More lives claimed as Florence rages on
● Food and water to be airlifted to city cut off by floodwaters
Officials in the US plan to airlift food and water to a city of nearly 120,000 people as rescuers elsewhere pull inland residents from homes threatened by swollen rivers.
Wilmington has been cut off from the rest of North Carolina by the still-rising floodwaters from Florence,
The spreading disaster claimed additional lives yesterday, with at least 17 people confirmed dead, and the nation’s top emergency official said other states were in the path this week.
“Not only are you going to see more impact across North Carolina, ... but we’re also anticipating you are about to see a lot of damage going through West Virginia, all the way up to Ohio as the system exits out,” Brock Long of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.
In Wilmington, the state’s eighth-largest city, residents waited for hours outside stores and restaurants for basic necessities like water.
Police guarded the door of one store, and only ten people were allowed inside at a time.
County commission chairman Woody White said officials were planning for food and water to be flown into the coastal city.
“Our roads are flooded,” he said. “There is no access to Wilmington.”
About 70 miles away from the coast, residents near the Lumber River stepped from their homes directly into boats floating in their front gardens; river forecasts showed the scene could be repeated in towns as far as 250 miles
0 A man carries a woman through the floodwater in Spring Lake, North Carolina after Storm Florence wrought havoc across the state
inland as waters rise for days. Downgraded to a tropical depression, Florence was still massive. Radar showed parts of the sprawling storm over six states, with North and South Carolina in the bull’s-eye.
In North Carolina, fears of what could be the worst flooding in the state’s history led officials to order tens of thousands to evacuate, though it was not clear how many had fled or even could.
President Donald Trump said federal emergency workers, first responders and law enforcement officials were “working really hard”.
As the storm “begins to finally recede, they will kick into an even higher gear. Very Professional!” he declared in a tweet.
The storm’s death toll climbed to 17 when authorities said a three-month-old child
was killed when a tree fell on a mobile home in North Carolina.
As rivers swelled, state regulators and environmental groups were monitoring the threat from gigantic pig and poultry farms located in low-lying, flood-prone areas.
The industrial-scale farms contain vast pits of animal faeces and urine that can pose a significant pollution threat if they are breached or inundated by floodwaters.
In past hurricanes, flooding at dozens of farms also left hundreds of thousands of dead pigs, chickens and other decomposing livestock bobbing in floodwaters.