ROWING TO SAFETY
Herman Locklear waits on his front steps for Brittany Douglas, center, a family friend, and his daughter, Charmaine Locklear, to row up to his house in floodwaters during Tropical Storm Florence on Monday in Pembroke, N.C. The death toll rose to at least 32. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
Throwing a lifeline to a city surrounded by floodwaters, emergency crews delivered food and water to Wilmington on Monday as rescuers picked up more people stranded by Hurricane Florence and the storm’s remnants took aim at the densely populated Northeast.
The death toll from Florence rose to at least 32, and crews elsewhere used helicopters and boats to rescue people trapped by stillrising rivers.
“Thank you,” a frazzled, shirtless Willie Schubert mouthed to members of a Coast Guard helicopter crew who plucked him and his dog Lucky from atop a house encircled by water in Pollocksville. It was not clear how long he had been stranded.
A day earlier, Wilmington’s entire population of 120,000 people was cut off by flooding. By midday Monday, authorities reopened a single unidentified road into the town, which stands on a peninsula. But it wasn’t clear if that the route would remain open as the Cape Fear River kept swelling. And officials did not say when other roads might be clear.
In some places, the rain finally stopped, and the sun peeked through, but North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper warned that dangerously high water would persist for days. He urged residents who were evacuated from the hardesthit areas to stay away because of closed roads and catastrophic flooding that submerged entire communities.
“There’s too much going on,” he said at a news conference.
About two dozen truckloads of military MREs and bottled water were delivered overnight to Wilmington, the state’s eighthlargest city, officials said.
The chairman of New Hanover County’s commissioners, Woody White, said three centers would open by Tuesday morning to begin distributing essentials to residents.
“Things are getting better slowly, and we thank God for that,” White said.
Mayor Bill Saffo said he was working with the governor’s office to get more fuel into Wilmington.
“At this time, things are moving as well as can be in the city,” he said.
Crews have conducted about 700 rescues in New Hanover County, where more than 60 percent of homes and businesses were without power, authorities said.
At the White House, President Donald Trump said almost 20,000 military personnel and federal workers were deployed to help with the aftermath.
“We will do whatever it takes to keep the American people safe,” Trump said.
Preliminary statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed Florence had the fourthhighest rainfall total of any hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since 1950, with 35.94 inches at Elizabethtown, N.C. Harvey’s total of 60.58 inches last year in Texas is No. 1.
Desperate for gas to run a generator at home, Nick Monroe waited in a halfmilelong line at a Speedway station even though the pumps were wrapped in plastic. His power went off Thursday before Florence hit the coast, but he couldn’t recall exactly when.
“It’s all kind of a blur,” Monroe said. Downgraded from a tropical depression, the deadly storm still had abundant rain and top winds around 25 mph. Forecasters said it was expected to continue toward the Northeast, which is in for as much as 4 inches of rain, before the system moves offshore again.
Flooding worries also increased in Virginia, where roads were closed and power outages were on the rise. In all, about 420,000 homes and businesses in three states were in the dark. Most of the outages were in North Carolina.