MIAMI — How do you measure a disaster like Florence? In sum, the storm is turning out to be every bit as devastating as forecasters expected, and it's far from done, with trillions of gallons of rain in the forecast, hundreds of people needing rescue, nearly a million power outages and several deaths. Thousands of people have been told they still faced "imminent danger" from flooding. The economic toll remains to be tallied.
In North Carolina, a mother and infant died when a tree fell on their house, a 78-year-old man was electrocuted while plugging in a generator in the rain, a 77-year-old man died after being blown to the ground while checking on his hunting dogs, and a sheriff's office said three people died because of "flash flooding and swift water on roadways.". In South Carolina , a 61-year-old woman was killed when her vehicle hit a tree that had fallen across a highway.
Thousands of people living within a mile (1.5 kilometers) of the banks of North Carolina's Cape Fear River and Little River were ordered Saturday to evacuate because they faced "imminent danger" from flooding as river basins filled beyond their capacity. The evacuation zone included part of the city of Fayetteville, with a population of 200,000.
Florence is testing the faith of people in the Bible Belt town of Lumberton, South Carolina , where people had to be rescued from rooftops after flooding caused by Hurricane Matthew two years ago. Lumberton's manufacturing-based economy was withering for years before that, and local newspaper editor Donnie Douglas says he doesn't know how much more suffering the traumatized residents can take.
Long before President Donald Trump tossed paper towels to storm-stricken Puerto Ricans and denied Hurricane Maria's reported death toll, his predecessors sometimes struggled to steer the nation through life-and-death emergencies. The Associated Press has fact checked some of the claims Trump made about Maria and the economy this week. Trump will travel next week to areas hit by Florence.
Typhoon Mangkhut set off landslides and destroyed homes in the Philippines, killing at least 12 people and prompting more evacuations as it turned toward southern China. Determining the role climate change plays in storms like Florence and Mangkhut is complicated, experts tell the AP. In the Atlantic Ocean, the Azores could get gusty winds and heavy rains from Tropical Storm Helene, and Ireland and the United Kingdom could get hit with the storm's remnants early next week.