‘THREAT BECOMES REALITY’
HURRICANE FLORENCE HEADS ASHORE AMID SKIRMISH OVER PUERTO RICO DEATH TOLL
As hurricane Florence’s leading edge battered the Carolina coast Thursday, researchers were standing by a study that found the death toll following hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico a year ago was 2,975, considerably higher than first thought.
Responding to a tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump, researchers from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University said their study, commissioned by the government of Puerto Rico, was carried out “with complete independence and freedom from any kind of interference.”
It was an “accurate and unbiased” assessment of mortality following the devastating storm last September, they said.
Trump on Thursday tweeted that “3,000 people did not die” in Puerto Rico and called the death count a move by Democrats to make him “look as bad as possible.”
Carmen Yulin Cruz, the mayor of the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan, tweeted in response that Trump was “delusional, paranoid, and unhinged from any sense of reality.”
The social media skirmish came as hurricane Florence was bending trees and shooting frothy sea water over streets on the Outer Banks islands off the coast of North Carolina, as the hulking storm closed in on the mainland with 155 km/h winds.
Forecasters said conditions will only get more lethal as the storm pushes ashore early Friday near the North Carolina-South Carolina line and makes its way slowly inland. Its surge could cover all but a sliver of the Carolina coast under more than three metres of ocean water, and days of downpours could unload more than a metre of rain, touching off severe flooding.
Florence’s winds weakened as it drew closer to land, dropping from a peak of 225 km/h earlier in the week, and the hurricane was downgraded from a terrifying Category 4 to a 2.
But North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper warned: “Don’t relax, don’t get complacent. Stay on guard. This is a powerful storm that can kill. Today the threat becomes a reality.”
Forecasters said that given the storm’s size and sluggish track, it could cause epic damage akin to what the Houston area saw during hurricane Harvey just over a year ago, with floodwaters swamping homes and businesses and washing over industrial waste sites and hog-manure ponds.
“It truly is really about the whole size of this storm,” National Hurricane Center director Ken Graham said. “The larger and the slower the storm is, the greater the threat and the impact — and we have that.”
The hurricane was seen as a major test for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was heavily criticized as sluggish and unprepared for hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year.
Schools and businesses closed as far south as Georgia, airlines cancelled about 1,200 flights and counting, and coastal towns in the Carolinas were largely emptied out.
Around midday Thursday, Spanish moss blew sideways in the trees as the winds increased in the port city of Wilmington, N.C. By early afternoon, utilities reported about 12,000 homes and businesses had lost power.
Wilmington resident Julie Terrell was plenty concerned after walking to breakfast past a row of shops fortified with boards, sandbags and hurricane shutters.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m probably a 7” in terms of worry, she said. “Because it’s Mother Nature. You can’t predict.”
More than 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia were warned to evacuate over the past few days, and the homes of about 10 million were under watches or warnings for the hurricane or tropical storm conditions.
Duke Energy Co. said Florence could knock out electricity to three-quarters of its four million customers in the Carolinas, and outages could last for weeks. Workers were being brought in from the Midwest and Florida to help in the storm’s aftermath, it said.
As of 5 p.m. Thursday, Florence was centred about 160 kilometres southeast of Wilmington, its forward movement slowed to 7 km/h.
Hurricane-force winds extended 130 kilometres from its centre, and tropicalstorm-force winds up to 315 kilometres.
Frustrated after evacuating his beach home for a storm that was later downgraded, retired nurse Frederick Fisher grumbled in the lobby of a Wilmington hotel several kilometres inland.
“Against my better judgment, due to emotionalism, I evacuated,” said Fisher, 74. “I’ve got four cats inside the house. If I can’t get back in a week, after a while they might turn on each other or trash the place.”
Authorities pushed back against any suggestion the storm’s threat was exaggerated.
The police chief of a barrier island in Florence’s bull’s-eye said he was asking for nextof-kin contact information from the few residents who refused to leave.
“I’m not going to put our personnel in harm’s way, especially for people that we’ve already told to evacuate,” Wrightsville Beach Police Chief Dan House said.
I’M NOT GOING TOPUTOUR PERSONNEL IN HARM’S WAY, ESPECIALLY FOR PEOPLE THAT WE’VE ALREADY TOLD TO EVACUATE.