With the death toll in Haiti now at over 900 and still climbing, according to Reuters, and the death toll in the U.S. at 14 confirmed deaths, at least half of them in North Carolina, Hurricane Matthew was indeed a dangerous storm.
As Matthew began to pull out to sea Sunday morning, the crisis in North Carolina was far from over. “As the sun rises in North Carolina and the blue sky returns, our state is facing major destruction and, sadly, loss of life,” Gov. Pat McCrory said on Sunday.
Rivers and creeks are overflowing, forcing people out of their homes and trapping others as far as 100 miles inland. The rainfall amounts were record-breaking, with Wilmington getting 18 inches, with 14 inches recorded in Fayetteville and 8 inches in Raleigh. Just in Fayetteville, over 880 water rescues have been made, according to the Associated Press.
“Right now, as we speak, people are trapped in their homes,” McCrory said Sunday morning. On Friday, President Obama approved Governor McCrory’s request for a federal disaster declaration for 66 counties in central and eastern North Carolina. People have been warned to stay off flooded roads, and parts of I-40 and I-95 remain closed.
No one has to be reminded that the impact of Hurricane Matthew is going to be felt for many days to come, particularly in North Carolina. Governor McCrory said this morning, “This is still an extremely dangerous situation. And I cannot stress it more especially in the areas of Rocky Mount, Kinston, Greenville, Goldsboro and other eastern towns, cities. We’re going to have major issues with rivers and flooding.”
In Georgia, Matthew created a record storm surge on Tybee Island close to the Georgia-South Carolina border, with the surge reaching 12.5 feet, according to the New York Times, breaking the previous 12.2 feet record set by Hurricane David in 1979.
In South Carolina, the state’s historic Low Country along the southern coast was inundated with rains and surging seas, turning roads into rivers and ripping trees from the water-soaked Earth before it made landfall in Charleston. Today, there are still over 430.000 people in the state without power.
“We had a lot of rain, for many hours,” said Capt. Bob Bromage, the public information officer for the Sheriff’s Department in Beaufort County, southwest of Charleston, according to the local ABC affiliate. “We had flooding, we may have had some surge that we’re not aware of yet, we have downed trees, we have reports of downed trees on houses already.”
And in Florida, Governor Rick Scott said that while the state had “suffered unbelievable amounts of beach erosion,” as well as damaged roads, flooding and felled trees, “The first thing we can say is we are all blessed that Matthew stayed off our coast.” Scott flew along the coastline to survey the damage.
At least two million people were ordered to evacuate up and down the south-eastern coast of the U.S. ahead of Hurricane Matthew. By hugging the coast as it moved north, the hurricane was spot-on with what forecasters had said would be the track. “People got incredibly lucky,” Colorado State University meteorology professor Phil Klotzbach. “It was a super close call.”
