Hurricane Matthew yesterday slammed into North Carolina and Virginia, packing a diminished yet still potent punch as it caused major flooding and widespread power outages along the US Atlantic coast after killing hundreds in Haiti.
Now weakened, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007 unleashed torrential rains and powerful winds as it churned slowly north after pummeling the southeastern coast of the US, killing at least 11 people in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina since Thursday and leaving more than 2 million businesses and homes without power.
However, storm damage in the US was much less than in Haiti ,where Matthew took nearly 900 lives and at least 13 people have died from outbreaks of cholera on the island in the wake of the storm.
Photo: AP
Early yesterday the storm threatened coastal communities in North Carolina and Virginia, where flash flood warnings were issued and gusts of winds of 120kph were recorded.
It was downgraded later in the morning to a post-tropical cyclone, but still had some dangerous fight left in it, dumping more than 30.48cm of rain on North Carolina in a deluge that flooded homes and businesses as far as 161km inland.
“The wind is bending the trees to a 90 degree angle in my backyard, I’ve lost electrical power in my home and the rain is blowing sideways,” Frank Gianinni, a 59-year-old occupational therapist, said in an e-mail from his home in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Photo: AP / Josh Galemore / Savannah Morning News
“Standing outside in my backyard just now, and I’m humbled by the power of nature,” he said.
Widespread flooding has been reported.
“We are looking at very significant flooding. Almost every road in the city is impassable,” Virginia Beach spokeswoman Erin Sutton yesterday told the Weather Channel from the city of almost 500,000 people that sits between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Photo: Reuters
On Saturday evening, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory had urged residents to stay off roads and sidewalks to avoid “deadly conditions” caused by severe flooding and debris.
Local and national media showed footage from throughout the region of motorists and passengers sitting and standing on vehicles stuck in rushing flood waters as crews used swift water boats to rescue the stranded.
In Cumberland County, North Carolina alone, more than 500 people had been rescued by crews as of early yesterday, the Weather Channel reported.
The center of the storm was set to move to the east of North Carolina later in the day as it weakens.
Matthew made US landfall on Saturday near McClellanville, South Carolina, a village 48km north of Charleston that was devastated by a Category 4 hurricane in 1989.
Parts of Interstate 95, the main north-south thoroughfare on the East Coast, were closed due to flooding and fallen trees, state officials said.
Roads in Jackson Beach, Florida, were littered with debris, including chunks from an historic pier dislodged by the storm, with some intersections clogged by standing water, while beachfront businesses suffered moderate damage.
“We rode out the storm. It wasn’t this bad at our house, but here there’s a lot of damage,” said Zowi Cuartas, 18, as he watched bystanders pick up shattered signs near the beach.
Additional reporting by AP
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