TRENTON, N.J. – Muddy, coffee-colored floodwaters poured into homes, basements and stores on both sides of the Delaware River and rose as high as the street signs Thursday in some of the worst flooding to hit the Northeast in decades. At least 15 deaths were blamed on the deluge.

The city of Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania was spared when the newly raised levees held back the raging Susquehanna River, and officials lifted an evacuation order covering 200,000 people. But other communities drenched by days of record-breaking rain were not as lucky.

Along the swollen and still-rising Delaware River, thousands of people were driven from their homes, and officials closed 10 bridges connecting New Jersey and Pennsylvania because of high water. The floodwaters reached as high as the street signs in Easton, Pa. On the other side of the river in Lambertville, N.J., ducks swam down a street of shuttered antiques shops.

The supply of drinking water was dwindling in Trenton, a day after the Delaware River forced the city’s water purification plant to shut down, and Gov. Jon S. Corzine declared a statewide emergency.

New Jersey State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes warned people not to return home. “The sun is shining but the waters are still high. The Delaware is raging,” Fuentes said. “It will get better, but it will not get better today.”

Mary Iglesias, who was forced from her neighborhood in Trenton, worried about what she would find when her family is allowed to go back.

“We dragged everything up out of the basement and put all the furniture we could on top of tables or counters on the first floor,” she said. “We tried to take it up to the second floor, but nothing would fit up the stairs except the TV.”

There were no immediate damage estimates. But Corzine said the flood looked a lot like one in April 2005 that caused $30 million in damage.

Herbert Sandor, who owns a building on Main Street in New Hope, Pa. — a quaint town 30 miles north of Philadelphia that is popular with tourists and antiques collectors – said the 10 stores in the building he owns were spared, but basement offices, including those of his wife’s advertising agency, were under 5 feet of water.

“It’s a disaster,” he said.

Monica Taylor stood on the edge of the floodwaters in the flood-prone Island section of Trenton, wondering how badly her home had been damaged. In 2005, she had 2 1/2 feet of water in her basement and was afraid there might be more this time.

“We’ve been through this before, but I don’t plan to get used to it,” she said.

In Maryland, evacuations were ordered in Cecil County as the rising Susquehanna threatened about 300 homes. About 2,200 residents downstream from a dam in Rockville were asked to stay away from their homes for fear the dam would break. Needwood Lake, 25 feet above normal Tuesday night, had dropped several feet by Thursday afternoon, but crews were still dumping loads of gravel on a leak.

At least 15 deaths in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and New York were blamed on the storms and the flooding. In New York’s Sullivan County, searchers found the body of a 15-year-old girl whose house collapsed as she stood on the porch to be rescued.

Searchers also found the bodies of two Maryland boys, ages 14 and 16, who were swept away earlier this week.