New England gets a taste of what the Southeast deals with every year.

Three New England governors declared states of emergency as torrential rains flooded parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine yesterday, washing out roads, flooding basements, and forcing emergency evacuations.

In Massachusetts, members of the National Guard and Red Cross and emergency workers from 20 state and local agencies worked to evacuate people in Peabody and Melrose after sewage backed up into apartment buildings. Five feet of water sloshed over downtown Peabody yesterday afternoon, rendering useless the sandbags laid out on Saturday. In Melrose, local officials requested boats in case they needed them to help rescue stranded residents, emergency officials said.

With river levels rising throughout the region, and rain expected to continue, emergency management officials predicted more flooding over the next several days, especially in Middlesex and Essex counties, the areas already hardest hit.

"This is going to get worse before it gets better," said Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. "We're having a hard time anticipating how extensive the damage will be."

"It's a very serious situation," said New Hampshire governor John Lynch, adding that forecasters were predicting 12 to 15 inches of rain by the end of the storm in parts of southern New Hampshire.