Historic N.C. town will get help, McCrory says
TARBORO, N.C. — Floodwaters as high as some rooflines swamped one of the country’s oldest towns chartered by African-Americans, setting up a daunting rebuilding effort for the second time in less than 20 years.
On Friday, Gov. Pat McCrory met with Princeville residents and town officials to pledge support after flooding spawned by Hurricane Matthew. The town also was inundated in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd.
McCrory said that with water as deep as 10 feet in the town of 2,000 people, at least eight out of 10 houses have been damaged.
“I’d say about 80 to 90 percent have definite water to the floors, to the windows, including the mayor’s,” he said.
The governor said National Guard troops have been sent to Princeville to prevent looting.
The river has crested, but residents haven’t been allowed to return.
“The thing that’s so dis-
In Haiti, an economic disaster
LES CAYES, Haiti — Haitian and international agricultural officials said it could be a decade or more before the southwestern peninsula recovers economically from Hurricane Matthew, which struck hard at the rugged region of more than 1 million people that is almost dependent on farming and fishing.
The Civil Protection agency said Friday that the death toll from Matthew, which made landfall Oct. 4, had risen to 546, though it was likely to climb higher.
In the Grand-Anse region, nearly 100 percent of crops and 50 percent of livestock were destroyed, according to the World Food Program. concerting to me is that a lot of these people who lost everything had very little to begin with,” he said. “We’re going to do everything we can to help them.”
The county is among about two dozen in the state where residents are eligible for FEMA disaster aid.
Upstream, flooding has eased in some communities
Yet for other cities, such as Kinston and Greenville to the south and east, more days of flooding are expected.
Wilmington, near where the Cape Fear River meets the coast, is bracing for downtown flooding weekend.
Matthew killed 546 people in Haiti and has left at least 41 dead in the United States. North Carolina’s death toll grew to 24 and South Carolina reported an additional death Friday, the fifth fatality in the state.
For Princeville, the flooding is a sad replay of Hurricane Floyd’s aftermath in September 1999, when floodwaters rose as high as 20 feet in the town.
This time, water flowed around the town’s rebuilt dike. Princeville is one of the country’s first towns created by freed slaves in 1865. this .