Pa. Orders 200,000 To Evacuate

Floods Also A Problem In N.J., N.Y., Md., Del., & Washington, D.C.

(CBS/AP)  Although the bulk of the rain moved out of the area Wednesday, streams were still rising from the runoff and forecasters said more showers and occasional thunderstorms were possible along the East Coast for the rest of the week.

CBS News correspondent Susan Roberts reports flooding in the nation's capital has closed has closed headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service, the Museum of Natural History and the National Archives.

All Smithsonian museums are closed as well, CBS News correspondent Joie Chen adds.

None of the flooded buildings had structural damage, but water in the basements damaged air-conditioning, electric wires and others building systems, said Mike McGill, a spokesman for the General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings.

"We're still in the process of evaluating the damage to those systems," he said.

Sandbags were set up to prevent more water from getting inside.

Officials at the Justice Department, which handles day-to-day operations it its headquarters, said it could take a week to clean up the mess there and reopen the building.

The National Archives moved in giant dehumidifiers to preserve its historic documents. "The threat to the records is not floodwater, but humidity from the lack of air conditioning," spokeswoman Susan Cooper said Wednesday.

Easier to clean up, but perhaps more dramatic: word that the elm tree which fell over at the White House due to the storms is part of our history - and was the model for the drawing on the back of the $20 bill.

Pitts reports concerns center around three river basins — the Susquehanna, the Delaware and the Mohawk. In Wilkes-Barre, that water in the Susquehanna is flowing at a rate of 1.7 million gallons per second.

An estimated 2,200 people were ordered to evacuate the area around Lake Needwood at Rockville, Md., which was approaching 25 feet above normal. Engineers reported weakened spots on the lake's earthen dam.

A swollen creek carved a 25-foot-deep chasm through all four lanes of Interstate 88, about 35 miles northeast of Binghamton, N.Y., and two truckers were killed early Wednesday when their rigs plunged into the gaps, officials said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from communities across New York state, and whole villages north of Binghamton County were isolated by high water.

Along the Delaware River, more than 1,000 people left low-lying areas of Trenton, N.J., and state employees in buildings along the river left work early.

Trenton's water filtration system was shut down because of debris floating down the Delaware, and Mayor Doug Palmer called for conservation, saying the city had only about two days of drinkable water. The river was expected to crest Friday at nearly 8 feet over flood stage, the fourth-highest level on record for Trenton.

The weather was blamed for four deaths each in Maryland and Pennsylvania, one in Virginia and three in New York, including the two truckers.

The Agnes flood caused 50 deaths and more than $2 billion in damage in Pennsylvania, and remains the worst natural disaster in state history. It left 20,000 families homeless in Wilkes-Barre and surrounding Luzerne County towns.

Afterward, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook one of the most ambitious flood-control projects east of the Mississippi River, raising the existing levees by 3 to 5 feet. The $200 million project was finally completed in 2003.