HEAVY RAIN, STORM BATTER NORTH CAROLINA AS HURRICANE FLORENCE MAKES LANDFALL
9,700 National Guard troops stand by with highwater vehicles, helicopters, boats
WILMINGTON: Hurricane Florence crashed into the Carolinas on Friday with 144 km per hour winds, torrential rains and a powerful storm surge before slowing to a pace that meant it would plague the area with days of flooding.
The hurricane’s storm surge — the wall of water it pushed in from the Atlantic — had “overwhelmed” New Bern, a town of about 30,000 people next to the Neuse River, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper said.
“The sun rose this morning on an extremely dangerous situation and it’s going to get worse,” he said at a news conference in Raleigh. “To those in the storm’s path, if you can hear me, please stay sheltered in place.”
Authorities in New Bern said more than 100 people had to be saved from floods and that the downtown area was underwater. The town’s public information officer, Colleen Roberts, told CNN 150 more people were awaiting rescue.
New Bern city officials tweeted, “You may need to move up to the second story, or to your attic, but WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU.”
As Florence pounded away, it unloaded heavy rain, flattened trees, chewed up roads and knocked out power to more than a half-million homes and businesses.
The centre of the hurricane’s eye came ashore at about 7.15 am near Wrightsville Beach close to Wilmington, North Carolina, with sustained winds of 150 km per hour, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Ominously, forecasters said the onslaught on the North Carolina-South Carolina coast would last for hours and hours because the hurricane had come almost to a dead stop at just 6 km per hour as of midday. The town of Oriental got more than 18 inches of rain just a few hours into the deluge, while Surf City had 14 inches and it was still coming down.
National Weather Service forecaster Brandon Locklear predicted Florence would drop up to eight months’ worth of rain in two or three days. Preparing for the worst, about 9,700 National Guard troops and civilians were deployed with high-water vehicles, helicopters and boats that could be used to pluck people from the floodwaters.
Cooper said the hurricane was “wreaking havoc” on the coast and could wipe out entire communities as it makes its “violent grind across our state for days”. He called the rain an event that comes along only once every 1,000 years.
About 10 million people could be affected by the storm and more than 1 million were ordered to evacuate the coasts of the Carolinas and Virginia.
Florence was seen as a major test for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was heavily criticized as slow and unprepared last year for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where the storm was blamed for nearly 3,000 deaths in the desperate aftermath.