FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.—Hurricane Matthew is gone, but the disaster it unleashed will slowly unfold this week as rivers across eastern North Carolina rise to levels unseen since a similar deluge flooded thousands of homes and businesses during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
Emergency planners are now using models that can pinpoint exactly how high the rivers can get and which buildings will be flooded days in advance. But they can’t predict whether dams and levees will bust from the stress of more than a foot of rain in some places. At least one already has.
In Lumberton, a levee broke overnight and crews scrambled to rescue 1,500 people. Most of them were in knee deep water, but there were people on rooftops waiting for boats or helicopters, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said.
Evacuations were ordered in cities along three different rivers. Some rivers were expected to be at record levels Friday—six days after Matthew’s rains ended.
State resources are stretched to their limit, McCrory said.
“If you’ve been told to evacuate, then evacuate. If you don’t we have to divert resources to the area to save you,” the governor said Monday.
Immediately after Saturday’s rains, thousands of people found themselves suddenly trapped in homes and cars during the torrential rains. 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.
The storm killed more than 500 people in Haiti and at least 22 in the U.S.—nearly half of them in North Carolina. Most were swept away by flood waters.
At least two of the five people reported missing in North Carolina have been found. McCrory and others fear the death toll may rise though, as impatient people drive around road barricades into swiftly moving floodwaters.
The National Hurricane Center issued its last advisory on Matthew at 5 p.m. Sunday, when the storm was about 200 miles off the North Carolina coast.
Princeville, a town of 2,000 that disappeared in the waters of the Tar River during Floyd, was evacuated Sunday. The river was expected to rise to 17 feet above flood stage by late Monday—a level not seen since Floyd, which was another storm whose eye brushed by North Carolina’s coast but poured 15 to 20 inches of rain inland.
David Bullock’s sister called him as he bought lottery tickets and told him police were knocking on doors in Princeville 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.
