» Snapshots: People struggle to cope in storm’s aftermath,

Florence’s strong winds may be dropping, but heavy rain and floodwaters are bringing wet misery to many of the people of North and South Carolina.

Here are snapshots of people struggling to cope in the aftermath of the powerful storm:

‘We’re OK right now’

Police helped Debbie Covington’s elderly parents leave their home in a low-lying neighborhood of Cheraw, South Carolina, early Sunday and shelter at Covington’s house on higher ground next door.

Several backyards were flooded by afternoon, swollen with rainwater that was running downhill. Soaking wet and without shoes, Covington was nervously watching the muddy water rushing nearby, wondering if they needed to seek shelter elsewhere. She had just run an errand and had some trouble returning home.

“I was driving the truck and everywhere I went, I couldn’t get here,” she said. “One way some trees were down. Another was blocked by water.”

Still, Covington said she planned to wait a little longer before evacuating.

“We’re OK right now, as long as it doesn’t get a lot worse,” Covington said.

‘It’s a lot of water’

Around the corner from Covington’s house, a vacant lot was underwater with two heavy backhoes used in construction and a truck submerged to the tops of their tracks and tires. A portable toilet bobbed in the water, leaning at an angle.

Samantha Graham’s house sat on higher ground nearby, but still had water seep into her basement and soak the carpet.

“It’s a lot of water,” Graham said as she walked her dog and looked at the flooded yards at the bottom of the hill. “Hopefully it doesn’t cross the road more than it already has.”

‘Watch the water rise’

On a country road just east of Goldsboro where two state prisons evacuated earlier this week ahead of expected flooding, Zack Lollar watches drivers make the tough decision whether their trucks are high enough to ford the high water or turn around.

The road Sunday was flooded about a mile away from the Neuse River’s usual bank.

Lollar is watching how far the river floods. His home’s interior was flooded by more than a foot of water during Hurricane Matthew two years ago. Afterward, his family received Federal Emergency Management Agency money to raise the ranch house onto a new base of concrete blocks about four feet off the ground to prevent a repeat of flooding damage, said Lollar, 24.

“The house will be all right, but I don’t want to get stuck out here,” he said. “Got nothing else to do but watch the water rise.’”

‘I don’t have any fear’

Coffee from a fastfood restaurant in hand, 63-year-old Melvia Eato and her grown son and daughter watched from her front porch as the water rose on her street in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

About 100 yards of the road was blocked Sunday morning by water lapping a few doors away, left by a deluge Saturday. Light showers lingered Sunday.

Eato said she saw no reason to leave since only her basement flooded during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, a standard used to measure flooding in the town.

“I was here during Matthew, doing what I’m doing now. Me personally, I don’t have any fear,” she said.

Her son, 45-year-old Lionel Atkinson, said he came to check on his mother Thursday and decided the many roads that have since flooded made it was too risky to drive home to LaGrange, about 15 miles east.

“We all came down to make sure she was all right. I didn’t think I’d get stuck,” he said. “We came here and this is where we’ve been.”