The hotel parking lots along Post Road and Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick are filled with trucks sporting out-of-state plates: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Alabama, Georgia. They belong to the hundreds of restoration crews who have followed the floods to Rhode Island to work on the cleanup, from pumping out basements to cleaning the Warwick Mall.

When the water - and the work - dries up, they’ll be gone.

Jesse Hymer, operations manager for a ServiceMaster Clean franchise in Cincinnati, Ohio, said he’s got eight employees here, staying at a Holiday Inn Express in Warwick. From The Providence Journal.