Crews helping storm victims
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Throwing a lifeline to a city surrounded by flood waters, emergency crews delivered food and water to Wilmington on Monday as rescuers picked up more people stranded by hurricane Florence and the storm’s remnants took aim at the densely populated Northeast.
The death toll from Florence rose to at least 21, and crews elsewhere used helicopters and boats to rescue people trapped by still-rising rivers.
“Thank you,” a frazzled, shirtless Willie Schubert mouthed to members of a Coast Guard helicopter crew who plucked him and his dog Lucky from atop a house encircled by water in Pollocksville. It was not clear how long he had been stranded.
A day earlier, Wilmington’s entire population of 120,000 people was cut off by flooding. By midday Monday, authorities reopened a single unidentified road into the town, which stands on a peninsula. But it wasn’t clear if that the route would remain open as the Cape Fear River kept swelling. And officials did not say when other roads might be clear.
In some places, the rain finally stopped, and the sun peeked through, but North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper warned that dangerously high water would persist for days. He urged residents who were evacuated from the hardest-hit areas to stay away because of closed roads and catastrophic flooding that submerged entire communities.
“There’s too much going on,” he told a news conference.
About two dozen truckloads of military MREs and bottled water were delivered overnight to Wilmington, the state’s eighth-largest city, officials said.
The chair of New Hanover County’s commissioners, Woody White, said three centres would open by Tuesday morning.
“Things are getting better slowly, and we thank God for that,” White said.
Mayor Bill Saffo said he was working with the governor’s office to get more fuel into Wilmington.
“At this time, things are moving as well as can be in the city,” he said.
Crews have conducted about 700 rescues in New Hanover County, where more than 60 per cent of homes and businesses were without power, authorities said.
Downgraded from a tropical depression, the deadly storm still had abundant rain and top winds around 35 km/h. Forecasters said it was expected to continue toward the Northeast, which is in for as much as 15 centimetres of rain.