By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Chris Megerian and Jenny Jarvie
Los Angeles Times
CONWAY, S.C. — With a plodding pace belying still-unspent fury, an increasingly deadly Tropical Storm Florence pushed deeper into the Carolinas Saturday, inundating homes, toppling trees and pushing rivers far beyond their banks as rescuers in boats and helicopters rushed to keep pace.
With two new fatalities reported Saturday, bringing the storm toll to seven, more than 1 million people, mainly in North Carolina, were without power a day after Florence arrived a few miles east of Wilmington, N.C., as a Category 1 hurricane.
By midafternoon Saturday, the storm was crawling westward at about 3 mph, unleashing havoc as it went.
Even as the winds abated, the waters rose. And rose.
The mayor of hard-hit New Bern, N.C., Dana Outlaw, said Florence’s lumbering pace — with long-lingering, rain-dumping storm bands hovering overhead — stood to increase damage, and danger along with it.
“This one stayed around awhile,” he said.
Floodwaters surged over roads, prompting the closing of Interstate 95 just north of the North Carolina border. With more than 2 feet of rain having already fallen in coastal areas, and with drenching rain forecast for days to come in the western mountains, officials ordered new evacuations affecting thousands.
Those included a mandatory evacuation issued because of “imminent danger” for anyone who lives within a mile of the banks of North Carolina’s Cape Fear River and Little River. That included parts of the North Carolina city of Fayetteville, population 200,000.
In all, 18 trillion gallons of rain could fall on the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states, according to the Associated Press. That’s as much water as there is in the Chesapeake Bay, and enough to cover the entire state of Texas with nearly 4 inches of water, the news agency said.
Authorities warned that it would be hard to keep pace with where all this water might wind up, how fast the storm would move and where it would tack next. “It has been most unpredictable,” said South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper warned people who fled their homes against going back too soon, citing perils including flash flooding and falling trees.
“If you are safe, stay put. … Don’t go back until this storm passes,” he said at a briefing Saturday. “This system is unloading epic amounts of rainfall.”
The triple punch of falling rain, rising rivers and coastal storm surges was already triggering catastrophic floods in several locales.
Hundreds were rescued in New Bern, a city of 30,000 at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers. The Coast Guard brought in helicopters and inflatable boats to pluck people from rooftops, cars and inundated homes.
The White House said President Donald Trump issued a disaster declaration for North Carolina a day earlier, freeing money for housing and home repairs. The president, embroiled in a social media dispute over the death toll in Puerto Rico last year from Hurricane Maria, praised first responders and insisted that his administration was fully prepared for whatever unfolded.
In South Carolina, emergency managers were watching several northeastern rivers that flooded two years ago during Hurricane Matthew, destroying homes and government offices.
One of those was the Waccamaw River in South Carolina’s Horry County, which had reached 8.9 feet by Saturday; it floods at 11 feet.
To give a sense of the scope of inundation to come, forecasters said the river’s crest was expected at 19.1 feet, beating the record 17.9 feet set during Hurricane Matthew. The county has a population of 325,000, about 20,000 in the riverfront county seat of Conway.
Along Conway’s Waccamaw Drive, residents who have already been flooded out of their homes three times in as many years had hours to decide again Saturday afternoon: Stay or go? Brian Saunders decided to leave, although most of his furniture would have to stay.
“We can’t get it all out —it’s too late,” he said as a neighbor helped carry out a few antique chairs.
In North Carolina, unrelenting rains were expected to swell the Cape Fear River to 62 feet next week, 3 feet higher than during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. The river runs through Fayetteville — home to the Army’s Fort Bragg — where officials opened emergency shelters and urged riverfront residents to evacuate.
Major flooding was also expected to the east in Kinston on the Neuse River, expected to reach 27 feet by Monday, nearing a record 28.3 feet set during Hurricane Matthew. To the north, officials were monitoring the Tar River, and sandbagging the French Broad River to the west and the Lumber River to the southeast.
“If you live in a floodplain and planned on staying, you might need to re-evaluate,” said Joel Cline, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center. “There’s a lot left to this even though the winds have died down and it’s inland.”
Coastal Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds will likely become bottlenecks, filling with runoff faster than they can drain into the ocean, he said.
“I don’t see any portion of the state of North or South Carolina that’s not going to be impacted in some way,” Cline said.
In addition to out-of-state emergency teams, volunteers from aid groups around the country have converged on North Carolina to help with the rescue efforts.
Ryan Bartholomew, who works with the Humanitarian Aid and Rescue Project, flew from Sacramento to Charlotte and then drove to flood-stricken New Bern to lend a hand.
“It gets to the point where they say, ‘We do need help,’” said Bartholomew, 32. “And we’re here to help.”
