Death toll mounts as floods, heat wave batter US

Three people at a bus stop were electrocuted in a lightning strike as the death toll mounted Thursday from storms, floods and a smothering heat wave battering the central United States.
Mudslides and murky floodwaters hampered recovery efforts in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio and Wisconsin where at least 23 people were killed after a week of heavy rains that prompted dramatic roof-top rescues.Meanwhile, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama continued to wither under a record-breaking heat wave blamed for the death of at least 25 people. Recovery workers in Oklahoma were searching Thursday for the body of a high school student who was sucked into floodwaters while running with his cross country team.Six other people were confirmed dead in the state after the remnants of tropical storm Erin dumped heavy rain there and triggered flooding over the weekend that continued to wreak havoc on the state.It was the third major flood the state has faced this summer and the deadliest so far because of the intensity of the storm, said Michaelann Otten, a spokeswoman for the department of Emergency Management."What made this one so amazingly intense is we had an eye of a hurricane form over our state," she told AFP. "We haven't seen it flood so fast and so high in recent memory."An initial survey of three counties found 42 homes destroyed and 451 badly damaged. Damage in 21 other counties has not yet been assessed because roads are still impassable, she said.Three people were killed in Madison, Wisconsin Wednesday afternoon when lightening struck a utility pole and knocked a live wire into a deep puddle at a bus stop, police said.A woman and her toddler were electrocuted as was a man who jumped off a bus to try to help them. The bus driver was also shocked when he tried to help but was knocked back into the bus and survived, police said in a statement.The Ohio river breached its banks after days of heavy rains and swamped cities and towns across the state. A 74-year-old man died after floodwaters knocked over a gasoline can and the pilot light of a nearby water heater set the gas ablaze, the Mansfield News-Journal reported.Texas was spared the brunt of hurricane Dean's wrath but was still cleaning up from the damage wrought by tropical storm Erin and months of endless rain which caused six deaths last week.This brought the state's flash-flood deaths to 40 so far this year, tying the record set in 1989, said Victor Murphy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service."We've had persistent, ongoing, relentless precipitation pretty much all year," Murphy told AFP."It's our wettest year on record so far... dating back to 1895."Meanwhile, a crippling heat wave brought death and drought to the south eastern states of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.Thirteen deaths were reported in Memphis, Tennessee and a dozen were reported in Alabama, officials said."These are a hundred year-plus records that are being shattered," Murphy said.One such record was in Athens, Georgia which has had 13 days this month with temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to an average of one day a year in August."That's a tremendous climatologically extreme event," Murphy said.Birmingham, Alabama broke records with 10 consecutive days of temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), up from the previous record of eight days in the deadly heat wave of 1980.Drought conditions are so severe that the town of Franklin has begun shutting off water service to homes which violate water restrictions and is considering banning restaurants from serving water to customers who don't specifically ask for it, the Tennessean newspaper reported.Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has made emergency funds available to buy air conditioners and fans for low-income residents.
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As in the days of Noah...