FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — When Hurricane Matthew dumped torrential rains on North Carolina, thousands of people found themselves suddenly trapped in homes and cars. Rescuers in Coast Guard helicopters plucked some of them from rooftops and used military vehicles to reach others, including a woman who held on to a tree for three hours after her car was overrun by flood waters.
In another dramatic rescue, a woman with her small child perched on the roof of her car had to be helped to safety as the waters rose around them, underscoring how quickly Matthew wreaked havoc 100 miles or more inland after sparing much of the Southeastern coast the catastrophic damage once feared.
The storm killed more than 500 people in Haiti and at least 18 in the U.S. — nearly half of them in North Carolina. Most were swept away by flood waters.
Gov. Pat McCrory said authorities were searching for five people and feared they may find more victims. The problems were far from over as all that rain — more than a foot in places — flows into rivers and downstream, likely causing days of major flooding in many of the same places devastated by a similar deluge from Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
“Hurricane Matthew is off the map. But it is still with us. And it is still deadly,” McCrory said.
Town evacuated
Princeville, a town of 2,000 that disappeared in the waters of the Tar River during Floyd, was evacuated Sunday as the river was expected to rise to 17 feet above flood stage by late Monday — a level not seen since Floyd. McCrory expected more evacuations as some rivers were predicted to crest next Friday.
David Bullock’s sister called him as he bought lottery tickets to tell him police were knocking on doors saying they had to go. He rebuilt his home after the 1999 flood.
“If I get flooded again, I can’t take it. I can’t go back and take the expense. If I get flooded again I’m going to say, ‘it’s yours, I’m gone,”‘ Bullock said.
More than a million people in South Carolina and North Carolina were without power, and at least four separate sections of Interstate 95 — the main artery linking the East Coast from Florida to Maine — were closed in North Carolina.
The ferocity of the rain caught people by surprise. Ezekiel Crowe, 10, escaped the floods in Fayetteville on Saturday with his parents and seven brothers and sisters when a police boat plucked them from an apartment as the waters rose.
“I was scared. I was scared. And I thought, I thought the world was going to end. But it didn’t,” he said.
Woman, dog saved
In Wilson County, rescuers were called when a 63-year-old woman didn’t make it home from work. They heard her cries for help while riding on top of a Humvee, and when they couldn’t get her with a rope, a National Guard soldier swam to her, staying until a rescue boat arrived, Emergency Management Director Gordon Deno, said.
Even animals had to be saved. WRAL-TV showed a dog swimming around floodwaters Saturday. McCrory said he and his wife were riveted by the coverage and relieved to find out from the Coast Guard that the dog managed to get into a tree and rescue it.
The rainfall totals were staggering: Nearly 15 inches in Fayetteville and 8 inches in Raleigh. McCrory warned that cities along rivers in eastern North Carolina needed to be prepared for days of flooding. The Lumber River in Lumberton was 4 feet above its record level Sunday afternoon and was forecast to remain there for at least five days.
Shortly before daybreak, the hurricane was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone. As of 2 p.m. EDT, the storm was centered about 150 miles east of Cape Hatteras, N.C., moving out to sea. It still had hurricane-force winds of 75 mph.
Elsewhere along the coast, things were slowly returning to normal. Much of Savannah, which had 17 inches of rain, was still without electricity. About 150 people stood in line for a grocery store to open like it was a Black Friday sale.
