Hurricane Florence still poses threat
Despite weaker winds
WILMINGTON (Reuters) — Hurricane Florence, growing in size despite its weakening winds on Wednesday, crept closer to the US East Coast as disaster mobilizations expanded south from the Carolinas into Georgia to counter the deadly threat of high seas and floods.
The center of Florence, no longer classified as a major hurricane, but still posing a grave threat to life and property, is expected to strike North Carolina’s southern coast today, then drift southwest along the shoreline before moving inland on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked late on Wednesday at 175 kilometers per hour, down from a peak of 140 kph a day earlier, before it was downgraded to a Category 3, then a Category 2, on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of wind strength.
“While Florence has weakened below major hurricane intensity, the wind field of the hurricane continues to grow in size,” the NHC said in its latest bulletin.
A long stretch of the US Eastern Seaboard remained vulnerable to hurricane and tropical storm conditions, from Georgia north through the Carolinas into Virginia. And Florence remained capable of unleashing rain-fueled catastrophic flooding of rivers and low-lying areas across a wide region.
“The time to prepare is almost over,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper told a morning news conference. “Disaster is at the doorstep and it’s coming in.”
Besides inundating the coast with wind-driven storm surges of seawater as high as 13 feet along the Carolina coast, Florence could dump 20 to 30 inches of rain, with up to 40 inches in parts of North Carolina, the NHC said.
Downpours and flooding would be especially severe, lasting for days, if the storm stalls over land. Heavy rains were forecast to extend into the Appalachians, affecting parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses could be flooded in North Carolina alone, Governor Cooper warned.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal issued an emergency declaration for all 159 counties in his state. Similar declarations were made earlier in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
More than one million people have been ordered to evacuate the coastlines of the Carolinas and Virginia. By late Wednesday, authorities in North Carolina reported nearly 7,000 evacuees staying in 71 emergency shelters throughout the state.
An estimated 10 million people live in areas expected to be placed under a hurricane or storm advisory, according to the US Weather Prediction Center.
Emergency preparations included activating more than 2,700 National Guard troops, stockpiling food, setting up shelters, switching traffic patterns so major roads led away from shore, and securing 16 nuclear power reactors in the Carolinas and Virginia.
The US Coast Guard said it closed the ports of Wilmington and Moorehead City in North Carolina and restricted port operations in Charleston, South Carolina. All seven of North Carolina’s ferry routes were shut down.