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U.S. NEWS Saturday 15 September 2018

Hurricane Florence

Continued from Front lier in the week, Florence
made landfall as a Cat-
As 400-mile-wide (645-ki- egory 1 hurricane at 7:15
lometer-wide) Florence a.m. at Wrightsville Beach,
pounded away at the a few miles (kilometers)
coast with torrential down- east of Wilmington and not
pours and surging seas, far from the South Caro-
rescue crews used boats lina line. It came ashore
to reach more than 360 along a mostly boarded-
people besieged by rising up, emptied-out stretch of
waters in New Bern, while coastline.
many of their neighbors By Friday evening, Flor-
awaited help. More than ence was downgraded to
60 people had to be res- a tropical storm, its winds
cued in another town as weakening to 70 mph (112
a cinderblock motel col- kph) as it pushed inland.
lapsed at the height of the But it was clear that this
storm’s fury. was really about the water,
Florence flattened trees, not the wind.
crumbled roads and Florence’s forward move-
knocked out power to ment during the day A fallen tree is shown after it crashed through the home where a woman and her baby were killed
more than 840,000 homes slowed to a near-standstill in Wilmington, N.C., after Hurricane Florence made landfall Friday, Sept. 14, 2018.
and businesses, and the — sometimes it was going Associated Press
assault wasn’t anywhere no faster than a human Meteorologist Ryan Maue In New Bern, population out of her neighborhood
close to being over, with can walk — and that en- of weathermodels.com 29,000, flooding on the during Florence’s assault.
the siege in the Carolinas abled it to pile on the rain. said Florence could dump Neuse River left 500 people “The wind was so hard,
expected to last all week- The town of Oriental, North a staggering 18 trillion gal- in peril. the waters were so hard,
end. Carolina, got more than lons (68 trillion liters) of “WE ARE COMING TO GET that trying to get out we
“It’s an uninvited brute who 20 inches (50 centimeters) rain over a week on North YOU,” the city tweeted got thrown into trailers. We
doesn’t want to leave,” just a few hours into the Carolina, South Carolinas, around 2 a.m. “You may got thrown into mailboxes,
said North Carolina Gov. deluge. Other communi- Virginia, Georgia, Tennes- need to move up to the houses, trees,” said Holt,
Roy Cooper. ties got well over a foot (30 see, Kentucky and Mary- second story, or to your at- who had stayed at home
The hurricane was “wreak- centimeters). land. That’s enough to fill tic, but WE ARE COMING because of a doctor’s ap-
ing havoc” and could wipe The flooding soon spread the Chesapeake Bay or TO GET YOU.” Boat teams pointment that was later
out entire communities as into South Carolina, cover the entire state of including volunteers res- canceled. She retreated
it makes its “violent grind swamping places like North Texas with nearly 4 inches cued some 360 residents, and was eventually res-
across our state for days,” Myrtle Beach, in a resort (10 centimeters) of water, including Sadie Marie Holt, cued by a boat crew; 140
the governor said. He said area known for its white he calculated. 67, who first tried to row more awaited assistance.q
parts of North Carolina had sands and multitude of golf North Carolina alone is
seen storm surges — the courses. forecast to get 9.6 trillion
bulge of seawater pushed For people living inland in gallons (36 trillion liters),
ashore by the hurricane — the Carolinas, the moment enough to cover the Tar
as high as 10 feet (3 me- of maximum peril from Heel state to a depth of
ters). flash flooding could arrive about 10 inches (25 centi-
A mother and baby were days later, because it takes meters).
killed when a tree fell on time for rainwater to drain On Friday, coastal streets
a house, according to a into rivers and for those in the Carolinas flowed
tweet from Wilmington streams to crest. Authorities with frothy ocean water,
police. Also, a 77-year- warned, too, of the threat and pieces of torn-apart
old man was apparently of mudslides and the risk of buildings flew through the
knocked down by the wind an environmental disaster air. The few cars out on a
and died after going out to from floodwaters washing main street in Wilmington
check on his hunting dogs, over industrial waste sites had to swerve to avoid fall-
Lenoir County authorities and hog farms. en trees, metal debris and
said, and the governor’s of- Florence was seen as a power lines.
fice said a man was elec- major test for the Federal A wind gust at the Wilming-
trocuted while trying to Emergency Management ton airport was clocked at
connect extension cords in Agency, which was heav- 105 mph (nearly 170 kph),
the rain. ily criticized as slow and the highest since Hurricane
Shaken after seeing waves unprepared last year for Helene in 1958. Nation-
crashing on the Neuse Riv- Hurricane Maria in Puerto wide, airlines canceled
er just outside his house in Rico, where the death toll more than 2,400 flights
New Bern, restaurant own- was put at nearly 3,000. through Sunday.
er and hurricane veteran The National Hurricane In Jacksonville, North Caro-
Tom Ballance wished he Center said Florence will lina, next to Camp Lejeune,
had evacuated. eventually break up over firefighters and police
“I feel like the dumbest the southern Appalachians fought wind and rain as
human being who ever and make a right hook to they went door-to-door to
walked the face of the the northeast, its rainy rem- pull dozens of people out
earth,” he said. nants moving into the mid- of the Triangle Motor Inn
After reaching a terrify- Atlantic states and New after the structure began
ing Category 4 peak of England by the middle of to crumble and the roof
140 mph (225 kph) ear- next week. started to collapse.