Florence death toll climbs to 37; Trump visits stricken area

NORTH CAROLINA, USA (AP) — The death toll from Hurricane Florence climbed to at least 37, including two women who drowned when a sheriff’s van taking them to a mental health facility was swept away by floodwaters. North Carolina’s governor pleaded with thousands of evacuees not to return home just yet.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, arrived in storm-ravaged North Carolina yesterday and helped volunteers at a church in the hard-hit coastal town of New Bern.

“How’s the house?” Trump was heard asking one person as he distributed plastic foam containers of food, including hot dogs, chips and fruit. “You take care of yourself.”

Wilmington, population 120,000, was still mostly an island surrounded by floodwaters, and people waited for hours Tuesday for handouts of food, water and tarps. Thousands of others around the state waited in shelters for the all-clear.

“I know it was hard to leave home, and it is even harder to wait and wonder whether you even have a home to go back to,” Governor Roy Cooper said.

After submerging North Carolina with nearly three feet (one metre) of rain, the storm dumped more than 6.5 inches (16.5 centimetres) of rain in the north-east, where it caused flash flooding.

Cooper warned that the flooding was far from over and will get worse in places.

“I know for many people this feels like a nightmare that just won’t end,” he said.

Addressing roughly 10,000 people who remain in shelters and “countless more” staying elsewhere, Cooper urged them to stay put for now, particularly those from the hardest-hit coastal counties that include Wilmington, near where Florence blew ashore on Friday.

Roads remained treacherous, he said, and some are still being closed for the first time as rivers swelled by torrential rains inland drain toward the Atlantic.

At least 27 of the deaths happened in North Carolina.

In South Carolina, two women died on Tuesday evening when floodwaters from the Little Pee Dee River engulfed the van taking them to a mental health facility, authorities said.

The risk of environmental damage mounted, as human and animal waste was washed into the swirling floodwaters.

More than five million gallons (18 million litres) of partially treated sewage spilled into the Cape Fear River after power went out at a treatment plant, officials said, and the earthen dam of a pond holding hog waste was breached, spilling its contents. The flooding killed an estimated 3.4 million chickens and 5,500 hogs on farms.