When they got to the home, the woman was deceased, Chad McEwen, assistant county manager for Pender County, said.
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The “intense rescue effort” included firefighters and FEMA volunteers, and was made hard due to the large size of the tree, according to Chief Jon Mason with the City of Wilmington Fire Department.
Hurricane Florence made landfall this morning near Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina, causing huge storm surges, heavy winds, strong winds, and intense flooding. Florence touched down early Friday as a category 1 storm with sustained winds of 90 miles per hour, quickly knocking out power.
Early Saturday morning Florence’s winds weakened to 65 mph (100 kph) as it moved forward at 5 mph (7 kph) and was about 15 miles (25 kilometers) west northwest of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
“Downtown Wilmington was getting a beating”, said Angela Brown, 62, of Wilmington.
There’s no doubt that Hurricane Florence is causing some real problems in America right now as it rips through North and SC and Virginia, but a clip has gone viral that appears to show a weather reporter hamming it up a bit. “The infrastructure is going to break”.
New Bern resident Dan Eudy said he and his brother were awakened on Thursday night by the sound of a boat ramming against his front porch.
Numerous roads were closed Friday as the storm raged through and then stalled over Wilmington.
In the neighbourhood where the mother and child died, resident Frank Hendrickson pointed to a tree that fell next door to him but spared a neighbour’s house.
A tropical storm warning is in now effect for Chesterfield, Lee, Sumter, Clarendon, Calhoun, Orangeburg, Lancaster, Kershaw, Fairfield, Richland, and Lexington counties, according to NWS Columbia.
Some coastal evacuees say they’re turning to their faith to get them through this stressful situation. “People who live in New Bern have experienced hurricanes before, but it has been a long time since we have experienced something like this”.
Forecasters say “it can not be emphasized enough that the most serious hazard associated with slow-moving Florence is extremely heavy rainfall, which will cause disastrous flooding that will be spreading inland”. The storm is some 645 kilometres wide. “We’re going to have to have patience, we’re going to have to be careful and we’re going to have to deal with a lot of water”. “After the rain, it’s flooding and river flooding as well”. And it’s travelling farther and creating deeper floods thanks to sea-level rise from climate change, which research indicates has added as much as 6 inches to Florence’s surge. Wilmington’s previous three-day record total was 19.66 inches recorded in 2010. At 8.27 feet, the river topped its previous high of 8.17 feet set during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Forecasters predict it will make landfall between Thursday and Friday. USA media later said a second man in Lenoir County died after heavy winds knocked him down as he tried to check on his dogs.
Both the Trent and Neuse rivers overflowed their banks, flooding homes, stores and streets and trapping many people in their houses.
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“Our hearts go out to the families of those who died in this storm”, Cooper said in a statement.
