"It’s a total mess down there": Quincy residents rescued from flooded homes
QUINCY, Mass. -- Residents of a neighborhood in Quincy, Massachusetts, are thankful to be rescued -- after a massive nor'easter pummeled the East Coast. On Saturday morning, the entire neighborhood was without power, and it wasn't clear when residents would be able to return. A front loader was removing debris from the area, CBS Boston reports.
At high tide during Friday's storm, Quincy was under water. Cars were left stranded and the National Guard was called in to help people stuck in their homes. The rescues happened throughout the day by boat, truck and front loaders.
"It's a total mess down there. I'm glad we're out of there," said resident Kyle O'Keefe.
"All our stuff is messed up but this is all that matters."
The National Guard made more than 100 rescues from the area of Sea Street. They were expected to return on Saturday.
Many people said the nor'easter packed a bigger punch than they expected. Christine Way-Cotter said she did not see this coming.
"I'm fortunate to get rescued," she said. "Our house is lifted so like nothing came into our first floor but our whole basement is probably six feet under water."
"My garage, it was all the way up to my waist," said Wayne Adams, who evacuated. "The water was all the way up to my waist."
The nor'easter sent waves onto side streets, submerging cars and making Sea Street and other roads impassable.
Shelters were set up at Quincy High School and Atherton Hough Elementary School for anyone in need.
The nor'easter pounded the Atlantic coast with hurricane-force winds and sideways rain and snow Friday -- flooding streets, grounding flights, stopping trains and leaving 1.6 million customers without power from North Carolina to Maine. As of 6 a.m. ET Saturday, there were seven confirmed weather-related deaths. People were killed by falling trees, including an 11-year-old boy in New York who was killed when a tree crashed into his home, according to authorities.
The storm submerged cars and toppled tractor-trailers, sent waves higher than a two-story house crashing into the Massachusetts coast, forced schools and businesses to close early, and caused a rough ride for passengers aboard a flight that landed at Dulles Airport outside Washington.
"Pretty much everyone on the plane threw up," a pilot wrote in a report to the National Weather Service.
Airlines canceled thousands of flights, and Amtrak said Saturday that service on the Northeast Corridor line would be suspended until at least 9 a.m. between Washington, D.C., and New York City "due to winter storm-related power outages between Philadelphia and New York City."