Worried, restless Carolina residents want to go home
Flooding is still a danger; Trump visits storm-hit N.C. town
Exhaustion and frustration are building in the Carolinas as thousands of people wait to go home days after Hurricane Florence unleashed epic floods blamed for at least 37 deaths, including those of two women who drowned when a sheriff’s van taking them to a mental health facility was swept off a road.
President Donald Trump visited the disaster zone, riding through soggy neighborhoods and helping pass out warm meals at a church in the hard-hit coastal town of New Bern.
“How’s the house?” Trump told one person. “You take care of yourself.”
To the south, daybreak brought a return of floodwaters to Nichols, S.C. The flooding had subsided, only to get worse again.
Mayor Lawson Battle said that as far as he knew, everyone in the town of about 360 people had evacuated. But Battle just couldn’t think about that anymore. “I’m focusing on this disaster at hand,” he said. “I don’t have time to think. I’m just so tired.”
Access improved to Wilmington, a North Carolina port city that was cut off for days by high water. But officials said they don’t know when evacuees would be able to return home. The Cape Fear River isn’t expected to crest at the city until Monday or Tuesday.
North Carolina officials said some 7,800 people remained in shelters, down from about 10,000 on Monday despite Gov. Roy Cooper’s plea to stay put.
Some of those who left shelters may have been headed toward the coast on U.S. 421, where a long line of cars, utility crews and trucks loaded with generators sat in a jam.
In South Carolina, two women being taken to a mental health facility died when the van they were riding in was engulfed by floodwaters, authorities said. A Horry County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said two deputies in the van tried to get the victims out but couldn’t. Rescue teams plucked the deputies from the top of the vehicle.