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'Worst yet to come': Florence leaves 14 dead as North Carolina braces for massive flooding | |
(about 1 hour later) | |
As the death toll from Florence rose and hundreds were rescued from flooded homes on Sunday, North Carolina slid towards the next stage of the disaster: catastrophic flooding. | |
Before the official death toll rose to 14, Mitch Colvin, mayor of Fayetteville, told reporters: “The worst is yet to come.” | |
Amid controversy over the federal response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, the director of the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, Michael Sprayberry, told ABC’s This Week the state was getting the support it needed. | Amid controversy over the federal response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, the director of the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management, Michael Sprayberry, told ABC’s This Week the state was getting the support it needed. |
Brock Long, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told NBC’s Meet the Press staff were meeting challenges “as they’re coming up to us”. The focus, he said, was on search-and-rescue and helping people in shelters. | |
Donald Trump used Twitter to say Fema, “first responders and law enforcement are working really hard on hurricane Florence. As the storm begins to finally recede, they will kick into an even higher gear. Very Professional!” | |
Nonetheless, the challenges faced were stiff. The mayor of the city of New Bern, heavily hit by flooding, told NBC he had imposed a curfew. Thirty roads remained impassable, Dana Outlaw said, with 4,200 homes and more than 300 commercial buildings damaged, 6,000 people without power and 1,200 residents in shelters. | |
On Saturday night, Duke Energy said heavy rains caused a slope to collapse at a coal ash landfill at a closed power station outside the port city of Wilmington. A Duke spokeswoman said about 2,000 cubic yards of ash were displaced at the Sutton Plant and contaminated water likely flowed into the cooling pond. Ash left when coal is burned contains toxic heavy metals, including lead and arsenic. | |
This is not a talking point. We are saying this because we are concerned with you. The worst is yet to come | This is not a talking point. We are saying this because we are concerned with you. The worst is yet to come |
After blowing ashore as a hurricane with 90mph winds, Florence lingered over the Carolinas and scattered destruction widely. By Sunday it had weakened to a tropical depression and was crawling west at 8mph. Winds were down to 35mph. But in North Carolina, rivers were swelling and thousands were evacuated. | |
The evacuation zone included part of Fayetteville. “This is not a talking point,” said its mayor, Colvin, on Saturday. “This is not a script, but we are saying this because we are concerned with you. The worst is yet to come. If you are refusing to leave during this mandatory evacuation, you need to do things like notify your legal next of kin. The loss of life is very, very possible.” | |
Forecasts said rivers would crest on Sunday and Monday at record or near-record levels: the Little River, the Cape Fear, the Lumber, the Neuse, the Waccamaw and the Pee Dee were all projected to burst their banks. | Forecasts said rivers would crest on Sunday and Monday at record or near-record levels: the Little River, the Cape Fear, the Lumber, the Neuse, the Waccamaw and the Pee Dee were all projected to burst their banks. |
In Goldsboro, rain fell and the Neuse was swelling above its banks. Sunday service at the Greenleaf Christian church was cancelled. The church’s pastor is the civil rights leader William Barber. He was forced to evacuate his 86-year-old mother west, to Greensboro. | |
Speaking on the phone from Washington, Barber told the Guardian he planned to return soon to oversee outreach efforts. The church, which serves some of the poorest residents in the city, will hand out free meals to children who would usually receive food at school. | |
He said: “I have members who live in rental housing that were afraid their housing was going to get destroyed during this particular hurricane. Thank God it lowered down to a category one. If it were a category three or four a number of my members would be out of home.” | |
In Lumberton, the river is considered flooded at 13ft. The National Weather Service predicted on Saturday it would crest at 24.9ft on Sunday. On Saturday, much of the south of the city was already under water. | |
Turner Park, a trailer park, was under 2ft. The Guardian watched as water crept towards Martin Luther King Jr Drive. Residents had been told to evacuate the park, where scores of 40ft x 12ft trailers stand on low-lying land. Across the road Newport church, a handsome white building with an impressive steeple, was under about a foot of water. Further north, many single-storey homes were flooded. | |
Twenty-five per cent of the population of Lumberton lives below the poverty line. The city was hit hard by Hurricane Matthew two years ago. Residents face losing property and possessions all over again. On Saturday, shelters in nearby Fayetteville were full by 6pm. | |
In Wilmington, which was hit by Florence on Friday, causing thousands to lose power, media said water supplies could be turned off due to flooding. Families discussed strategies for finding batteries for generators and pouring drinking water into coolers, in case the taps ran dry. | |
A mother and baby who lived in Wilmington were among the dead. Three more died in one inland county, Duplin, because of flooding. A husband and wife died in a storm-linked house fire, officials said, and an 81-year-old man died after falling while packing to evacuate. | |
In South Carolina, a 61-year-old woman was killed when her car hit a tree on a highway. Authorities said a 63-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman were asphyxiated after using a generator inside their home. The toll climbed to 14 after a man drowned when his pickup flipped into a drainage ditch along a flooded road. | |
The White House declared a major disaster in North Carolina and said Donald Trump would visit storm-affected areas next week. | The White House declared a major disaster in North Carolina and said Donald Trump would visit storm-affected areas next week. |
The president’s tweets about Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria continued to cause controversy. Trump has repeatedly claimed the recognised death toll from the storm, around 3,000, has been inflated by his political opponents. | |
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressional candidate who has become a leading voice on the progressive left, told CNN’s State of the Union Puerto Ricans, subject to the “worst humanitarian catastrophe in modern American history”, pointed to “government inaction as the cause of death”. | |
Hurricane Florence | Hurricane Florence |
Hurricanes | Hurricanes |
Natural disasters and extreme weather | Natural disasters and extreme weather |
North Carolina | North Carolina |
US weather | US weather |
South Carolina | South Carolina |
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