Five Deaths Attributed to Tropical Storm Florence
PAUL: It is still an absolute mess in the Carolinas. And that green band that you see there on the radar is only going to make it worse here in the next few hours. So glad to have you with us. I am Christi Paul. Victor Blackwell is there in Myrtle Beach right now. You have got some new information for us?</s>BLACKWELL: I do. I do. We have been talking about rain that has come down on North Carolina and will be coming down over the next several days. Well, we've just learned that North Carolina has broken its all-time record for rainfall during a tropical system. It was held back in 1999 during hurricane Floyd at 24.06 inches. Well now hurricane and tropical storm Florence have broken that record and they may surpass it even more because this storm is not moving, Christi. It is moving at virtually two miles per hour. When I hear two miles per hour, I think about that old Fresh Prince song, "Two Miles an Hour, So Everybody Sees You." We see hurricane and tropical storm Florence. It is staying here for quite a while and it cannot move out quickly enough.</s>PAUL: All right, Victor, thank you so much. We're going to be going to Victor again in just a couple of minutes here. But Florence, remember, slammed ashore in North Carolina as a category one hurricane just a little more than 26 hours ago. It has since been downgraded, as you heard him say, tropical storm. But this is still dangerous. I want you to look at the fury that it brought with it as it hit.</s>MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The wind is whipping stronger than it has in the last 24 hours.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The eye did make landfall at Wrightsville Beach about six miles from where I am with a wind speed of about 90 miles per hour.</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: This isn't just water that's coming this way. The ocean and the wind are forcing sand up into the air.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you look all the way down among all those people, you might be able to make it out. That is the ocean. It is not supposed to be there right now.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Power is out all over the city. That tree over there to my left, to your right, looks like it is about to be uprooted. And we're getting a lot of strong gusts of wind.</s>DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are in River Bend, experiencing an extraordinary amount of flooding here. And a lot of people have said that they weren't expecting it to flood like this here.</s>PAUL: I want to give you another update on something we have been going back and forth here about some different information that was coming in. At one point we had said there were seven deaths we had been told attributed to the storm. It is five deaths attributed to this storm now. Two of those deaths apparently are being categorized as a murder-suicide. So again, there had been seven deaths, but five of them are attributed to this storm in terms of a 77-year-old man who was found dead at his home. He had gone out to check on his hunting dogs. The wind knocked him down. There was a mother and infant who died when a tree fell on their home. And another man in the north county who was electrocuted when he was attempting to connect extension cords outside his house. So Victor, we just wanted to make clear some of the new information we had coming in about the death numbers that have been fluctuating a bit.</s>BLACKWELL: Yes, those details coming from law enforcement. They have corrected the numbers they released to us. Now again, five deaths attributed to the storm. Let's go now to David Cotton. He's the county manager there in Onslow County in North Carolina. David, good morning to you. First, I understand that there have been rescues across Onslow County. Are there still people waiting to be rescued from their homes? And give us an idea of the conditions there.</s>DAVID COTTON, COUNTRY MANAGER, ONSLOW COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA: Sure. Good morning. There are approximately 40 folks in the queue waiting to be rescued. For the most part they are not in imminent danger, but flood waters are rising quickly, and we are working with the Coast Guard and Marine Corps to deploy helicopters and swift water teams. We have had a swift water team that just arrived from Indiana that has already gone into service, and we are actively rescuing those folks as we speak.</s>BLACKWELL: These 40 people or so, I know that's an estimate, are they in one specific locale or are they spread across Onslow County?</s>COTTON: Sure. For the most part we have isolated there, 10 people needing rescue from one location. And beyond that it is the individual homes with two people or one person. The overall conditions are really deteriorating as we speak. As you mentioned, the storm is not moving, so we are moving beyond flooding like we have never seen. Places that are not identified as being in flood plain are being flooded. Homes that would have never been expected to have ever seen any water damage are up into the first floor, over the roof of vehicles. So it's going to be a long process of cleanup. But right now we're still focused on the rescue.</s>BLACKWELL: Those 10 that you said in one location, which city are they in, or are they in unincorporated Onslow?</s>COTTON: They are near Jacksonville. It's right on the unincorporated border between Jacksonville and just being in the county itself.</s>BLACKWELL: OK. Was there a mandatory or even a voluntary evacuation order for your county? And how many people do you believe decided to leave?</s>COTTON: There was. We started with a voluntary evacuation when we declared a state of emergency on Monday. Tuesday based on conditions and when we anticipated the storm arriving, it was actually a category four on Tuesday and coming straight for the new river which is right in the center of our county. I then issued a mandatory evacuation. We did a mass transportation of those that did not have vehicles to get out in partnership with Onslow County school system to Raleigh. That was just over 1,100 individuals that caravanned to Raleigh. And beyond that, we were estimating those that heeded the warning in the neighborhood of 30 to 40,000, maybe more than that. But we're a county of 200,000.</s>BLACKWELL: All right, sir, thanks so much for spending a couple minutes with us. I know that you have a lot of work to do and there are still those people who are waiting to be rescued. The best to you and the people there in Onslow County. You said you have rescue teams from Indiana coming in, and hopefully they'll be able to assist shortly. Again, thank you for your time. I'll let you get back to work. Christi, again, this story has not moved on, the storm has not moved on solely to South Carolina. As we heard from the county manager there. There's still a lot of work to do in North Carolina. Back to you.</s>PAUL: Yes, and a lot of people who still need to be rescued. Victor Blackwell, Victor, thank you so very much. Another former Trump aide is flipping. This time we're talking about Paul Manafort, the same person President Trump called a brave man last month for refusing to break. What does this mean? We're going to discuss it.