North Carolina flooding 2016: Hurricane Matthew has tempered, but storm isn’t over

At least 20 people in the USA have died in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, which battered the East Coast this weekend, before weakening this morning before going out to sea.

He said two people died in Johnson County, two in Bladen County and one each in Rowan, Pitt, Sampson and Harnett counties. Robeson County, which includes Lumberton, had North Carolina’s highest violent crime rate in 2014. In North Carolina, rising waters have damaged hundreds of buildings, forced thousands into emergency shelters, and left almost 600,000 customers without electricity headed into Monday. “I’m praying that is not going to be”, Mr McCrory said. About 28,000 of the outages were inland in the Fayetteville with nearly 15,000 in the Wilmington area along the coast.

“I can not stress (enough) to people, especially on the Tar River today, if we say the water is coming and we say do not drive through that water, we mean it”, McCrory said at a news conference. She said she excepted about 2,000 Guardsmen to be dropped from duty by Wednesday afternoon, mostly from Florida and Georgia. They said that’s down from around 100,000 Saturday morning. Residents in the Triangle are not expected to need to evacuate. The woman identified herself as Valerie and said she was homeless.

The state reported the evacuation of a prison threatened by flooding.

Officials were concerned that other cities could suffer the fate of Lumberton, a community of 22,000 people about 80 miles from the ocean.

The minimum-security facility for male inmates is near downtown Goldsboro and near the confluence of the Little River and the Neuse River.

Emergency crews have been using helicopters and boats to rescue some residents stranded on rooftops.

Thousands of people found themselves suddenly trapped in homes and cars during the torrential rains.

McCrory said property damage from debris was significant statewide, including Lt. Gov. Dan Forest’s home, which was “totally destroyed” by a fallen tree. “The town hall was the high ground”.

Already 887 people have been rescued from floodwaters and crews are “extremely exhausted”, he said.

“The water is rising so fast it’s scary”. “The issue right now is the outer wall diameter is just wide enough that we’re going to see it move up Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral and the barrier islands of Volusia county”. Charleston County authorities reported trees and power lines down throughout the county as 1,538 people waited out the storm in shelters.

Waggoner reported from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Matthew’s damage exceeded expectations, Duke Energy said.

Power companies say it may be several days before power can be restored to all electric customers across SC.

One of the cities hardest hit by the flooding was Fayetteville. Fugate says the Carolinas will continue facing life-threatening conditions for days because of the flooding. She said 8,000 linemen were working to get electricity restored.

Gov. Pat McCrory is to given an update on the state’s efforts to recover from the storm at 9 a.m. Monday. “Even the military base has road closures”. On Monday, a court extended the voter registration deadline because evacuations. More than 400,000 in SC remained in the dark, in addition to over 308,000 in Florida and 204,000 in Virginia.

The storm was blamed for at least 11 deaths in the United States – five in Florida, three in North Carolina and three in Georgia, including two people killed by falling trees in Bulloch County, the county coroner said.

In Wilson County, rescuers were called when a 63-year-old woman didn’t make it home from work.

Davis said Carter will meet this afternoon on hurricane operations with the National Guard bureau chief, U.S. Northern Command’s commander and the deputy director of operations in the Joint Staff.

Matthew, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007, was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Sunday after its rampage through the Caribbean killed 1,000 people in Haiti.

The precise death toll remains uncertain.

While the crisis was far from over in North Carolina, other places to the south began getting back to normal, with millions relieved that the storm wasn’t the catastrophe that many had been bracing for. The power started coming back on. All but one have involved motor vehicles. “We will not see the rivers peak possibly until Monday and Tuesday. The battery could produce a spark that could ignite leaking gas, if present”. It is moving north about 12 miles per hour (19 kph).

He tried to walk inside the house, whose floors were covered by what looked like more than a foot of sand. But he said individual assistance and permanent repairs to government buildings, roads and parks hasn’t yet been approved.