Florence forces more evacuations.
GALIVANTS FERRY, S.C. >> With muddy river water still washing over entire communities on Friday, eight days after Hurricane Florence slammed into land with nearly 3 feet of rain, new evacuation orders forced residents to flee to higher ground amid a sprawling disaster that’s beginning to feel like it will never end.
At least 42 people have died, including an elderly man whose body was found in a submerged pickup truck in South Carolina, and hundreds were forced from their homes as rivers kept swelling higher. Leaders in the Carolinas warned residents not to get complacent, warning additional horrors lie ahead before things get better.
“Although the winds are gone and the rain is not falling, the water is still there and the worst is still to come,” South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said.
Speaking in Las Vegas, President Donald Trump said South Carolina is in for a “tough one” as flood waters keep rising.
“They got hit, but the big hit comes days later and it will be the biggest they’ve ever had,” said Trump, who visited North and South Carolina this week.
While most peoples’ lights are back on in the Carolinas and Virginia and trucks are picking up mountains of storm debris, water draining toward the sea from inland areas is sending rivers over their banks across a wide region.
Rescuers wearing nightvision googles used helicopters, boats and bigwheeled military vehicles overnight to evacuate about 100 people from a southeastern North Carolina county where high water breached a levee, flooding a town.
In South Carolina, emergency managers ordered about 500 people to flee homes along the Lynches River. The National Weather Service said the river could reach record flood levels late today.
In tiny Galivants Ferry, Audra Mauer said she lost her home two years ago when Hurricane Matthew hit and she’s losing it again to Florence. No area improvements were made after Matthew, she said.
“They didn’t clean the ditches,” she said. “Same levee. Same dams. What have we been doing for two years?”
About 25 miles nearer to the South Carolina coast,
Kevin Tovornik tore out carpet and removed furniture as a preventative measure because he expected flooding at the house he has owned for 20 years in Conway, where the Waccamaw River was still rising. Bridges are starting to close because of flooding, he said, and friends were struck in traffic for hours trying to cross the town of 23,000.
Road travel also was a daunting problem in Wilmington, a city of 120,000 people still mostly cut off from the rest of North Carolina. A photograph posted by the state transportation agency showed flowing water and buckled highway asphalt on one
of the few passable routes into the city, where officials have distributed food and water to residents.As environmental worries mount, Duke Energy said a dam containing a large lake at Wilmington power plant had been breached by floodwaters, and it was possible that coal ash from an adjacent dump was flowing into the Cape Fear River.
Paige Sheehan, a Duke Energy spokeswoman, said the company didn’t believe the breach at the L.V. Sutton Power Station posed a significant threat for increased flooding to nearby communities because the river is already running high.