Officials worried about pressure on the town?s levees ordered up to 200,000 people to evacuate the Wilkes-Barre area after the Susquehanna River was swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 12 people in the Northeast.

Besides those evacuees, at least another 11,000 people were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, Maryland and New York as rivers and streams surged over their banks, washed out roads and bridges and cut off villages in some of the worst flooding in the region in decades. In the Binghamton, N.Y., area, an entire house floated down the Susquehanna.

The Pennsylvania levees appeared to be performing exactly as intended yesterday and the Susquehanna crested at just over 34 feet, well below the top of the 41-foot floodwall. The rain-swollen river began a slow retreat at 6 p.m. Wednesday and was not expected to rise again despite the possibility of more showers and occasional thunderstorms along the East Coast.

A second crest predicted early yesterday did not materialize, leading officials to preliminarily declare victory.?It is definitely going in the right direction and we couldn?t get better news,? said Luzerne County public safety chief Alan Pugh. Although the bulk of the rain moved out of the region, some streams were still rising from the runoff.

The rains, which began over the weekend, have been blamed for four deaths each in Maryland and Pennsylvania, one in Virginia and three in New York. Wilkes-Barre, a city of 43,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania coal-mining country, was devastated by deadly flooding in 1972 from the remnants of Hurricane Agnes.

Emergency officials had been keeping a close eye on the river, hoping the levee system the US Army Corp of Engineers finished overhauling just three years ago would hold. They ordered the eva-cuations just in case.?We?re confident that the Army Corps of Engineers did a great job building the levee system, but water is a powerful force?, said Mayor Tom Leighton.

Retirees Richard and Janet Yahrae were rousted from their high-rise apartment building Wednesday afternoon and wound up spending the night with 275 others at a high school-turned-emergency shelter.

But they didn?t mind, and didn?t even complain about the uncomfortable narrow cots: ?The dike?s never been tested. Who knows if it?s going to hold or not ?? said Richard Yahrae, 71.

Low pressure

A dozen helicopters from the Pennsylvania National Guard, the state police and the Coast Guard were sent on search-and-rescue missions, plucking stranded residents from rooftops in Bloomsburg, Sayre and New Milford. Hundreds of National Guardsmen prepared to distribute ice, water and meals ready to eat. Flooding closed many roads in the Philadelphia area, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The soaking weather was produced by a low-pressure system that has been stalled just offshore and pumped moist tropical air northward along the East Coast.