Carolinas brace for monster hurricane
WILMINGTON, N.C. — The leading edge of Hurricane Florence lashed the coast of the Carolinas on Thursday as the weakened but widening storm edged closer to the southeastern U.S., bearing dangerous winds and drenching rains.
Florence’s sustained winds fell to 110 mph overnight, dropping it back to a Category 2 storm. But the still-powerful storm also grew even larger, visible from outer space as an enormous circular mass set to envelop the coastline, with tropical storm-force winds extending nearly 200 miles ahead of Florence’s center.
“Please hear my message — we cannot underestimate this storm,” said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, speaking Thursday at a briefing in Raleigh, the capital. He warned of “battering winds and relentless rains that will last for days,” with storm surges up to 13 feet, reaching the second stories of buildings in vulnerable coastal areas.
“We’re on the wrong side of this thing,” he said. “Today, the threat becomes a reality.”
In Wilmington, a North Carolina port city of 120,000 people, many homes were empty and boarded up Thursday. Almost all businesses — ice cream shops, seafood restaurants, banks and real estate offices — were shuttered.
But as the rain and wind bore down with the approaching dusk, the lights were still on at a Wilmington branch of Waffle House, the popular chain known for staying open through almost anything. Cooks cracked eggs and slung hash browns; servers poured coffee with a “There you go, sweetie.”
An employee who stood under an awning outside the Market Street location to greet a stream of arrivals said the restaurant would stay open unless conditions became unsafe — “if the hurricane pulls off the roof or breaks the glass.”
Amid the darkening daytime skies that heralded the arrival of the monster storm’s outer bands, some businesses sought to convey a spirit of jaunty defiance.
“HEY FLO ... KISS MY GRITS!” someone had spraypainted on a sheet of plywood covering a window at a downtown nightclub called the Liquid Room. “Wilmington will survive.”
Travel will soon be hazardous, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster warned at an afternoon briefing.
“Trees will be down on the road. Power lines will be down on the road,” he said. “This is enormously dangerous.”
Some hurricane-vulnerable areas were already succumbing. The ocean was washing across parts of North Carolina Highway 12, which connects many barrier islands with the mainland.
By early evening, Florence was a scant 100 miles eastsoutheast of Wilmington, lumbering its way toward the Outer Banks, with the eye of the storm expected to make landfall Friday.
Authorities warned that the greatest peril could come from epic rains the storm will drop as it lingers at the shoreline, more than 2 feet expected along the coast and significant amounts far inland as well.
At a briefing Thursday, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator William “Brock” Long appealed to coastal residents not to read too much into the drop in the wind speed as Florence approached the mainland.
“This is a very dangerous storm,” he said. “Please do not let your guard down . ... The ocean is going to start rising. Your time to get out of those areas is coming to a close.”
President Donald Trump offered fresh reassurances about the degree of federal preparedness for Florence, but at the same time renewed acrimonious commentary about last year’s heavily criticized response to Hurricane Maria, which ravaged Puerto Rico.
On Twitter on Thursday, the president angrily disputed an academic study citing nearly 3,000 deaths in the U.S. territory in the wake of the storm, saying without evidence that the figure was put forth “by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.”
“I love Puerto Rico!” Trump declared.
Utility providers, meanwhile, told customers in the Carolinas and beyond to expect prolonged power losses once the storm hits. Officials grimly warned of the dangers of gas-powered generators and candles.
Duke Energy, the main regional electrical provider, projected that some 3 million people could lose power and warned that the lights could stay out for a long time. The company was mobilizing thousands of out-of-state workers to help cope.
There are half a dozen nuclear power plants in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, three states expected to feel the storm’s greatest effects, but most are situated well inland. One that lies just four miles from the coast is Duke Energy’s 1970s-era Brunswick plant, outside the town of Southport.
The plant’s location, about 20 miles south of Wilmington, puts it near the storm’s expected path. One of its two reactors was shut down earlier Thursday and the second was to be shut by day’s end, the Reuters news agency reported.