Flooded New England Starts To Drain

Northern New England's rivers crested and started to recede Tuesday, after thousands of people had fled submerged neighborhoods during the region's worst flooding in nearly seven decades.

"We've seen anywhere from eight to 12 inches of rain across the region in the last four days," CBS News meteorologist George Cullen said.

More rain was falling Tuesday, although the rain was lighter than it had been in the past few days.

However, the worst of the flooding was thought to be over, and some residents were being allowed back into their homes.

"The rivers have crested, and they're beginning to pull back a bit," Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said on CBS News' The Early Show. "The rain that's coming down now means it's going to take longer for them to pull back and just more suffering for the 2,500 people who are out of their homes because it's just going to take longer to get them back in."

Forecasters say there was so much rain they'll have to rewrite the history books. Mother Nature has already changed the landscape, reports CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.

"It was a little scary looking out the window knowing you have lakefront property all of a sudden," said resident John O'Brien.

"You didn't buy that?" asked Alfonsi.

"No, but hopefully I can sell it that way!" O'Brien replied.

The storms have swamped much of northern New England. In New Hampshire, more than 600 roads were damaged, destroyed or under water. In Maine, flooding washed out dozens of roads and bridges, and threatened a pair of dams along the swollen Salmon Falls River in Lebanon. Two areas of Lebanon near the Spaulding Dam were evacuated Monday as a precaution.

Peggy Fennelly had not seen the inside of her flooded candy store in York, Maine, until she walked inside, accompanied by Gov. John Baldacci.

She found bags, sodas in plastic bottles and supplies floating in the dark water. Her freezer was toppled onto its side. Boxes of penny candies and chocolate were soaked and ruined.

"I started crying and he hugged me. He said 'you're a strong lady and you'll make it,'" said Fennelly, standing outside Sweet Josie's Candy Shoppe on Monday as her son-in-law, wearing a wetsuit, hauled away the candy that could be salvaged.

The air mattress Nick Barrett brought with him when he evacuated his Lowell, Mass., condominium overlooking the surging Merrimack River could turn out to be more than just a comfortable place to sleep. It might also have to be a raft.

"I'm going to use it to get back in, too," he joked late Monday night as he looked over the flooded parking lot of his building.

In Lowell, crews took to the streets in boats and used bullhorns to urge 1,000 households to evacuate.

"They were pulling up with boats, loading people into boats, getting people to higher ground, they were putting people on the back of some very large trucks, just saying 'hold on,'" school committeewoman Regina Faticanti told CBS Radio station WBZ-AM. "This is pretty scary."

Barrett, 24, left Monday morning but came back at night to check things out.

"I packed a week's worth of clothes," he said.

Several hundred Methuen, Mass., residents, who live downstream of the Spicket River Dam, left their homes after officials became concerned that the dam, shored up by several thousand sandbags, would give way under the pressure of the raging river.

Even though the ferocious water tore away a wooden walkway across the top of the dam and knocked over a nearby lamp post, city officials said they were confident the concrete structure would hold when the river was expected to crest early Tuesday.

Schools across the North Shore and Merrimack Valley as well as in southern New Hampshire announced they would stay closed Tuesday.

The flood water also overwhelmed sewage systems and drowned waste water treatment plants. Burst pipes in Haverhill have been dumping 35 million gallons of waste a day since Sunday into the Merrimack River. A flood at a regional treatment plant in Lawrence was threatening to shut down the power there, which would send sewage into the Merrimack at a rate of 115 million gallons a day.

"That's going to have an impact potentially downstream. Not on drinking water, but environmentally on our shell fish beds out by the Atlantic," Romney told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "All those things are being evaluated."

There have been no fatalities from the storms yet.

"The good news is that all of the homeland security work and the drills and training that have been going on to prepare for a terrorist event have really allowed us to move very, very quickly to prepare for what is a natural disaster," Romney said.

Widespread flooding has prompted a rush across New Hampshire on sump pumps, wet-dry vacuums and other cleanup equipment, forcing dealers to order emergency shipments. Many stores started waiting lists.