-Georgia wildfire

In northern Florida a wildfire had forced the evacuation of about 250 homes, said Annaleasa Winter, a state forestry spokeswoman. That fire had blackened up to 18,000 acres and before it was 35 percent contained.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said the state had more than 220 active fires that had charred a total of 125 square miles (324 sq. kilometers).

In Georgia officials issued a mandatory evacuation for an area that they feared would be in the path of a 107,000-acre blaze in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, the largest recorded blaze since state record-keeping began in 1957.

Tropical Storm Andrea

Smoke was spreading across wide areas of Florida as wind circulated around Subtropical Storm Andrea, centered about 100 miles off the Georgia coast with top sustained wind around 45 mph. The National Weather Service forecast that the storm would show little movement and dissipate near the coast in four days.

Battling the blazes did not get much immediate help from rain. Forecasters said no significant downpours were expected over land. The storm’s lightning could also spark off more fires, meteorologists said.

Elsewhere, a wildfire near the Canadian border in northeastern Minnesota had covered more than 34 square miles, adding more than 8 square miles (20 sq. kilometers) in one day, authorities said. It had destroyed 45 buildings, including multimillion-dollar homes, and firefighters said it was just 5 percent contained.

More than 100 people had been removed from their homes in the path of the fire.