1000s flee homes in North Carolina as floodwaters rise
Florence kept dumping rain on North Carolina on Sunday and officials warned residents that rivers inland were likely to flood.
Florence, which crashed into the state as a hurricane on Friday, had weakened to a tropical depression by Sunday morning but was forecast to drop another 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 cm) of rain in North Carolina, bringing rainfall totals in some inland areas to 15 to 20 inches, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The most rain so far from Florence was 33.9 inches (86 cm) in Swansboro, North Carolina, a new record for a single hurricane in the state. The previous record was 24 inches (61 cm), set by Hurricane Floyd, which killed 56 people in 1999, said Bryce Link, a meteorologist with DTN Marine Weather, a private forecasting service.
In Fayetteville, a North Carolina city of about 210,000 people some 90 miles (145 km) inland, authorities told thousands of residents near the Cape Fear River and Little River to get out of their homes by Sunday afternoon because of the flood risk.
A total of about 761,000 homes and businesses were without power on Sunday in North and South Carolina and surrounding states, down from a peak of nearly 1 million.
Emergency teams worked through the night rescuing people by boat and even airlifting 50 stranded people in North Carolina. A least seven people have died so far in the storm in North Carolina, including a mother and child killed by a falling tree and three people who drowned, state officials said. A woman died in South Carolina when her car hit a fallen tree.
(Source: Reuters)
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