FLORENCE
WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) Blowing ashore with howling 90 mph winds, Hurricane Florence splintered buildings, trapped hundreds of people and swamped entire communities along the Carolina coast Friday in what could be just the opening act in a watery, two-part, slow-motion disaster. At least three people were killed.
Forecasters warned that drenching rains of anywhere from 1 to 3½ feet as the storm crawls westward across North and South Carolina could trigger epic flooding well inland over the next few days.
As 400-mile-wide Florence pounded away at the coast with torrential downpours and surging seas, rescue crews used boats to reach scores of people besieged by rising waters along a river. More than 60 others had to be rescued as a cinderblock motel collapsed.
Florence flattened trees, crumbled roads and knocked out power to more than 700,000 homes and businesses, and the assault wasnt near an end.
Its an uninvited brute who doesnt want to leave, said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
The hurricane was wreaking havoc and could wipe out entire communities as it makes its violent grind across our state for days, the governor said. He said parts of North Carolina had seen storm surges the bulge of seawater pushed ashore by the hurricane as high as 10 feet.
A mother and baby were killed when a tree fell on a house, according to a tweet from Wilmington police. The governors office said a third person was killed while plugging in a generator.
Shaken after seeing waves crashing in the Neuse River just outside his house in the town of New Bern, hurricane veteran Tom Ballance wished he had evacuated.
I feel like the dumbest human being who ever walked the face of the earth, said Ballance, owner of a seafood restaurant that was flooded.
By early afternoon, Florences winds had weakened to 75 mph, just barely a hurricane and well below the storms terrifying Category 4 peak of 140 mph earlier in the week. But the hurricane had slowed to a crawl, drenching coastal communities for hours on end.
The town of Oriental, North Carolina, received more than 18 inches of rain just a few hours into the deluge, while Surf City had 14 inches and it was still coming down.
Florence made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane at 7:15 a.m. at Wrightsville Beach, a few miles east of Wilmington and not far from the South Carolina line, coming ashore along a mostly boarded-up, emptied-out stretch of coastline. It started pushing its way westward across South Carolina later in the day, in a watery siege that could go on all weekend.
For people living inland in the Carolinas, the moment of maximum peril from flash flooding could arrive days later, because it takes time for rainwater to drain into rivers and for those streams to crest.
Preparing for the worst, about 9,700 National Guard troops and civilians were deployed with high-water vehicles, helicopters and boats that could be used to pluck people from the floodwaters.
Authorities warned, too, of the threat of mudslides and the risk of an environmental disaster from floodwaters washing over industrial waste sites and hog farms.
