North Carolina Floods Following Hurricane Matthew Traps Hundreds

Floodwaters swamped North Carolina towns on Monday as rescuers assisted hundreds of residents on Monday in the wake of Hurricane Matthews. Officials also cautioned that life-threatening flooding from mushroomed rivers would continue for days.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that some villages and towns in Haiti had just been wiped out. The hurricane killed close to 1,000 people in the impoverished nation.

In the United States, the amount of casualties climbed to at least 23, with almost half in North Carolina.

North Carolina received as much as 18 inches (39cm) of rain over the weekend but skies were clear on Monday. Raging rivers and breached levees, however, remain major problems.

Eleven people died in the state and with rivers getting higher, the governor said he anticipated an increase in fatalities.

The White House said in a statement that the flooding provoked President Obama to declare a state of emergency in North Carolina on Monday. This makes funding accessible to affected individuals in ten counties damaged by the storm.

Governor Pat McCrory said that water and air rescues would carry on throughout the day. They counted around 2,000 residents trapped in their homes and on rooftops in Lumberton, off the Lumber River.

See Related News: As Matthew Departs, Battered Cities Focus on Recovery and Flood Control

More flooding expected

Central and eastern towns along the Lumber, Neuse, Cape Fear and Tar rivers expected major flooding. The National Weather Service forecast disastrous flooding due to anticipated overflowing of the Neuse river on Friday night.

On Monday afternoon, emergency officials in North Carolina’s Lenoir County declared a mandatory evacuation for businesses and residents near the Neuse River.

Several inland and coastal communities remained under water from storm surge or swarming rivers and creeks.

Governor Nikki Haley, in neighboring South Carolina, alerted that waterways were rapidly reaching capacity around the state.

Emergency services reported three storm-related deaths in her state, she said.

Downed power lines also elicited warnings as around 715,000 businesses and homes were without power on Monday night in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Florida.

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Couple Ride Out Matthew in Tower in the Middle of the Ocean

More than 30 miles off the Atlantic coast, a North Carolina man and his fiancée are riding out Hurricane Matthew on top of an old Coast Guard light station. Richard Neal is the owner of the podium, called Frying Pan Tower. Accessible only by boat or helicopter, the structure stands around 100 or so feet above the ocean. The tower has amazing views of the sunrise and sunset but there’s no land in sight.

Neal bought the light station from the government after the Coast Guard vacated it in 2004. Radar and GPS made the light station outdated for ships traversing the shallow Frying Pan Shoals.

Neal leases the station out as a vacation home. The area boasts of mild weather and good fishing in the Gulf Stream below.

Because of the good fishing in the Gulf Stream below and the generally mild weather through out the year, the tower is leased out by Neal as a vacation home.

They are getting some incredibly massive waves that make the tower shake and tremor. Nevertheless, steel is amazingly tough, Neal said after acknowledging that the light station is a “solid old beast”.

Neil inadvertently rode out Hurricane Arthur on the tower two years ago when he and his guests got shut in by the storm and couldn’t leave. Matthew had about the same wind speed as Arthur as they approached North Carolina. Hence, Neil believed the structure would be safe this time.

Tower shakes and leaks during storm

He said that all the structure would do is shake and leak.

Neal said he coordinated with the Coast Guard and admitted he would be on his own should anything happen to the tower.

He said that he and his fiancée discussed about going back to the mainland about two or three times. They decided to stay anyway.

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Americans Flee Coast as Hurricane Matthew Approaches US

President Barack Obama and state governors advised millions to evacuate or brace for a possibly destructive Hurricane Matthew. Residents near the southeast US coast on Wednesday stocked up on groceries, lined up for gasoline and took off inland.

Matthew, considered the strongest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, battered the Bahamas and heads directly for the United States. The US National Hurricane Center said that it would likely hit Florida with heavy rain, powerful winds and storm surges on Thursday.

Obama emphasized in a briefing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that if there’s an evacuation order in their community, people should take it seriously.

FEMA has placed commodities and other supplies in Albany, Georgia and at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. They also positioned personnel to emergency operation centers in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

According to the Miami-based hurricane center, Matthew is a Category 3 storm with sustained winds of about 115 miles per hour on Wednesday night. They added that it was too early to forecast where the hurricane was expected to do the most damage.

Emergency measures

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott appealed to those areas at risk to evacuate as soon as possible. The inhabitants may start leaving even if orders had not yet been issued.

Scott also called for Obama to declare a pre-landfall emergency for Florida. This would bring federal resources such as water, food and tarps, and would augment an already active force of 1,500 National Guard members with an additional 1,500.

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s office said he extended a state of emergency proclamation to include 17 additional counties. This brings the total to 30 counties.

Medical staff cleared at least four hospitals as evacuations were proceeding in about a dozen of Florida’s coastal counties, Scott said.

Authorites expect the initial effects of the storm on Saturday morning in South Carolina. At this time drivers at the state already report gridlocks and long delays.

On social media, Floridians said they were stocking up on groceries and setting up their homes with hurricane shutters.

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