In Photos and Video: South Carolina Responds to 'Once in 1,000 Years' Storm

Rescue efforts are underway in South Carolina after heavy rainfall triggered record flooding over the weekend, leaving at least nine people dead and large parts of the state underwater.

"If you are in your house, stay in your house," South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley told state residents in a news conference Sunday. "This is not something to be out taking pictures of…. This is an incident we've never dealt with before."

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Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that the disaster constitutes a "1,000-year rainfall event," or one that is expected to occur only once a millennium. The state is scrambling to respond. As of Monday morning, about 1,000 law enforcement officers and transportation workers had been deployed to fix roads and help residents find their way to safety.

Police in the state capital of Columbia said search-and-rescue operations would ramp up on Monday in the heavily affected Richland County, which encompasses Columbia. Rescue workers will take military vehicles into the flood zone to evacuate survivors, marking an orange X on buildings that have been evacuated, officials said.

The destruction was driven by Hurricane Joaquin, which is centered off the US coast about 100 miles northwest of Bermuda. "The flooding is unprecedented and historical," Dr. Marshall Shepherd, a meteorologist and director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, told AP. He said the storm was fueled by a "river" of tropical moisture coming out of Joaquin.

By Monday, the storm had dumped more than 20 inches of rain in parts of central South Carolina, the National Weather Service (NWS) said. Sunday was Columbia's wettest day on record. Rains flooded highways along the South Carolina coast between Charleston and Georgetown, according to the NWS, making transportation around the state treacherous.

Georgetown, a city of 9,000 people, was mostly under water, while the four major highways leading into it were closed.

"We have every ambulance in the county out responding to calls," Georgetown County spokeswoman Jackie Broach said. "People are being moved from their homes in boats."

— Ashley Miller (@Ashes4eternity)October 4, 2015

A 70-mile stretch of Interstate 95 was also closed because of high water.

State Highway Patrol reported 315 collisions and 318 cases of roadway flooding over the weekend. So far, hundreds of flood rescues have been carried out, and eight water rescue teams are operating with more on their wayfrom other states, South Carolina's emergency management office said.

Images coming out of Columbia, South Carolina, also showed entire residential neighborhoods covered in water.

The storm also devastated the state's infrastructure. Fire officials are reporting multiple dam breaches across the state, and early Monday morning emergency officials reported 21,150 power outages.

Meteorologists say that the the worst of the storm is over, but forecast another 2 to 6 inches of rain through Monday.

"For us," Brian Hinton, deputy chief of the Charleston County Volunteer Rescue Squad, told the New York Times, "this is a biblical event."

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