Florence lays rainy siege; 4 deaths attributed to slow-moving storm

Sgt. Matt Locke (left) and Sgt. Nick Muhar with the North Carolina National Guard help a child Friday as rising floodwaters from Hurricane Florence threaten the family’s home in New Bern, N.C.
Sgt. Matt Locke (left) and Sgt. Nick Muhar with the North Carolina National Guard help a child Friday as rising floodwaters from Hurricane Florence threaten the family’s home in New Bern, N.C.

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- Tropical Storm Florence continued to thrash the Carolinas on Friday evening with fierce winds, driving rain and catastrophic flooding. Downgraded from hurricane strength after making landfall near Wilmington, N.C., the storm had killed at least four people, authorities said, and trapped hundreds of others whose rescues continued as night fell.

Forecasters warned that drenching rains of 1 to 3½ feet as the storm crawls westward across North and South Carolina could trigger epic flooding well inland over the next few days.

As 400-mile-wide Florence pounded away at the coast with torrential downpours and surging seas, rescue crews used boats to reach more than 360 people besieged by rising waters in New Bern, N.C., while many of their neighbors awaited help. More than 60 people had to be rescued in another town as a cinder-block motel collapsed at the height of the storm's fury.

Florence flattened trees and crumbled roads, with the siege in the Carolinas expected to last all weekend. The storm knocked out power to more than 890,000 homes and businesses, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks the U.S. electrical grid.

Duke Energy Corp. has estimated that as many as 3 million customers, 75 percent of its total, face potential power failures from the storm.

"It's an uninvited brute who doesn't want to leave," said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.

The hurricane was "wreaking havoc" and could wipe out entire communities as it makes its "violent grind across our state for days," the governor said. He said parts of North Carolina had seen storm surges -- the bulge of seawater pushed ashore by the hurricane -- as high as 10 feet.

A mother and baby were killed when a tree fell on a house, according to a tweet from Wilmington police. Also, a 77-year-old man was apparently knocked down by the wind and died after going out to check on his hunting dogs, Lenoir County authorities said. And the governor's office said a man was electrocuted while trying to connect extension cords in the rain.

After reaching a Category 4 peak of 140 mph earlier in the week, Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane at 7:15 a.m. at Wrightsville Beach, a few miles east of Wilmington and not far from the South Carolina line. It slogged ashore along a mostly boarded-up, emptied-out stretch of coastline.

By Friday evening, Florence was downgraded to a tropical storm, its winds weakening to 70 mph as it pushed inland. But it was clear that this was really about the water, not the wind.

Florence's forward movement during the day slowed to a near-standstill -- sometimes it was going no faster than a human can walk -- and that enabled it to pile on the rain. The town of Oriental, N.C., got more than 20 inches in just a few hours into the deluge. Other communities got well over a foot.

The flooding soon spread into South Carolina, swamping places like North Myrtle Beach, in a resort area known for its white sands and multitude of golf courses.

For people living inland in the Carolinas, the moment of maximum peril from flash flooding could arrive days later, because it takes time for rainwater to drain into rivers and for those streams to crest.

Authorities warned, too, of the threat of mudslides and the risk of an environmental disaster from floodwaters washing over industrial waste sites and hog farms.

Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government officials said they were focusing on saving lives as they anticipated several more days of flooding and destruction.

The officials outlined a vast deployment of resources: 1,100 FEMA rescuers in North and South Carolina, 40 aircraft, more than 7,100 members of the Coast Guard, 500 medical personnel deployed to shelters, and the deployment of the National Guard of both Carolinas.

The officials also said swift-water boats, high-water vehicles and a variety of rescue specialists were standing by. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was watching several dams, but said they have the capacity to hold Florence's rainfall.

The National Hurricane Center said Florence will eventually will break up over the southern Appalachians and make a right hook to the northeast, its rainy remnants moving into the mid-Atlantic states and New England by the middle of next week.

Meteorologist Ryan Maue of weathermodels.com said Florence could dump a staggering 18 trillion gallons of rain over a week on North Carolina, South Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland. That's enough to fill the Chesapeake Bay or cover the entire state of Texas with nearly 4 inches of water, he calculated.

North Carolina alone is forecast to get 9.6 trillion gallons, enough to cover the Tar Heel state to a depth of about 10 inches.

GUSTS AND DEBRIS

On Friday, coastal streets in the Carolinas flowed with frothy ocean water, and pieces of torn-apart buildings flew through the air. The few cars out on a main street in Wilmington had to swerve to avoid fallen trees, metal debris and power lines.

A wind gust at the Wilmington airport was clocked at 105 mph, the highest since Hurricane Helene in 1958. Nationwide, airlines canceled more than 2,400 flights through Sunday.

In Jacksonville, N.C., next to Camp Lejeune, firefighters and police fought wind and rain as they went door to door to pull dozens of people out of the Triangle Motor Inn after the structure began to crumble and the roof started to collapse.

The city of New Bern was trapped between two rivers swollen with rainwater and storm surge. As its historic downtown flooded, people were rescued from flooded homes and stranded cars by authorities and visiting "Cajun Navy" volunteers.

"The storm surge alone has overwhelmed the city of New Bern," Cooper, the governor, said at a news conference. More 100 swift-water rescues were carried out there overnight, he said, "and we expect more."

Though New Bern is dozens of miles inland from the coast, it was especially vulnerable because its downtown has rivers on two sides: the Neuse and the Trent. Starting Thursday night, they were inundated by 13 inches of rainfall -- which flowed downstream just as the hurricane pushed seawater upstream from Pamlico Sound.

As a result, water levels in New Bern rose more than 10 feet in a few hours Thursday night and Friday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The two rivers backed up into yards, houses, and downtown streets: the city's online maps showed flooding had spread several blocks inland. Power was out throughout almost all of the downtown area.

The entire county had been under a mandatory evacuation order since Tuesday. But many of New Bern's 30,000 people had stayed behind.

"We've got about 8 more feet of tidal surge that we can handle," said Jay Schreiber, who was waiting out the storm in a second-floor condo in the city's downtown. From his balcony, 12 feet off the ground, he could see the confluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers -- now a huge expanse of water, after both rivers overflowed their banks.

There was 4 feet of water in the building's first-floor garage. Schreiber and his wife Shari were inside with supplies of water, Gatorade and canned goods. "We're doing OK, he said in a phone interview. "But we're on an island."

For other people, the water rolled too fast: their islands vanished, and they were left scrambling to get away -- either up into attics and upper stories, or out into flooded streets.

"We are coming to get you," the city tweeted in capital letters around 2 a.m. "You may need to move up to the second story, or to your attic, but we are coming to get you."

Boat teams including volunteers rescued some 360 residents, including Sadie Marie Holt, 67, who first tried to row out of her neighborhood during Florence's assault.

"The wind was so hard, the waters were so hard, that trying to get out we got thrown into trailers. We got thrown into mailboxes, houses, trees," said Holt, who had stayed at home because of a doctor's appointment that was later canceled. She retreated and was eventually rescued by a boat crew; 140 more awaited assistance.

Ashley Warren and boyfriend Chris Smith managed to paddle away from their home in a boat with their two dogs, and the experience left her shaken.

"Honestly, I grew up in Wilmington. I love hurricanes. But this one has been an experience for me," she said. "We might leave."

After seeing waves crashing on the Neuse River just outside his house in New Bern, restaurant owner and hurricane veteran Tom Ballance wished he had evacuated.

"I feel like the dumbest human being who ever walked the face of the earth," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Drew, Seth Borenstein, Allen G. Breed, Jeffrey Collins, Jennifer Kay, Tamara Lush, Gary Robertson, Sarah Rankin, Denise Lavoie, Meg Kinnard, Skip Foreman, Jeff Martin, David Koenig, Gerry Broome, and Jay Reeves of The Associated Press; by Katie Zezima, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, David A. Fahrenthold and Julie Tate of The Washington Post; by Brian K. Sullivan, Pratish Narayanan, Heesu Lee, Jim Efstathiou Jr., Paige Smith, Andrew Wallender, Christopher Martin, David Wethe, Nathan Crooks, Alex Longley and Ari Natter of Bloomberg News; and by staff members of The New York Times.

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AP/The News & Observer/CHUCK LIDDY

Rescue and emergency workers wait Friday to remove the bodies of a mother and child who were killed when a tree fell on their home in Wilmington, N.C., as Hurricane Florence made landfall. The father was transported to a hospital with serious injuries.

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AP/ALLEN G. BREED

A speedboat sits wedged in bushes in the parking lot of a waterfront hotel Friday in New Bern, N.C. Wind and rain from Florence caused the Neuse River to rise, swamping the city.

A Section on 09/15/2018

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