Southeastern Pennsylvania no stranger to flooding

Remnants of Tropical Storm Allison dropped up to 9 inches of rain on suburban Philadelphia Sunday morning. CNN anchor Stephen Frazier talked by phone with Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency spokesman Marko Bourne about the flood history of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

STEPHEN FRAZIER: The water disappeared very quickly. It almost seems in some areas as if there never was a flood, but I'm sure that the damage is going to be plenty and you're going to have quite a time in finding it all.

MARKO BOURNE: Well, no doubt about it. This is an area that has been flooded before: in 1999 following Hurricane Floyd and also back in 1996. So, it's an area that is, unfortunately, used to flash flooding and they do come and go fairly quickly, but unfortunately, the aftermath can be pretty devastating.

FRAZIER: Is this an area that is in a flood plain? Is this near sources of flooding? Or was this purely just rain that couldn't ruin off fast enough?

BOURNE: Well, a little bit of both. There's a tremendous amount of rain that fell, upwards of nine inches in some places within Bucks and Montgomery Counties, plus the Neshaminy Creek watershed, when it does rise, it rises rapidly. It also feeds into the Delaware River, which is a tidal river, and what we had was the crest of the river -- the Neshaminy meeting a high tide in the Delaware River, and that certainly can back things up considerably throughout the entire region.

FRAZIER: Would it be your intent to help people get back to where they were or is this the kind of flood plain where you'd like people to move out permanently?

BOURNE: Well, in many of the areas down there, the commonwealth, working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been very successful using the hazard mitigation program to purchase homes that are in the flood plane. Many more of these areas are not naturally in a flood plain, and this type of flash flooding can be particularly troublesome to them.

One of the things that we are doing is that Governor Ridge has directed and we are working closely with our Federal Emergency Management Agency partners to go into the area, starting tomorrow morning, in force to do a complete damage assessment. We have actually had teams from PEMA on scene there throughout the day today, working with the county emergency management folks on the local level and tomorrow, FEMA will be joining us to do a detailed survey to determine what kind of assistance might become available down the road.

FRAZIER: A lot of acronyms in there. PEMA is Pennsylvania, FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I guess, then, this is the kind of story where we'll be talking to you for several days, Mr. Bourne.

BOURNE: There's no doubt it's going to take us a couple days to at least assess, initially, here the damage, put those numbers together and send that off to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine whether or not we're going to be able to seek federal assistance for this.

FRAZIER: Well, coming as it does in the middle of all of this, we're grateful for you taking time to join us today. Marko Bourne from Pennsylvania's Emergency Management Agency, thanks very much.